First African soft-furred litter!

[Entropy]

I had a chance to pick some of these up from Bryan Kollwitz before leaving Indiana and I'm beginning to kick myself for not doing so. Nice litter!

[Dougie]

Well to be honest in the wild the adult females aren't confined in a small area with a breeding male either so comparing wild reproduction to captive breeding just doesn't work.

Not entirely true. Think about the places that you see rats and mice at in the wild. A lot of times there is a massive infestation (ie. over-run houses), so my guess is that they are almost instantly pregnant again under those circumstances. It would be interesting to see some type of scientific approach to see if life-spans are decreased by this, since right now it is only speculation.

[TekWarren]

folks kindly let me keep my topic focus on the litter and their development rather than each others breeding practices ok?

Not that I don't want to hear your oppinions but a seperate topic would be a little more courteous.

[TekWarren]

Saturday the pups of this litter where exactly one week old so I snapped another shot for my album/records. Their hair/fur is definately starting to get thicker. You can kinda tell where the pattern/color lines will be but its still pretty early yet to really tell.

The previous links above will not work anymore my gallery went through some um..."re-arranging" to say the least but I got it back up. Here is a link to the main album for my ASF rats:

http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/ma...?g2_itemId=340

[recycling goddess]

ahhh so cute!

[TekWarren]

I can't wait untill they start pop'n around

[Ginevive]

I never keep my preggo/birthing/nursing female rats w/ a male, or even w/ another female. I let them give birth, burse and raise the babies; then I give them about a week to recuperate and rest before re-breeding. The way I think of it, if I were to come back in another life as one of my female breeder rats, I would be happier this way than being constantly bred.
To keep this on topic.. awesome rats Tek! That is definately something different; hopefully people can start breeding mroe so that they'll be more widespread in the hobby.

[Emilio]

Heath do those african's rat's look like they grow slower?

[TekWarren]

The guy who got me into these rats said that to him they seem to grow/mature at a pretty good rate. Me personally, I can't say for sure this being my first litter. I can honestly say that it might seem a bit slower only because I am excited about them and anticipating their development. They have noticeably increased in size in just the one week, and as I commented I can already see color/pattern breaks in their fur and its thickening up.

According the care sheet I've based all my info on they open their eyes at 14-16 days so I'm really looking forward to next weekend or early the following week for this development.

[TekWarren]

Two weeks old today!

Here's all 8 of them: http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/ma...g2_itemId=1103

My wife holding one: http://warrenreptiles.com/gallery/ma...g2_itemId=1100

They are becoming pretty active, eyes should be opening any day now!