Not a bad week

A few days ago a smaller rat, that I had no idea was pregnant, dropped 12 baby rats. 3 days later, my biggest female, who I knew was pregnant, dropped 12 babies too. None of the babies made it 3 days though. And on Thanksgiving my most anticipated female (African rat) dropped 8 babies. And I must say, African rat babies are uuuuggllyyy!

Now at the moment I have another heavily pregnant female rat and a heavily pregnant African rat. And two more rats that are just putting on weight.

My male has been a stud. Breeding every female in sight. Which leads me to a question. When you observe, if you do, your males breeding a female does he seem to "groom" his ummm... hmm.. how do I say this... penis... right after "the job is done"???

ya i seen it...thats what they do i guess

Sounds like things are rockin along well with the rat colony.

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Originally Posted by RKO

My male has been a stud. Breeding every female in sight. Which leads me to a question. When you observe, if you do, your males breeding a female does he seem to "groom" his ummm... hmm.. how do I say this... penis... right after "the job is done"???

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Yep male rats are very (how do I say this nicely) "hygiene conscious" LOL. They thoroughly clean themselves after every mating.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Sounds like things are rockin along well with the rat colony.



Yep male rats are very (how do I say this nicely) "hygiene conscious" LOL. They thoroughly clean themselves after every mating.

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Good to know. Just yesterday he was running after every female in sight! Which is like 7, since I pulled out the heavily pregnant one. At first I was thinking he had some type of STD:oops:

Alright, the heavily pregnant female rat just popped about 30 minutes ago. Gave birth to 9 babies.

Whoops, just popped another, make that 10! So 40 babies in the past week. Think I might grow these ones out a little...

Make it 11...

LOL Maybe that's why they don't get STD's! Sounds like your female rat isn't done yet. She'll finish up when she's ready - looks like she's popping out a decent sized litter for you.

Neato, I love when they give me larger litters. I had one last month that gave me only 2 babies! She was older anyway and is now digesting in my friend's BCI's stomach. But I had a girl give me 13 babies overnight now.. so I am happy too.

Final count was 11. I'm glad this breeding project has really kicked off. My first attempt took me 4 months to get one litter. Second attempt took only about 2 months to get the first. This one has taken a bit longer since I bought all the females as small rats. But its really paying off now.

You appear to be doing well on the rat front! Now all you need is a really good female that'll give you 15 pups or more. ;) One of my brand new breeders, had her first litter about 5-6 days ago, and gave me 15...I was so pleased with her!! I was really used to getting 10-13, so I had to re-count a few more times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. :)

It's a bit amusing, how obsessed with hygiene rats are. Amusing because people think of them as filthy, nasty creatures, when really, they bathe more than we do! Of course, they could just be considered covered in rat spit, rather than clean...but, I personally find them to be very clean little fellows.

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Originally Posted by RKO

Final count was 11. I'm glad this breeding project has really kicked off. My first attempt took me 4 months to get one litter. Second attempt took only about 2 months to get the first. This one has taken a bit longer since I bought all the females as small rats. But its really paying off now.

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It usually works that way. Take the time up front with any animal to make sure it's healthy and well started, you get a better breeder in the end. Glad to hear things are going better for you this time around. :)

I'm fine with the sizes they're throwing now. I just feed all the babies to my hatchlings. I'll grow them out for a (very) little while then in with the hatchlings they go and mother gets to rejoin the rest of the stock.

My other African dropped 7 pinkies today as well.