Number of rats per tub

[cncmachineguy]

I have read the sticky that has the beautiful colored spreed sheet in it (Should I breed, how much to breed). It suggests a 12 week plan for each Female. I can get on board with that but here is my question:

Does it suggest each Female live alone (not counting the kids) and the male is homeless? (so he is couch surfing the girls)

So assuming (this is for theory here) each litter is removed by 4th week, 6 tubs would be needed for 6 breeding females?

Seems like if this is true, do all the things I have read about not keeping them by themselves go out the window? I am fine personally with that, just want to be sure.

Thanks for answering what has no doubt been answered before, but I don't like to assume anything and like things to be verbose.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I suggest no one lives alone, rats are social creatures, the only time my females are ever alone is a few days prior to birthing (they birth in individual tubs)

Some people will rotate males, some will rotate females, I have my males set in their tub and I introduce 1 or 2 new female each week and remove the pregnant ones (I usually run 1.2 or 1.3 per tubs), so in my case I rotate female.

Once the babies are 5 to 7 days the female go in communal nursing tubs.

Now for the rotation a female will be re-entering rotation about every 8 weeks.

Gestation is 3 weeks, rats get weaned at 3 weeks and you allow 1 or 2 weeks for the female to become pregnant.

In your case I would have 2 females per tubs and rotate 1 male and having him stay 2.5 weeks in each tub.

[cncmachineguy]

Does this make sense:

3 Females per tub for 2 tubs with the ladies. (mind you number of tubs needed is not a concern for me, just trying to makes sense here).

Every 2 weeks 1 lucky lady goes to stay with the male for 2 weeks. this leaves 2 in the "mating tub" 2 in the tub she came from, 2 in the other tub, and 1 in the birthing tub.

Going for a litter every other week without any alone time except for delivery. (of course us humans would need several people for the delivery but I digress)

Then in the perfect world my machinist head lives in, the birther will return to the girls tub she came from and another will be ready to move to it.

So I haven't done all the moving around in my head yet, but I am thinking this will put everybody where they need to be with nobody feeling left out.

[cncmachineguy]

Here is what I am thinking for rotation and schedule:

Rat Rotation week Bedroom tub2 ladies tub3 ladies Delivery Room Male F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 1 F1 B V B P F3 2 F1 B V B P F3 3 F4 P V B B F6 4 F4 P V B B F6 5 F2 B P V B F1 6 F2 B P V B F1 7 F5 B P V B F4 8 F5 B P V B F4 9 F3 B B P V F2 10 F3 B B P V F2 11 F6 V B P B F5 12 F6 V B P B F5

Now I realize there will be issues like girls won't get prego right on time and prolly I will need 2 delivery tubs as things won't happen to the day as I want. BUT, this seems like the only way I see to have nobody alone ever. At 4 weeks the kids are pulled and that mom goes on vacation. So only 1 litter in a tub at a time so no babies are stomped on by bigger babies.

The big question is will everybody be happy moving around like this? It is always the same 3 girls in a tub, just sometimes 1 or 2 are out on the town.

This in theory gives me a new litter every other week without (hopefully) stressing the females out. No harems, no singles, no mixed age babies. 4 or 5 tubs, 1 male and 6 females.

Thoughts anyone?

[paulh]

There are many acceptable breeding plans. Separating the sexes maximizes female life span. To maximize production, just put a male and two females in a tub. Pull out the babies when they are weaned. And replace the females when they are a year old. You set your priorities and make your choice.

[Aedryan Methyus]

I'm in the middle of building two 7 tub rat breeder racks with auto watering systems right now and I will be brand new to rat breeding. My plan is to start out with 20 females and 4 males with 5 females per tub. I will pull females out and place them into communal maternity tubs as they become pregnant. Once each litter reaches 3 weeks old, I will remove the weanlings from the maternity tubs while separating the males from females and placing them into segregated "death row" tubs to be grown up to various sizes. The mothers will remain in the maternity tubs for another week or two to recover then placed back into rotation. Does that sound like a pretty decent system to you guys?

[cchardwick]

I keep changing things up with my colony, right now my production is really good and I'm happy with my new system. I start by pairing up six females and one male in a grow out tub for breeding. Every weekend I pair up six females to keep a constant production going. It's actually pretty cramped in there but as each female becomes very pregnant I pull her out and put her in her own nursing tub to give birth. After a couple more weeks I'm just left with the male by himself and I actually feed him off to my retics LOL. Then when the female has babies with eyes open and running around I put two females and all their babies in grow out tubs. Once I feed off or sell all the babies I usually pair up more and more females until I get six per tub. Right now I have tubs of two and four and six females that had all babies removed. Then on the weekends I put six to a tub with one male and start over again.

Every week I drop a brand new breeder male in the tub with six females, using a new adult male every time gives me assurance that all females will get bred. I save all of my black rat males as breeders, seems that it's a pretty rare mutation and I don't get many pure black males, so my male breeder tubs usually have 2-3 black males at a time I'm growing up. Once I pull a male I'll drop in another smaller black male or two to keep it going. And every six months to a year or so I'll hold back my pure white females to raise up as breeders.

When I open a breeder tub I know the females are white and the males are black, no confusion at all. And I used to use hooded and random colored males and females, if I find a female that's not white I know she is old, same thing with my males, if they aren't black they are old. Sometimes I'll use a male more than once but they usually get big and old much faster than the females. I think it's better to keep females a bit older since they tend to have bigger litters. Females that are too old start dying when they give birth, then it's time to replace them all. Maybe on my next rotation I'll use hooded females as breeders and cull all the white ones. Makes keeping track of all my 50 tubs of rats much easier without writing it all down and keeping track. If I get too many babies all at once I'll pull about 20 females out for future breeders and raise them up and slowly replace the older ones.

I'm finding that my production is limited by the number of tubs I have. I have 20 nursing tubs so if I have six females per week that go into the tubs I have three weeks of females going in. I tried to pair nine females per week but I ran out of nursing tubs and they gave birth in groups in their grow out tubs. It seemed to work OK and my production went through the roof but things got really confusing, I decided to cull a lot and go back to six per week to keep my original system going.

Hope that helps!

[cncmachineguy]

Thank you all for your kind suggestions, When I need more production I will be fully ingesting them no doubt. Chris that sounds really ambitious!!

For now I only need 4 feeders a week, hence trying to get a plan for a litter every other week. Sometimes I will need to buy some feeders, but they are a pain to get around hre and rasing rats looks like fun.

I suppose in the end the only thing to do is try it. it will either work, fail, or fall somewhere in between. If it fails I will know one way not to do it. If it works - all is good. Somewhere in between approaches gray area. I don't like gray too much

[Aedryan Methyus]

I keep changing things up with my colony, right now my production is really good and I'm happy with my new system. I start by pairing up six females and one male in a grow out tub for breeding. Every weekend I pair up six females to keep a constant production going. It's actually pretty cramped in there but as each female becomes very pregnant I pull her out and put her in her own nursing tub to give birth. After a couple more weeks I'm just left with the male by himself and I actually feed him off to my retics LOL. Then when the female has babies with eyes open and running around I put two females and all their babies in grow out tubs. Once I feed off or sell all the babies I usually pair up more and more females until I get six per tub. Right now I have tubs of two and four and six females that had all babies removed. Then on the weekends I put six to a tub with one male and start over again.

Every week I drop a brand new breeder male in the tub with six females, using a new adult male every time gives me assurance that all females will get bred. I save all of my black rat males as breeders, seems that it's a pretty rare mutation and I don't get many pure black males, so my male breeder tubs usually have 2-3 black males at a time I'm growing up. Once I pull a male I'll drop in another smaller black male or two to keep it going. And every six months to a year or so I'll hold back my pure white females to raise up as breeders.

When I open a breeder tub I know the females are white and the males are black, no confusion at all. And I used to use hooded and random colored males and females, if I find a female that's not white I know she is old, same thing with my males, if they aren't black they are old. Sometimes I'll use a male more than once but they usually get big and old much faster than the females. I think it's better to keep females a bit older since they tend to have bigger litters. Females that are too old start dying when they give birth, then it's time to replace them all. Maybe on my next rotation I'll use hooded females as breeders and cull all the white ones. Makes keeping track of all my 50 tubs of rats much easier without writing it all down and keeping track. If I get too many babies all at once I'll pull about 20 females out for future breeders and raise them up and slowly replace the older ones.

I'm finding that my production is limited by the number of tubs I have. I have 20 nursing tubs so if I have six females per week that go into the tubs I have three weeks of females going in. I tried to pair nine females per week but I ran out of nursing tubs and they gave birth in groups in their grow out tubs. It seemed to work OK and my production went through the roof but things got really confusing, I decided to cull a lot and go back to six per week to keep my original system going.

Hope that helps!

Wow... It sounds like you have your system down to a science! That's a smart way to keep track of how old your females are. I've been wondering how to go about that... Do I understand correctly that you only breed each male 6 times then feed them off? At least they die happy, but i'm curious why you only breed them 6 times... Do male rats just stop breeding enough to keep up or become less fertile or something?

@cncmachineguy - It has been recommended to me that 1 female breeder per snake is ideal for keeping up with supply and demand. So, if you only have 4 snakes, 4 female rats and 1 male rat would probably be all you need. That sounds sooo much easier than what i'm heading into, which is still nothing compared to what cchardwick and a lot of these other guys have to keep up with! lol

[CALM Pythons]

I don't pull or switch..I use breeders for about 7/8 months then allow 3 pups (2F 1M) to grow to breeding age and feed off the 7/8 month old breeders. I have 4 breeder tanks and 2 grow out tanks. My males help take care if the litters so it works out great.
I tried 3 to 1 for a long time and one litter was always smooched and died.


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