rat babys burried?

So my mommy rat just completely covered the babys in nesting and aspen chips. i thought it was cute.. but odd.

does she do this to keep them warm while she eats?

HIdes them, keeps them warm, keeps them from crawling around so she doens't have to go round the little buggers up later..
Rat mommys are fun.

Yeah that happens a lot. You have to be careful when dumping the old substrate to make sure you don't throw out any babies along with the wood shavings.

I used to be so worried that my momma rats would lose them when I first started breeding rats. Now I've learned to trust my momma rats - they know what they're doing! :D

I just had a mouse mommy do that. I thought it was great since I keep my mouse colony in the garage where it gets pretty cold for SoCal at night. Babies are now nearly 2 weeks old, fat and just pre-hopper stage. =)

I love the trick where they use their empty food bowl, flipped over, to corral the little ones. Female rats generally know what they are doing and have great mothering instincts. :)

LOL , I have one female that puts everything in the tub including the kitchen sink over her pups when she needs a break. Blocks of wood, treats, aspen , wood pellets, bowls, toilet paper rolls... whatever happens to be in there ends up on them. Crazy little rats. :P

yeah mine has aspen and clothe. she has used the clothe to wall them in and uses the bare plastic for the bottom.

Im worried though because she left a single baby about 7 inches from the nest on his own and she is feeding and cleaning the ones she has. but ignoring the one she left out

is this normal? I saw her drag the lil fellow out on a nipple so i know she didnt toss it out?

It is funny to watch how each female deals with her big, busy litter. Some literally run themselves ragged trying to stay on top of the babies and nurse almost 24/7, some of mine construct massive nest walls trying to keep the little leeches at bay so they can get a break LOL. I've a couple of females that take literally every scap of bedding to shore up that high wall, even when I add in more so they don't poop on the bare enclosure floor, they toss that on there too...in a very vain attempt to keep the wigglers in place. It's always funny to watch that first baby rat finally scale the massive wall it's mama built and waddle over to find her. Sometimes I swear those female rats roll there eyes and sigh a bit LOL.

i have a shelf about 4 inches up that she has her nest under. and has walled it in. with a roof. so she just wiggles out and fills in the hole and the babbys are stuck hehe.

its cute but she always drags one out and leaves it and i feel bad for the little guy.

This happens. Eventually she'll notice and go grab him, or he'll squeak and get her attention. If she's off doing something else you can just toss him back in the nest. Rats don't generally wig out about human smell, but if you hand him back to her, and she's a biter, she might bite *him*. (i've had that happen before with a particularly defensive mommy rat)

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Originally Posted by takagari

yeah mine has aspen and clothe. she has used the clothe to wall them in and uses the bare plastic for the bottom.

Im worried though because she left a single baby about 7 inches from the nest on his own and she is feeding and cleaning the ones she has. but ignoring the one she left out

is this normal? I saw her drag the lil fellow out on a nipple so i know she didnt toss it out?

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Sometimes they've just forgotten one and will go retreive it, or it stayed attached to her teat and fell off out of the nest when she left to feed. Usually the mother rat will notice and go get the stray. If not you can usually nudge it back to her.

Sometimes though if you notice she's kicking out the same one over and over there is a good reason. She's instinctively culling her litter of a less than perfect offspring, a runt or one that just isn't right to her. When I see that I do let the mother rat make that call. I think her instincts are usually right and I'll remove that offspring.

Also don't be surprised if female rats with larger litters split the litter and make two nests. That's totally normal behaviour. When I first was breeding rats I'd stupidly "help" the mother by putting the litter all back together for her. I'm pretty sure most of my female rats were giving me the evil eye about that "help" LOL.