Live Feeders & Side Effects

[Prognathodon]

Not-Pet Fail. Fail fail fail. (headdesk, headdesk)

The rat girls are Fawn (or maybe Faun, forgot to ask Dracos which way we were spelling it) and Cheesecake, and last I knew he was debating between Watson or Pickering for the male.

But babies *will* be feeders!

Tonight's projects: hopper feeder for the rats, drilling a water bottle nozzle hole in the mouse tub, and giving the rats the additional chew toys I got them yesterday.


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[artgecko]

Rats are great and make very good pets. Hold back any babies that are very friendly / tame and less aggressive (don't bite) and you will end up breeding friendlier calmer rats. If you have them in a glass tank, i'd switch to a large bin cage made from a steralite tub.. rats need more ventilation than mice. You can cut large holes in the tops / sides of plastic tubs then cover them with hardware cloth (I solder holes around the large windows, then weave metal wire through them and the hardware cloth to attach it). This will allow you to put a water bottle on the side, hang chews / toys, etc. Bin cages are also easier to clean because they are light weight.
C
I'd also suggest getting a CO2 chamber setup.. The rats will quickly breed and grow and you will have to euthanize some of the babies and freeze unless you have enough snakes to eat them each week. You will also need a second or third bin to separate males from females as they can reproduce at 5-6 weeks of age. Rats can have litters of upper teens to even 20, so you need to be prepared for that.

[Prognathodon]

We've got a tank topper in transit for the rats, which will triple their floor space and have good ventilation. And we can give them more toys, hammock, etc.

I suspect the topper may make it easier to socialize with them too, since it has front doors, so we can come in level (with treats), rather than from above.

And today we picked up another half-dozen episodes of Mice TV - the little BPs fed quite nicely on mice yesterday (one took a live rat crawler on Sunday, the other refused). They have definite lumps, but I don't think the mice were too big.


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[Prognathodon]

I made the current mouse bin out of a tub, and I think it came out pretty well, but I'm not sure I want to repeat the process. Attaching the mesh onto the lid was tedious. Debating what I want to do for grow-out bins. No sign of pregnancy in the rats, the decision may wait until we get pups.

I expect we'll set a CO2 chamber in the long run; to get rid of just one rat (see below) we used a small piece of dry ice in a 5-gallon bucket.

More drama and a new actor on Rat TV. Our first male turned out to be a bitey jerk, so he was euthanized and is now living in the freezer. Got a new male, Falstaff, who is soooo much nicer, but doesn't seem to have any concept of treats. The girls are cheerfully running up and down the now 3-level cage, hopefully Falstaff figures out the ramps and soon (he's on the level with the food and water).

No sign of pregnancy yet in the rats, and I'm not going to complain if jerk-rat was unsuccessful at breeding.

Faun is an escape artists, she's 2/2 for escapes on cage-cleaning days. If it goes to three, she may also have to move to the freezer.

Introducing Falstaff to Cheesecake was uneventful, she even seemed to be mothering him at first. Either that, or grooming vanilla off of each other got them drunk. (Cheesecake was off being escaped at the time) Faun doesn't pay much attention to him good or bad, which is better than relations with the first male, who tried to bully the girls.

Saturday I discovered that Mouse TV had run a snuff film - went to clean the bin and found one of the mice dead and being snacked on. I suspect it was the mouse that had looked a little . . . off. Fur slightly shaggy, eyes not quite wide open, etc. I sent the body out to the wheelie-bin, cleaned the cage thoroughly with F10, and will again before re-stocking after the current occupants are fed off.


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[artgecko]

Watch for signs of illness in the other rodents.. RIs and other issues can spread and kill fast.

I used bin cages for my grow outs.. I just bought the largest bin I could find and used hardware cloth mesh over the "windows" on the sides and top. I "wove" the mesh on with aluminum wire through soldered holes around the windows. As long as the mesh overlaps the plastic edge (you put it on the inside and I like at least 1/2" larger hardware cloth on all sides) it keeps them from chewing out. If you use zip ties to attach the cloth, you have greater risk of them chewing out.

Rats take ~21 days to gestate and don't show until well into the 2nd -3rd week IME, so give it time. if they are pregnant by the aggressive male, you will want to use all babies as feeders and not hold any back as temperament is genetic.