Breeding but no babies!!!

[juddb]

I have had two pair of rats for about 3 months now. They have been mating every 5 days, but i have yet to see any signs of pregnancy . What signs in particular should i be looking for for pregnancy? Also my setup is a 40gallon tank with aspen and like five hides for them. A water bottle and i feed them, (i switch it up everyday) rat mix food from petsmart,dog food, cheerios, brocolli, carrots, celery, all kinds of rat treats. We spend a lot of money on them. What am i doing wrong? Or am i? Please help

[lord jackel]

I have had two pair of rats for about 3 months now. They have been mating every 5 days, but i have yet to see any signs of pregnancy . What signs in particular should i be looking for for pregnancy? Also my setup is a 40gallon tank with aspen and like five hides for them. A water bottle and i feed them, (i switch it up everyday) rat mix food from petsmart,dog food, cheerios, brocolli, carrots, celery, all kinds of rat treats. We spend a lot of money on them. What am i doing wrong? Or am i? Please help

How big are the females? (in grams if known) or there age?

Also, where did you get all of them from (males and females)?

As for what to look for it is really obvious when a rat is pregnant (they get huge)

[frankykeno]

Just to clarify here. You have "two pairs of rats". Does that mean 2 males and 2 females all together in that 40?

[juddb]

Yes two males two females. I got them from my buddies pet store. I weighed the females like a week ago. One is about 240 grams the other is about 220 grams.

[juddb]

Just to clarify here. You have "two pairs of rats". Does that mean 2 males and 2 females all together in that 40?

Is that bad? It was my understanding that they like to live in groups....
This weekend im going to get another tank just for the females.

[frankykeno]

Okay if they've been together 3 months already then they were way, way too young and small to breed at first. You're actually lucky they didn't manage it as females that are bred too young and small don't do well or produce decent litters. Usually 250 grams or about 4 months of age is the minimum for a female rat for first breeding.

Rats do like to live together and are very social. However two sexually mature male rats together with sexually mature female rats can result in a very serious fight between the males. I don't know anyone else's experience but the only time I ever allowed it (I was moving rats and temporarily dropped a male into the wrong tank with a breeding group), there was a massive and nearly deadly rat fight.

I would suggest you seperate the two males and just allow one to rotate in with your females for a couple of weeks for breeding purposes (they can take turns being your breeder male). Then let the males live together while the females raise their young seperate from them. If not the males will reimpregnate your females almost immediately after they give birth, resulting in a female nursing young while also growing a new litter inside her (bit hard on the females in my opinion).

You'll also need to start now planning ahead for those litters. At around 4 weeks of age you need to seperate the young rats from their mothers and by 5 weeks of age they must be seperated by gender - unless of course you will have fed them all off by this age - not sure what sizes you need. Male feeders to one enclosure, females to another or they will start jumping on each other and inbreeding. Believe me you don't need a big group of feeder rats trying to breed each other constantly.