A Friend for Cookie

[frankykeno]

Went into our favorite pet store today to get Baby's feeder mouse and came home with that plus a lovely little girl rat as my other female rat, Cookie, needed a cage buddy. She's a real cutie...Berkshire....lovely dark grey and a creamy tummy and legs, no blaze tho like Cookie has.

Now what shall I name her....hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?


~~Joanna~~

[tigerlily]

Congrats on the new addition. Now for some yummy names? Creme is my suggestion. What goes better with Cookie than Creme?

[Smulkin]

Cracker? Croissant? Crepe?


What color again? Grey? Hmmm - too early and lacking coffee for me.

[frankykeno]

Really dark grey, almost like a gunmetal grey with a lovely creamy tummy. She was the prettiest girl in the place LOL so I had to take her plus she's lovely natured. That pet store always seems to get the nicest tempered rats for their pet stock. They actually have asked me to sell them back any babies I get from breeding the 2 males and 2 females we've bought from them. So once our girlie rats are a wee bit bigger we'll pair them up with the studly guy rats across the room.

Quick question for those that breed rats. Once the females are pregnant when should I move them to seperate cages or can they be left together to raise their litters? What if one gets preggie and the other doesn't, do they need to be seperated?


~~Jo~~

[Smulkin]

I prefer to seperate them from the rest when they are noticably huge and ready to drop (you can almost see the individual lumplings at that point). Whenever possible I keep them seperate for raising the litters as otherwise I've observed they kind of continually juggle around "ownership". THe last batch I had to do this until I could get an extra cage - and as I went to seperate them I noticed one mother was nursing 2 pups while the other had hoarded 20, was noticably thin and feared the babies wouldt be getting enough milk. When they keep playing tag and snatching them from each otehr the pups can wind up with some scarring from being carried around in mom's mouth so often. Nothing detrimental ever came of this, none died or became sick etc, and the nursing mothers never seemed to squabble over it - still i felt better knowing all the pups were getting good suckle instead of 20 fighting for 8 nipples.


I never leave the mother/litters in with other non-preg or male rats as the few times this had (unintentionally) happened they disappeared pretty fast

Hopefully someone with longer experience than me can chime in here.

[frankykeno]

Thanks for the advice, it was great. I kinda figured it would be better to seperate them but I always like to hear from more experienced breeders. I bred rats years ago but they were sisters and had a massive enclosure so did fine with raising their litters communally. Cookie is a wee bit older she may well be bred much sooner than the new little girl rat so I will seperate them. So far they seem to like each other well enough, a wee bit of the typical rat boxing games and sniffing of "best bits" LOL but they are curled up in the sleeping box quietly happily now.

She has a name btw. I was just holding her and thinking she looked like a little grey nun in an old fashioned habit when the name Abby came to me. So Abby she is LOL.

~~Joanna~~

[Smulkin]

Nice name - quite apt and well thought.

Yep I encourage anyone else to chime in - I don't for a second pretend to be any sort of authority on the ratoncitos. The largest enclosure we have for them (the meet'n'greet one) is a 55Gal - given larger areas it might (or not) be ok to leave them in with litters - I'm not sure,

[Ginevive]

I seperate the mamas too. It is just a stressful time for them and I like them to have some privacy. A ten gallon tank works great for a mom with babies; not so big that she could forget where she put them.