Question about Rats

[rabernet]

When we get back from Daytona, my next project is to get two nice young female rats and raise them a little bit before getting a male.

When I was in PetSmart yesterday, picking up cat & dog food, and kitty litter, I noticed that they had female blue rats (I think that's what they called them, I remember at least blue - female and rat! LOL)

But they were $9.99 as opposed to their other female rats that were $6.99.

Are they any hardier than other rat females, or just more highly desired for coloring? I couldn't see them, they were all inside their igloos and since I wasn't buying yesterday, didn't ask them to pull them out.

[SnakeySnakeSnake]

Russian Blue or American Blue?

I believe they price them just for the coloring. As for being hardier? I can't say that they are... they produce nice sized litters for the most part, but so do my albinos.

That being said, something happened with one of my mothers (not sure what) and she stopped feeding her babies, I didnt catch it in time and 4 of her 16 babies died... 3 of them were Russian Blues, the only ones in the litter, so based on that limited experience, they dont seem to be hardier 2 self and one berkshire, I was bummed BIG time.

[rabernet]

Didn't say if American or Russian blue - not that I can remember anyway. What's the difference?

[Emilio]

Robin if you've never tried breeding rat's let me tell you with the little exp I have it's awesome. Sorry I don't know much about color's , from what I've seen albino's are the best breeder's.

[rabernet]

Haven't tried yet - all but two of mine are mice eaters, simply because mice are less expensive than rats here and I have not seen any compromised growth in feeding only mice.


However, I've held back some pregnant female mice and had successful litters - but it just took so long for the litters to get to the size I'd want them to be fed off that I decided that I probably wanted to move to rats. One appropriately sized pup or small rat would be easier for me than raising enough mice for multiple (currently my collection of mousers get 1 to 2 medium mice a week depending on their age and size) feed items per snake.

I've picked up the occasional small, small rat and tried them on the larger mousers, and they each took them with no problem, so I'm not too concerned with switching them all over eventually and if I need to pick up extra mice for the reluctant ones, that's not problem.

So, I plan to start with 1.2 rats and supplement my breeding efforts with picking up extra prey at the pet store where I currently get my feeders. Hopefully I'll find just the right ratio of rat litters to keep my gang feed on a weekly basis with very little need to pick up any extras at the pet store.

Going slowly so as not to take on more than I can handle space wise.

Sorry about going on and on! LOL

[muddoc]

Robin,
I never really bred rats until I had a larger collection. When my collection was small, we bought all of our food. The rule of thumb that I have been using for about two years now, seems to be working good for us. My rule of thumb is one female rat for every snake we feed, and that seems to keep us pretty good, with only a little bit of excess rat. I would think that you kight want to start with about 1.4, and keep 2 females in one enclosure and two females in another enclosure. Rotate the male, and that should help you to have babies at different times, rather than you having two females only, and them having litters at the same time. Hope that helps.