size for male breeder rat

i have two female rats--both about 5 months old or so. i have a male that i saved back from a batch of feeders i picked up--he's maybe about 8 weeks old. my question is, how close in size does the male need to be to the females before i can safely breed them? right now he is only about a third of their size--looks like he might make a tasty morsel for them if they decide they don't like him. :O

I think they would be fine together.. I've never had a female make a snack out of a male. ;) doesn't mean she won't teach him a thing or two.

hm ok, well i'll give them some supervised time together and see what happens. :)

lol shelby. anyway, there was some rats up at our other piece of property that ate each other, it was nasty

That is unusual for rats to seriously attack each other.

Mice, on the other hand are jumping at the excuse to butcher one another.

Our new male rat, Casanova, is quite a bit smaller and younger than our two females Emily and they did hassle him a wee bit for the first day or so. Nothing major, just giving him a bit of rat attitude LOL. Once he ummm got down to business they seemed to like him a whole lot better!


~~Jo~~

well my two girls are quite fascinated with their new little boyfriend. they cannot stop checking his...parts. it's hilarious, but i'm like--yes girls, he is a boy! how many times do ya need to check? that and the grooming--he's clean as a whistle now! :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shelby

That is unusual for rats to seriously attack each other.

Mice, on the other hand are jumping at the excuse to butcher one another.

---

they were mice that are dad put in a bucket with no food or water to release in the morning. when he woke up they had ate eachother, probably for food or water.

LOL Emily! Yes rats are very ummmm sociable and errrrr friendly that way! :P

We had to laugh though at poor Casanova who would chase the girls, Cookie and Abby, when they weren't in the mood for his antics and squeak plaintively at them for attention. Kinda sad squeaky begging. Mike just shook his head and commented rather dryly..."don't beg them! they won't respect ya buddy boy!" ;)

~~Jo~~

nother question--is it ok to put a second male in with the girls or will the males fight? i have another little male that i want to keep so that male #1 will have a friend/cage mate when he isn't with the girls but seems i have heard that if the males don't grow up together they may not get along. is this true or should i just introduce them once i separate male #1 from his ladies (which won't be until i am pretty sure they are both pregnant)?

Two males is fine. Watch them at first, if they're being turds, just wait until the girls are gone. Most likely they'll just tussle a bit and then be friends.

I keep my females with the male(s) all the time When there are BIG litters, the males actually sit on half of the litter while mom suckles the other half! It's cute.. poor pinkies don't know what to do with dad. :rolleyes:

lol, poor babies are confused!

i'll try the other male with everyone else tonight i think. we'll see how it goes. :) i feel sorry cassanova because jo said he is crying for attention now that he all by his lonesome--that's kinda what inspired me to decide to keep this male too. ;)

Actually he was crying for attention from the girls LOL. He does need a cagemate though so we'll likely be getting another young male to be buddies with him (and more females when I have the room for them).

Our male rats have always gotten along pretty well but do play pretty rough so it's nice if they are sort of similar in size. They do like to cuddle though and are usually way more laid back than the busy always females LOL.


~~Jo~~

Yes, the female rats have a post birth heat.. like 5 hours after they have babies they're pregnant again.

I separate female babies from males as soon as they are weaned.

ha yeah jo i know it is the girls he wants--but since that's not going to be an option for my little guy he's gonna have to have another male for a friend in the weeks after the girls give birth. i don't want them getting pregnant again immediately--for their sake and because i don't need THAT many babies. :)

My mom wont let me breed rats :( but ill do it anyway :)

Bad boy.. how do you expect to hide rats?

Don't you know us moms always know everything! Bwwwwwwhahahahahahaha!


~~Jo~~

ill just have to convince her :) im a good boy.....NOT

one of the females is nesting! :D the poor little boys had to go live by themselves and they are soooo mopey and sad. :tears: hopefully i'll have some beebies soon! (just had to share since these will be my first rat babies :)).

We now have 4 females rotating in with Casanova the male. Somebody BETTER get pregnant! Mike has taken to calling all 5 rats "the freeloaders" and I think I heard him mutter something about "if they ain't breedin, they're feedin"...accck!


~~Jo~~

aw, still no babies?! maybe casanova isn't so much the casanova after all.....

Good lord no! I swear sometimes I think I'm spoiling these rats so much they can't be bothered to do anything more than lay around cuddling each other and waiting for the sap to provide yet another scrumptious rat meal!

It's not like they aren't the right age, the right sex, obese or anything I can see wrong. Perhaps I'm just not being patient enough but lordy it seems everyone else just puts a boy with a girl and bingo! rat babies arrive.

I'm going to have a serious talk with Casanova about what can happen to a boy rat that doesn't apply his lil rat mind to his "work" LOL.

I sure hope when it comes time to breed snakes that I do a lot better than my current track record with rodents!


~~Jo~~

lol.. poor Jo. I have had some rats that are just slower.. one female only gave a litter every other month or so.. not every month like most do.

Do you leave the females with the male all the time? That is the best way to get babies.. if you 'rotate' the females, you aren't going to have as much luck.

actually about heat cycles: Females of breeding age come into heat all year round, every 4 to 5 days, unless they are pregnant or nursing. As a rule of thumb with rodents I personaly would not...and do not put more than one male in with female(s). Many people will keep pairs together while I have the best success by providing the most space possible to individual females who are preparing for birth. By keeping them seperate you can insure they are going to get all the food/water they need and can be monitored much more efficiently. With multiple females birthing at the same time you can also run into a dominant female "taking over" ALL babies trying to care for one huge litter. This can result in some malnurished pups and even death. For the most part this shouldn't be a problem...but I've seen it happen and have better luck giving females their own individual spaces. I get healthier litters, and much calmer breeder females.

What I have is one big cage and then two 10 gallon maternity glass tanks. I had the two bigger females in with the male for 2 to 3 weeks with the two smaller females seperate so they could have a bit more time to grow up. I figured after that time period the two big females would have gotten pregnant so rotated them out to seperate maternity tanks and popped in the 2 younger girls who now look old enough to make me some rat babies.

Well the two big girls spent the last three weeks lazing about their maternity tanks with no babies produced so they are now back in with the male to try again. I did pull the smaller younger females out as I'm concerned about overcrowding or the bigger females picking on the smaller females. The big girls have been together for quite a few months now as cage buddies (they started out as pets) and I didn't know if they would accept the two new females which are a fair bit smaller than they are.

If I were to put all 4 females in with the male at the same time, what is an appropriate size enclosure for them. I want rat babies but I don't want to put too many rats into a space too small for them all.

Shoot Em, my apologies for hijacking your thread!


~~Jo~~

nah you aren't hijacking jo, we're still talking about breeding rats. :) i have had 2 males and 2 females together for about 3-4 weeks in one big cage. i took the males out last night as it should be getting close to time for the females to deliver if they became pregnant soon after the males were introduced. once each female delivers i will move her into her own enclosure. i have 2 more females as well, but they aren't quite old enough to put into the rotation yet, so i'm thinking next time the original females deliver i'll put the younger girls in with the males. that's the plan right now anyhoo. :)

unless your needing ALOT of smaller sized rats/pups you should lay out a schedule at least in your mind and try and stick to it. Having several rats give birth to litters all in the same week can be overwhelming if your not ready for it and the space they will require as they grow...or maybe you have alot of smaller hungry snakes :) I try and cycle mine so that the litters are of varying stages of maturity. If you need adult sized rats and are breeding all of them at once it could be a bit expensive to raise 40ish rats all at once to adult size. I find it more cost effective to breed around my reptiles eating habbits and the current stock of rats I have. You may consider breeding just one or two of your girls now and letting the younger once mature more and breeding them later, this way if you feed off the litters of the first females you will have more feeders right behind, and by then the first females will be ready to enter the cycle again...but its really up to you and how your demand is for volume and sizes that you require for your reptiles.

As for males if you have one that is mature, healthy, and never misses ;) there really isn't a need for more than one unless your breeding MANY females. You can have one good stud that will carry you through a few years, to me having more than one male is just throwing food/money away they are almost always the first to be fed/sold out of my stock.

as for the males--i admit i'm being emotional about it. :P i want my male to have a friend when he's not with the ladies, so i have 2 males. and besides, they are cute. :)

right now i mostly need rats that are around weaned rat size. i have one adult female that wants live weaners and nothing else, but she will eat 3-4 per week. several of my other snakes are eating live weaned rats as well, 1-2 per week each. i still have some frozen rats (mostly smalls) for those that take f/t but i'd like to use those up and have my rat breeders provide enough to feed all the snakes. (which right now the count stands at 15 so there is a decent number of mouths to feed.) i do need to work out some kind of schedule that i can stick to and know that i will have the right numbers of food items when i need them.

That's sort of why I was thinking of rotating my females in pairs. While one pair is in with the studly wonder the other pair is out either delivering, nursing, whatever. Now if only somebody would get to it!

(Maybe some soft music, a lil white wine........)


~~Jo~~

I keep my rats in trios.. I need more cages though so two of them have three females with a male.. and one cage has two males and two females. I have the extra male because I have a rex male, a seal point siamese velveteen rex male, a dumbo capped apricot male, and.. oh, I can't remember the other male, but I like different colors/patterns/hair and ear types so none are disposable. ;)

Males are kept with females all the time.. when there are big litters, the male will 'sit' on part of the litter and keep them warm. He seems to like the babies. Females will rotate nursing babies.. I haven't had trouble with dead babies.

I keep a breeder for one year or a little more. Rats only live 2-3 years, and after the first year to year and a half they start to slow down.

wow, well no babies yet so i'm not sure if or when but the other female that was in with the males is now quite obviously in heat so i guess she is had not yet become pregnant. i placed her in the enclosure with the males and it was on! i hadn't actually witnessed rat copulation before and well, it's evidentally quite a frantic little task. :O

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shelby

That is unusual for rats to seriously attack each other.

Mice, on the other hand are jumping at the excuse to butcher one another.

---

yeah it was a mouse, my bad

Yea Mle.. that's one of the reasons why the rats are in the basement now.. too noisy!

yeah i'm looking to breed rats and i would like to know how many females do i need breed so i could have 30 small- med rats everyweek?

Well.. I'm not always good with numbers, but I'll tell you what I know.

Good females will give you 10-15 babies every month. Rats at one month are weaned.. they aren't quite what I'd call 'small' they're a bit smaller than that.. around the size of a big mouse. At two months they're getting bigger small-medium.

Males do get substantially larger. Rats are full grown at roughly 6 months.

I'm still trying to figure that out myself Eugene with my 6 Royals of various sizes, just how many rats I need of what size per week so I can figure out how many males/females breeders I need to get close to that goal.

I know from what I've read it's good to have a Co2 setup as you'll sometimes end up with more than you need of a particular size.


~~Jo~~

co2 is not a problem i have 3 50lbs tanks at my dads from when i play paintball

with a well planned breeding schedule/plan you can guestimate how many "cows" you will need to keep your animals fed using just your own rat stock. I can feed 6 ball pythons: 2 adults, 2 yearling(ish), and two 05's with 3 consistant females cycled around a male. I cut out my mice down to just one pair for pinkies which I feed my children's python.

One way to get around a schedule if its to much "work" or you just can't seem to get it right is to just freeze your own when they get to the size you need. The only ones I have to freeze are my mouse pinkies, the rats are "consumed" on a pretty regular basis.

Thanks Heath! Well with our number of balls (6 as well) perhaps if my females get going the four of them will do quite nicely and I'm happy to stock any spares up in the freezer.

I think *cross fingers* I have a preggie one. The beige hooded just suddenly "popped" yesterday and looks like she's got side saddles LOL. She's in a maternity tank by herself now and has appropriate nesting material so we'll just have to see.


~~Jo~~~