Looking to start breeding rats.

[Ogre]

So my collection is growing and I would like to set up a rat collony. I plan on starting small with 5 females and 2 males. I've been looking at the different stickies and I now realize I'll need to let everyone rest once the babies have been weaned, so I'll have a couple weeks were I'll be feeding f/t which is fine with me as I prefer that. I know time will come to 'retire' breeders and possibly have to pick up new ones. I have a local breeder that has rats available and is cool with me using their rats to breed. I've looked at a lot of builds for racks and I have some ideas on which ones I'll be taking plans from.

Now my questions, is it ok to interbreed rats or will I be dealing with a mess of issues? If it's ok how often should I introduce new blood? The containers I'm looking at are around 20"*27" is that big enough for a mom and her babies? If you can think of other important facts that I haven't thought of let me know.

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[JoeNapoli]

Yes 20"*27" is big enough for a mom and her babies but not for 5 females and 2 males and then their 5 litters on top of that. Better off going with a trio, or just a pair. I go with pairs in 18.25" x 12" cages.

You said you're gonna start with 5 females and 2 males and want a rack big enough for a mom and her babies. So you mean you're gonna pull a pregnant female and leave the other 4 females and 2 males? or are you going to pull her after she drops a litter? Either way I think is bad, I learned the hard with my African Soft Furs that a lone, isolated female will die. Sucks to wake up one morning and see a big, fat, plump, pregnant rat that I was eagerly gonna count pups... but she doesn't move coz she's dead. (May be different with common rats.) Also pulling a nursing female together with her litter, and one of her sisters, didn't work either. Dead pups next day. Nursing mothers best left alone. Again could be different with common rats but why push it?

The idea of interbreeding is to avoid inbreeding and keep the litter sizes large and fast growing. But IME some interbreeding is good. We don't want to mix a rat that, for example, comes from a line whose litters are consistently 20+ pups with a rat from a line of small litters. Also, if/when you come across a unique color don't mix it with common colors, instead try to create some more of that line via inbreeding. Rats of uncommon appearance, e.g. solid beige w/ruby eyes, can fetch $10+ each on craigslist in my area. And though I didn't get into it for the $ it does help to offset costs of food/bedding.

Consider setting them up outside and/or in an area where the stench (of common rats) won't bother humans.

Depending on how near a population center you reside craigslist can be helpful, and economical, in obtaining the supplies that you will need to get started. Seems like for every guy/gal that is getting into the hobby there is one that is getting out of it and looking to unload his/her equipment.

Good luck and have fun with your new endeavor. I like rat breeding more than snake breeding.

[nightwolfsnow]

Inbreeding is actually beneficial. That's how you find out if there are any genetic issues in your lines. Once any potential issues are weeded out, you can inbreed indefinitely.

I pair a male with a couple females every week, and wait until they're a few days away from their due dates before separating them into their own maternity bins. I give them 3-4 weeks to recover before breeding the female again.

Make sure you have a good food picked out. Mazuri 6f is good, but pig feed with 16% protein will also work fine.

[Ogre]

Yes 20"*27" is big enough for a mom and her babies but not for 5 females and 2 males and then their 5 litters on top of that. Better off going with a trio, or just a pair. I go with pairs in 18.25" x 12" cages.

You said you're gonna start with 5 females and 2 males and want a rack big enough for a mom and her babies. So you mean you're gonna pull a pregnant female and leave the other 4 females and 2 males? or are you going to pull her after she drops a litter? Either way I think is bad, I learned the hard with my African Soft Furs that a lone, isolated female will die. Sucks to wake up one morning and see a big, fat, plump, pregnant rat that I was eagerly gonna count pups... but she doesn't move coz she's dead. (May be different with common rats.) Also pulling a nursing female together with her litter, and one of her sisters, didn't work either. Dead pups next day. Nursing mothers best left alone. Again could be different with common rats but why push it?

The idea of interbreeding is to avoid inbreeding and keep the litter sizes large and fast growing. But IME some interbreeding is good. We don't want to mix a rat that, for example, comes from a line whose litters are consistently 20+ pups with a rat from a line of small litters. Also, if/when you come across a unique color don't mix it with common colors, instead try to create some more of that line via inbreeding. Rats of uncommon appearance, e.g. solid beige w/ruby eyes, can fetch $10+ each on craigslist in my area. And though I didn't get into it for the $ it does help to offset costs of food/bedding.

Consider setting them up outside and/or in an area where the stench (of common rats) won't bother humans.

Depending on how near a population center you reside craigslist can be helpful, and economical, in obtaining the supplies that you will need to get started. Seems like for every guy/gal that is getting into the hobby there is one that is getting out of it and looking to unload his/her equipment.

Good luck and have fun with your new endeavor. I like rat breeding more than snake breeding.

I don't plan to pull the females, the males will be moved and each female will have her individual tub/container. With extra tubs for babies being grow for food and an additional container split in half for males when not breeding.

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[wolfy-hound]

Inbreeding is not an issue.

Lab colonies have sometimes been closed for decades. What you do is get your initial group and begin breeding. You eliminate any undesirable traits by culling the parent(s) as needed. With any luck and a strict culling ethic, you can shape your colony to what you want to produce(for feeders, you want large litters, quick growing babies, moms that are sturdy and able to breed without getting weak, and rats that do not bite, maul litters or chew enclosures).

Once you have a viable colony, you simply hold back new stock from the best you have. If you have a mom that throws huge litters, save some of her daughters. Don't worry about breeding daughter to father, it will only highlight any issues you would want to cull out anyway and it will also enhance those traits you are breeding for.

If needed, you can add in rats. I would only add in rats if your stock is not up to snuff. If the two males you get are aggressive for instance... cull both, get new. Be prepared to feed off every youngster from unsuitable parents. Keep records so you know how to cull a line if needed. Eventually you'll have a closed colony that will produce well.

Never ever let rats run out of water. Keep them clean and feed them good food. And CULL any rat who chews the bin. At one point I culled entire bins that had a chewer. One chewer doomed the whole bin. Now no chewing. Same for biting rats. No biting rats now.

[Ogre]

Inbreeding is not an issue.

Lab colonies have sometimes been closed for decades. What you do is get your initial group and begin breeding. You eliminate any undesirable traits by culling the parent(s) as needed. With any luck and a strict culling ethic, you can shape your colony to what you want to produce(for feeders, you want large litters, quick growing babies, moms that are sturdy and able to breed without getting weak, and rats that do not bite, maul litters or chew enclosures).

Once you have a viable colony, you simply hold back new stock from the best you have. If you have a mom that throws huge litters, save some of her daughters. Don't worry about breeding daughter to father, it will only highlight any issues you would want to cull out anyway and it will also enhance those traits you are breeding for.

If needed, you can add in rats. I would only add in rats if your stock is not up to snuff. If the two males you get are aggressive for instance... cull both, get new. Be prepared to feed off every youngster from unsuitable parents. Keep records so you know how to cull a line if needed. Eventually you'll have a closed colony that will produce well.

Never ever let rats run out of water. Keep them clean and feed them good food. And CULL any rat who chews the bin. At one point I culled entire bins that had a chewer. One chewer doomed the whole bin. Now no chewing. Same for biting rats. No biting rats now.

Thanks this is really good news. Now I just need to start. I like to hear that once I get a good colony going I can simply expand from there. I'm also curious in the approximate amount of food they will go through in a month. I was thinking of going with the ones recommend earlier in this post ( Mazuri 6f)purchased in 50lb bags.

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[wolfy-hound]

The amount of food used will depend on what type of food you feed and how you feed it and what stage of rat you're feeding.

Feeding in the bin will result in waste. Feeding growing young rats will use more food, etc.

[cchardwick]

I've been breeding rats for about a year now and I can share a few thoughts. I started out using glass aquariums and it was a ton of work, then I moved to an ARS rat breeding rack and I'll never go back to anything else. It's so easy, I just top off the water and check the food every day and it waters and feeds all 20 tubs. My rack will hold about 150 pounds of food and the way the rack is set up none ever gets wasted. And I can clean all 20 tubs in about an hour. However, I did have one water nozzle pop out and flood a tub, I lost all rats in that tub except one large male. I also had my nozzles start randomly leaking after about a year so I bought all new nozzles, but you can clean and rebuild them too.

I also started out using pine bedding and I was throwing out dead rats every day due to a respiratory disease. Turns out it was the pine bedding dust and odor that is super toxic to mice and rats. I've since switched to a couple sheets of newspaper on the bottom topped with shredded paper from work. It's free bedding and works fantastic and the rats love it and now I have zero deaths.

Also, you can quickly get over run with rats in no time at all. I used to try to organize them the way you are talking about above, but now I keep male tubs and female tubs and group breed my females. Some tubs have one male and one female, other tubs have one male and several females. Sometimes I'll leave the males in and sometimes I'll pull them. If I have way too many rats I'll separate all the males and females except one or two pair. I usually keep a couple tubs with one female and male together all the time, if you never separate them they will have babies before the first ones are weaned. In that case it's better to move the older or younger babies to a nursing mother or you will have losses. In some tubs I keep just nursing mothers. I tend to keep changing things up. It's amazing how many rats you can produce out of just a small rack system like this, literally hundreds per month.

Rats will get too big for even the largest ball pythons. That's one of the reasons I got into reticulated pythons, they will eat multiple jumbo rats at a time.

It's probably best to monitor your rats really close and euthanize and freeze them when they get to a certain size, otherwise you'll have a rack full of rats that are too big for your snakes. It's better to have a freezer full of perfect sized rats.

I highly recommend using an ARS rat rack system even though it's expensive. Even if you just got a couple levels to start. The main reason is the chew out factor. You'll never see a rat chew any part of an ARS rack, it's just built to perfection. If you build your own you will have them chew out. I've even heard that freedom breeder racks can have chew outs. Nothing worse than having rats running loose in your house or around your yard and neighborhood and breeding like mad. The only rat rack that I know of that has zero chew outs is the ARS rack.

There are many ways to breed your rats some faster and some slower. If you had a tub with 5 females and one male you could potentially have 16 x 5 = 80 rats per month! I just went through a major rat explosion, I delayed removing the babies from the tubs and all the females grew up and got pregnant. When I did finally separate them I had tons of tubs with moms and babies. Just this weekend I gassed and froze about 100 rats of all different sizes, I'm guessing I still have over 100 rats in my rack.

Personally I'd never bring more rats into my house again, just not worth the risk of bringing in some kind of sickness. I've never had a problem with interbreeding. I got my rats from a pet store all at once, they have some interesting genetics since they are all different colors. I started keeping all of the baby albinos but decided after awhile that it didn't really matter what the colors were.

I'd also suggest getting a CO2 tank and regulator and using a Tupperware with tire valve (valve core removed) as a euthanization chamber.

Here are some photos of my setup. I currently keep mice in aquariums and put carbon filter pads on the top to keep the smells to zero. My rats don't hardly smell at all, I clean tubs twice a week and spray them with disinfectant during cleaning. If I over stock the rat tubs and don't clean them often enough they can really stink, you just have to keep the populations down and keep on top of cleaning. The bedding should not get to a point where it is wet with pee and matted down or if it has an ammonia smell. For adults I try to keep a max of 5 rats per tub. With babies I can keep as many as 30 in some tubs and thin them out as they grow. If a rat is trying to raise too many babies it's best to feed off the runts first.

I also like to keep a variety of snakes that can eat an assorted size of mice and rats. That way I can feed off just about any size mouse or rat. For example, if I'm getting over run with mice I can feed small pinky mice to my Arizona Mountain King snakes or my smaller California King snakes, as many as 4 or more pinkies per snake per feeding. That way I can use them up. Most of the time I have a problem with having too many rodents LOL. But that's a good thing as my business expands and as I get more snake racks set up.

[Ogre]

So cchardwick are those tubs some sort of plastic or are they stainless? I understand they came with the rack.

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[Ogre]

Nevermind I used Google. It's a plastic of some sort.

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