2 litters in one tub bad idea?

Hey guys and gals i have a week old litter and one that showed up today. My concern is they have all be put into one giant pile lol. My question, is it ok for them to be like this being there are tiny pinks in next to fuzzies? Will the pinks be suffocated or not be able to reach food over the older ones? http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/02/10/vagyhe9u.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Generally when you have such a difference in size between the babies and regardless of the rodent, yes it will be an issue, the larger baby will be fed whereas the smaller ones won't be as lucky, which tend to translate in losses.

u can try but I would split them up

yikes, will it be ok to put them by themselves with babies or should i keep at least one extra adult female with momma ( for social reasons or nanny help)?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MonkeyShuttle

yikes, will it be ok to put them by themselves with babies or should i keep at least one extra adult female with momma ( for social reasons or nanny help)?

---

Moms will do better on their own they will be busy nursing so there is no need for another female with them, the only way I would consider having another female is if that female had a litter of the same size too.

Putting a female with a litter with one that does not have one is never a good idea either. ;)

with that settles that then. thanks Deb!

im close to having this same issue. i started my colony with 1 male 2 females. one of the females dropped her first litter of 10 on the 18th and i expect the second female to drop any day. they are in a pretty big tub and ive provided 2 bowls for them. should i try to move them to separate bowls if they give birth in same bowl?

cage view
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/320...0/812/t20a.jpg
first litter :)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/320...0/812/t20a.jpg

I don't really have any issues with different age litters on top of one another. I feel like splitting them up could cause more problems than leaving them together, because ASFs have weird social structures.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grrmisfit

im close to having this same issue. i started my colony with 1 male 2 females. one of the females dropped her first litter of 10 on the 18th and i expect the second female to drop any day. they are in a pretty big tub and ive provided 2 bowls for them. should i try to move them to separate bowls if they give birth in same bowl?

---

They'll probably separate them into both bowls no matter what. Most moms split the nest into 2 smaller nests if the strain is high on her body. So they might mix the 2 litters up, but they'll probably use both bowls. :)

We do ASFs in 1.3 groups and dont have many loses of pinks, aside from stillborns. The mothers will seperate the larger young usually and they take turns nursing. You do have to be wary though to wean them off at the appropriate age. The offspring of the mother needs to be weaned out before she drops another litter. Having two litters in the same cage from a single mother is too much and messes up the balance of females to offspring.

Haha, Rhasputin beat me to it, but I 100% concur with everything he said. In my experience it is not a issue at all with ASFs.

I separated them and they've done fine i had three females pop a week after each other but decided to keep them in one pile and one momma decided it wasnt her job to feed her babies and actually where growing at a slower rat then the other two litters and i mean waayyyy slower. They started looking like dwarf asf's. separated them and each mom did well. I was worried about the social thing too but there doing well. I did come home to one female last weekend though after two days who was dead with blood around her vagina. Rhas any idea?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MonkeyShuttle

I separated them and they've done fine i had three females pop a week after each other but decided to keep them in one pile and one momma decided it wasnt her job to feed her babies and actually where growing at a slower rat then the other two litters and i mean waayyyy slower. They started looking like dwarf asf's. separated them and each mom did well. I was worried about the social thing too but there doing well. I did come home to one female last weekend though after two days who was dead with blood around her vagina. Rhas any idea?

---

Did she have a litter? Or no?

She was on her second litter which was as of the weekend when she died 3 weeks old. I will pm you pics bro

Her litters were back to back and she was around 5-6 months old, diet is Mazuri 6f and sometimes bread and seeds or cheerios.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OctagonGecko729

We do ASFs in 1.3 groups and dont have many loses of pinks, aside from stillborns. The mothers will seperate the larger young usually and they take turns nursing. You do have to be wary though to wean them off at the appropriate age. The offspring of the mother needs to be weaned out before she drops another litter. Having two litters in the same cage from a single mother is too much and messes up the balance of females to offspring.

---

weaning is at about 3 weeks? and then i move them to their own tub. the question I have about that is what do you do when the females in the juvi tub start getting pregnant? do you move them over to old tub or just keep making new juvi tubs?

I don't wean mine until they're 2-3 months old. They never breed for me that early anyways, lol.

I set up colonies and leave them that way for the duration of their breeding lives. I commonly have pinks, fuzzies and hoppers in the same tub and they all end up in one big pile. I may lose a few weaker runts because of this, but there's no real noticeable loss and the occasional one that I do lose very likely wouldn't have made it even with just it's own siblings to contend with for food.

well the other one did drop 8 2 days later.. some were looking kinda runtish so i tried moving them to separate bowls.. they diddnt like this idea so they moved them back lol. when should i move the babies to their own tub? And should i keep males from females? I'm all kinda new to this not sure how on i keep them sorted. Or do i just keep all the kids away from the breeding pair and let what happens happens to the new females?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by grrmisfit

weaning is at about 3 weeks? and then i move them to their own tub. the question I have about that is what do you do when the females in the juvi tub start getting pregnant? do you move them over to old tub or just keep making new juvi tubs?

---

Here is my process. I have all of the morphs that are available. I currently run two 1.3 groups. I set up the adult breeders so I always have an idea of who the babies belong to in the bin. So an example would be: Amber "pied" male, amber "pied female", "pied" female, and agouti female. If you read up on the morphs and watch your tubs this makes it much easier to keep track of lineage.

So, for your question. I wean them off their mothers at 21-25 days to allow the newborn pinks free access to their mothers. The weaned rats get separated by sex into a large bin which houses either males or females.


When I'm looking to start up a new breeding group I pay a lot more attention to the animals to figure out temperament and health. Then I try to find the desired temperament and health in the morphs that would allow me to setup the new breeders like I stated above. There are many different combos of morphs you can use in the adults to identify lineage by the morph of offspring. Once I have found my desired breeder group I put them together rather young. It usually helps cut down on fighting and if the male is larger then the females he usually gets picked on less.

We have had a lot of issues with our original group around aggression, cannabilism, culling for no apparent reason, and (really disturbing) our original females began chewing off the right ears of their offspring. The last one developed late and was really disturbing because they seemed to have a methodology of abusing the young. It wasn't long after that until they culled several fully grown hoppers. I was already in the process of shutting down the group so that was the last straw for me and I fed off the females.

The original groups offspring was selected and paired up as half siblings. We took a lot of time out to pet them while they were young. So far it has worked out very well. They are on litter 4 now and I have only seen them cannabalize one pink which probably died on its own anyway. The aggression is completely gone, we can fool around with their pinks and fuzzies without them attacking us. They can be handled as well.

So the plan is to just keep up what we are doing and hopefully progress forward on temperament and birth counts.

thank you! so far all are living and doing well. I had read that they get very aggressive with babies around but so far mine have been pretty ok about my handling and cleaning since they decided to have them on cleaning day. I heard some squeaking and was afraid there was some baby eating going on but after watching for a minute I saw it was one of the females moving the newer pinks to the top of the pile

Another question. After the next litter is born and ready to be weaned can they be put in with the older juveniles or do I have to make new tubs for ever weaned litter?

Should be fine to mix them. :)