Quick question about breeding

Hey all, I just started breeding my own rat colony. I literally set everything up with the help of reading alot in this section on Saturday. Right now I have 14 balls, 3 of which are of breeding age and the rest are in the high 300g-500g range and plus 6 eggs getting ready to hatch within 2 weeks. All are eating small-medium rats. Right now I have 1 male and 3 female rats to start with, I know I'll probably need more in the future to keep up with my little collection lol. My main concern is when do I take the babies away from the mother rat? I'm going to need them to grow up abit before I can feed them to the snakes. Any help on this or other advice would be great! Thanks!

I take them once their eyes are open and they are feeding on their own 4-5 weeks I think

Awesome! So anywhere from a month to a month and a half sounds good :)

oh yeah, sometimes when mine are at the point of opening their eyes, I will let the mom spend the night with dad, so that she gets pregnant right around the time her current litter is weaning.

Sounds great! I just hope these four rats can cut down the $100 pet shop visit every two weeks lol. How many breeders do you have for your snakes?

From my own experience, the rats are weaned at 3 weeks. By 5 weeks they're already at the high end of smalls.

YMMV

They open their eyes at 2 weeks old and I wean rats at 3 1/2 - 4 weeks old, typically they are about 35 grams at this age.
If I'm holding back rats to raise to become breeders I cull the litter down to 4-5 kits and by the time those are weaned they are HUGE, lol.
I like my holdbacks to stay with momma rat till they are at least 4 weeks old or even a bit older if possible.

I wean em at 4 wks, if I'm holding back for breeding, I'll leave them in for 6 weeks to make sure they are huge and healthy... By then, the momma's are literally kicking them away anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by deathblooms

Sounds great! I just hope these four rats can cut down the $100 pet shop visit every two weeks lol. How many breeders do you have for your snakes?

---

At the moment I have 10 females, 2 males. I need to raise up 10 more females & 2 males, and that should take care of my needs....hopefully :rolleyes:

If you have 14 bp's plus 6 eggs that are going to hatch, you're definitely going to need more female rats. I think I've heard that you should have at least 1 breeding female rat for every snake you have.
I have around 60 breeding female rats....although I dont't have 60 bp's yet (someday soon enough! Haha). Anyways, when I first started out, I HATED not producing enough rats. So I prefer to have a little extra rather than not enough or barely scraping by with enough.
And I take most babies away from their mom around 4-5 weeks of age. A couple females usually get left in there with her for a while longer.

I pulled them at 4 weeks when I was breeding for feeders.

Now with the ones I'm keeping, I leave them with their mom until 6 or so weeks. They are usually half again larger than the babies I pull at 4 weeks. However, the mothers can't support a litter of 10-16 babies at 6 weeks.

I usually cull all of my litters (even now) to no more than 6-8 young. The babies and mom seems to be a lot healthier. The female also seems to be able to recover a lot faster.

Thanks for the help guys and gals! This is really informative! Where do you guys purchase your breeders at? The ones I have for now I purchased at a local pet store, not one of the big chain stores, this one has been around before I was even around lol. I'm in Illinois, so there's not alot of choices for me to go to. I'm thinking the midwest reptile show is coming at the end of the month, I might try and see if they have anything there.