Rats wont stop killing eachother. Any ideas?

I have them in a rack system. They have food and water and I check them daily. Everyday I check on them my hopper rats have killed 1 to 2 off. Im not sure why but its getting old. They have food and water and they are not overcrowded as I have about 10 in a 20 gallon tub. I have included a picture of my rack. Any ideas why they are doing this?

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/...-25-03_740.jpg

http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/...-24-54_816.jpg

once i have a rat that is eating others i kill off the whole tub and start it over. once they do it they will do it again. feed them off and restart the tub.
adam jeffery

god i just fed off like 4 hoppers that had no back feet because they were literally being eaten alive.. It was sad and I hate rats..

You have to cull that entire group and start over. You may have bad stock or your food is not good.

I had one group who for 6 moths were dropping 100+ pinks a month, then one week a female decided go awol on my male and made him very nervous and ate a lot of the babies.

I gassed them all and started over with new blood from other rack. I will have the occasional baby pink or fuzzy be a runt and die but dont allow them to eat live babies.

I'm sorry to say it sounds like you have bad stock. It's not normal for rats with plenty of food and water to kill each other.

As Rich said it could be your food is not giving them the nutrition they need. Are you feeding a quality lab block like Mazuri, Zeigler or Harlan/Native Earth?

What are you feeding?

Where did you get the rats, and how old where they when you put them together?
Cull the group and buy younger rats...

What are you feeding?

Do you house young animals with older ones that are unrelated?

Do you have more than one adult male in those tubs?

Sorry man. What are you feeding? Can they reach it? Do you have different ages housed together? I would feed em all off or freeze em and start over. No reason for this to be happening.

I'm so sorry. I have to agree with everyone. Feed your group off. Don't take chances, kill all of them. It sucks and I would be just as frustrated as you are if it were me. But please tell us what pellets they are being fed. It's possible there is simply not enough protein or fat content.

Are the rats in a room that has a lot of noise or activity? Sometimes that will start them killing and eating each other.

Once a rat has done that, I don't trust it. They tend to do it again. Best to do as the others have suggested and feed them off and start over with new stock.

Yeah as a rodent breeder i have seen this before if Dog food was being used mainly cheap dog food. Also are they able to reach the food? We keep 8 Weaned rats per tub (females and then we move them to $ per tub when there reach the small rat size then leave them from there but if its not the food you will need to Cull that entire group...

I agree with the others. I had a group of cannibals one time. They killed each other one at a time until I had one left. I happily fed her to my retic at the time :)