My first litter just arrived!

My hooded rat just gave birth to her first litter. I have her in a 106 qt tub with another female and the male. I have a large plastic hide that she has the babies in with the other female, and it looks like the male has been kicked out. I was wondering when it would be okay to count the pinks and handle them. The mom is very sociable with me and her behavior hasn't changed throughout her pregnancy. Advice on what to do or not to do would be appreciated. Thanks!

My advice is wait 3 days for mom and babes to bond. Congrats!

Ive handled my babies right after birth with no problems for cleaning. Dont know if its the right thing to do, but I have!

Congrats!

I can't wait to experience this myself! I've got one, maybe two females that are pregnant.

I handle them whenever. I've had three litters so far and counted the last two groups on day one. Of course since my current breeding group are biters I used a gloved hand to pull babies out.

I count/clean whenever I need to. And if my daughter spots the pinks first, she always has to "say hi" to them all. My mommas are fine. Grats on the babies!

Congrats! I've had 2 litters so far :)

The first one scared the crap out of me because I thought she still had a week to go and when I opened her tub she went running to the other side with a bunch of pink things following @.@

I waited 3 days to start handling the pinks, though, I bet I could have handled them immediately and it would have been fine. Rat moms are really good at what they do :)

Good rat mothers won't abandon their pinks or eat them or any such thing if you handle the babies right away. However, since it is your first litter, you have no idea how good of a mother you have. I'd recommend waiting a day or two before you mess around too much.

Whether or not they'll bite you is a different issue. I've read that even very tame females can sometimes become aggressive when protecting their babies. In my colony, the ones that I've raised since birth have so far shown no tendency in that direction, but the original females that weren't terribly tame when we got them did bite me a few times when they had pinks.

My two hooded girls become every aggressive and serious biters when pups are around, but they are good moms so I won't cull them for a while. When the lid comes off they scamper to the other side and I can count, handle, clean, etc without too much fuss. Newborn or week old it doesn't seem to matter.

Thanks for all the input. I went ahead and lifted the hide and counted them later that day. There were 13 of them! Later in the day I counted 12, and then today I found 11, and a half eaten one, in the nest. Maybe 13 was too many for her? She hasn't seemed to mind me handling them, even when she is in the nest. She's a really sweet gal, but has one quirk. If you put your finger at the top of the wire mesh, she will attack it ferociously. She does this to any object placed there. I first noticed this a few weeks before the birth, so I don't think it's related to pregnancy. I've never fed them through the lid, and first noticed this behavior before I added a food hopper that hangs from the lid. Perhaps some rats just have an instinct to attack/bite things through wires? She's a pet store rat that lived in a glass enclosure there, so I can't imagine it's a learned behavior. The other two just come up and sniff your fingers and maybe nibble extremely lightly. Other than this she has shown absolutely no signs of aggression.

Here's a picture from day 1.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/ccBP7JY.jpg?1[/IMG]

Here they are on day 2, with colors already starting to show.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/f5yke0s.jpg[/IMG]

I had another question. About how many days old will they be when they reach the size equivalent of an adult mouse? My BP is 178g and I've been feeding her adult mice that are 24-28g. I plan on euthanizing and freezing them when they reach the appropriate size. Would cervical dislocation be appropriate? Any other recommendations for euthanasia method?

Anybody with experience know about how many days old before they reach the size equivalent of an adult mouse?

I had to do CD once... I'd advise looking into a CO2 chamber... CD can be not-so-fun your first time and not very pleasant for the rat either (unless you can get someone locally to demonstrate the proper technique for you). I'd say about 4-5 weeks old... At least that was the age of my rats that I "adopted" recently and they were about the size of adult mice.

Someone posted a size conversion chart at some point here, but I'm not sure where it's at. You might just want to weigh them (if you have a scale) and use that as a guide.

Will you be keeping any back as breeders? If so, you might want to handle them regularly just in case so that any you keep will be socialized. Even if not keeping them, if planning on doing CD, they'll be less stressed if they're used to you handling them.

I'd say they're are about 30 grams at 3 weeks old. My first litter is at the 4 week mark today and 85-90 grams.

Do you have a scale? I suggest weighing them every day because they gain weight so rapidly, you're almost certain to miss your time frame if you miss a day or 2.

CD is hard to do if you've never done it before. I agree that you should look more into CO2.
I thought that I could do CD, but I turned out to be too squeamish and scared to hurt the rat.

Here's a good video on CD if you still want to look into that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opwXJ7MgjPE

Thanks for the replies. I did buy a scale, and at 1 week to the day most are weighing in at 12 grams.

Would you guys recommend dry ice or a setup with CO2 tank/cartridge? Would walmart have everything I would need for that?

I just cleaned the tub for the first time and I tried to reconstruct the nest the way she had it and place the pups in it inside the hide box. A few hours later I came by and noticed that she had moved all of them out to a corner in the tub and was nursing them there. Is this anything to be concerned about? Unfortunately I have to take them in the car for a 4 hour trip tomorrow. Hopefully they don't get too stressed out.

Kat dog this method seems way less horrific the co2. In the co2 method it puts them to sleep but they have time to panic. I may be wrong but watch co2 vids and every time they crack the tank to allow the co2 in the rats panic for a couple of seconds. I guess the co2 is preferred caused you dont have to use your hands.


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If you do CO2 right , you use a little CO2 to put them into a light sleep and them flood the container to kill them. They don't panic at all.

Congrats! :)
About 20 years ago, I kept two hamsters as pets. Well, they both got out and hooked up on my couch, right by the remote control. LOL Needless to say, she got preggers. Sadly, the pups didn't survive. They were still born, and to my horror, mommy hammy was chomping away on one of them. :( I'm glad your little ones are here and are doing well! Keep us posted.

The babies are two weeks now and weigh from 18-22 grams. I'm thinking I'll let them grow to 30 grams, because my snake is ~200g and you're supposed to go with 15% of weight right?

Anybody have personal experience with dry ice, vinegar/baking soda, or a tank? I'd prefer to do one of these over cervical dislocation, but I don't know if I can get dry ice and the tank method seems to have a high initial cost. I'm also concerned because these methods don't allow for control of flow rate, so I worry it might burn their eyes and respiratory tracts.

I'm currently using baking soda/vinegar to euthanize my rats because I haven't built a real chamber yet.

I have a container where the rats go and connected to it by a hose is another container I put baking soda and I pour vinegar on it in intervals so it slowly replaces the oxygen and doesn't cause a strong vinegar smell while they are alive.
I then have a tube going from the container the rats are in into a bowl of water so oxygen can escape to reduce air pressure, but oxygen can't get back in.


My rats just fall asleep calmly and die. No labored breathing, no pooping, no trying to get out.


I'm not going to stick with this set up for long though, I'm going to build myself a real chamber once I figure out where to go to get co2 refills.
I'm probably going to end up spending about $40-50 on the co2 chamber, the parts are pretty inexpensive on amazon.



10-15% is the general rule for babies. So 30 grams is a good weight :)

So I just tried to euthanize 7 of my litter (a friend wanted to take 4 as pets) and it didn't go so well. They ranged from 25 to 28 grams. I was going to wait until they were a little heavier, but they started looking a bit bigger than the mice I have been feeding my BP. Anyhow, I tried the baking soda and vinegar method using two Glad plastic containers. They were both small containers less than a gallon. I ran plastic tubing from the baking soda/vinegar container to the other plastic tub where the rats were, and then ran plastic tubing from that container to a water bottle. I used 1/2 cup of vinegar and 1/4 cup of baking soda, and repeated that dose 3-4 more times. However, the rat pups were still breathing after 20-25 minutes. I finally took them out and did CD on them. What could have been wrong with my setup? It was pretty much airtight, including the holes where the tubes ran in and out. How long should it take for their respiration to cease? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Sounds like you didn't create enough CO2.

Where they knocked out at least? After my rats fall asleep I maximize the amount of co2 I can get into that container and that kills them pretty much instantly.

How old were they? CO2 doesn't work on rats 2 weeks and younger. They are resistant to hypoxia. Meaning they don't need much oxygen to survive since they're mostly under mom still. So they can survive a CO2 chamber. The only humane way to euthanize them is CD or freezing. Anything older than 2 weeks has to be CD or CO2.

Also, you can get cheap CO2 from a sporting good store. $15-20 for a paintball canister and $2-3 to fill it up.
Takes 2-3 mins to euthanize rats via CO2.


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The rats were 17 days old. They were all apparently knocked out and some of them weren't breathing, but some were. I repeated the mixing of baking soda and vinegar multiple times, and heard the water bubbling where I had the tube for the exhaust from the chamber, so it should have filled with CO2. Perhaps they were still resistant to hypoxia?

Hey Sinclaire!

Once you start seeing the mother get up to eat and drink on her own away from her rat kittens they're ready to be touched. Do however exercise caution with your fingers around a new mother. They're very hormonal and can be much more vicious even if it is an extremely docile rat :)

-ratpimp

edit; generally rats require no assistance during or immediately following birth (unless the mother is literally too tired to move afterwords - In this case I add another doe to help take care of the kittens who were born) however this is a perfect time to clean the babies if you so choose.

I also wanted to mention that I had a layer of aspen on the bottom of the euthanasia chamber. Could this have interfered with the process in some way?