Mama rats with babies are mean!

[cchardwick]

I've been playing around with different ways to breed my rats. I have them in 40 gallon glass critter cages, basically a 40 gallon long aquarium with a sliding locking screened top. I was separating pregnant females in separate tanks but decided to try 'group breeding'. I had one male and three females in a 40 long tank. One mama had her babies and was very aggressive towards all the other rats, especially another mom who was ready to give birth. So I decided to pull out the mama with babies and the one about to give birth into separate tanks and now everyone is happy!

I also had a mom with some older babies, probably just ready to open their eyes. So I decided to put a young male in that tank hoping they would pair up and I could try one male to one female. Boy was I mistaken! That female proceeded to beat up that male until I thought he was going to have some permanent damage! The fighting was so intense that she actually killed one of her babies. So I put the male back in the male tank and fed off the dead pup.

I actually took that really mean female that beat up the male (from above) and took not only the male out but I took all of her babies out and gave them to another mama rat. I left her alone for just an hour or two. Then I put her with a male / female pair with no babies in the tank. Surprisingly they got along great and there was no squabbles at all!

I'm still trying to figure out this rat breeding to keep production up and to keep all my rats happy. If I separate the females they don't breed back right away, kind of slows down production, but it seems to keep the rats really happy! I think if I were using tubs I would never get to see their interaction and if they were happy or stressed.

I do have a bunch of 10 gallon tanks I use to breed mice. I'm thinking I could actually put the mom and new babies in a 10 gallon tank and they would be perfectly happy. She just sits in one spot all day on her babies, could probably keep her in there for 2-3 weeks until the babies got bigger (or fed off).

[voodoolamb]

It's instinctive for momma rats to be crazy aggressive towards strange male rats. Males often kill litters that are not theirs.

If you want to do colony breeding (I am not a fan of it myself) you can't take the male out and put him back and definitely not replace him with a different male while kits are on the ground or moms are ready to pop.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I have tried various ways in the past 9 years and the best one that works for me is to rotate my females remove them when pregnant, move them to an individual birthing tub and than move them them to a communal nursing tub when the babies are 5 to 7 days old, cuts down on the fighting and losses.

And of course it also prevent back to back breeding with females becoming pregnant hours after giving birth, that take it's toll pretty fast and litter are getting smaller as well as the babies.

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[wolfy-hound]

You definitely can't be putting a strange male in with a young litter.

All of my moms are really chill about their babies and all the rats in the harem take care of all the babies, including the male who will lay over the litter and babysit.

[cchardwick]

I'm finding out the hard way what I can and can't do LOL.

[Ba11er]

Females can definitely get a little aggressive when they have babies. One of my females tries to be a super mom and will take all the babies in the cage, even pups from another mom and fight to keep them. Some females will be fine nursing together others wont. If the pups grow good then i wont isolate the females if they are slow growing ill put the females in a smaller container which has worked for me so far.