Gots bebes

[Entropy]

So, I had two females drop their litters in the last week. A black berk girl and a dumbo Siamese girl. Pictures will be forthcoming but I'm pretty happy. Not super large litters but my god the babies are huge. I have one more girl that's going to pop within the next week and a half. Why the excitement? These are the first litters since I decided to get back into breeding my own.

[rabernet]

Congratulations, Melissa! Where are the pictures though?????

[frankykeno]

Congrats Melissa! Sometimes those smaller litters do produce really big pinks that, with all that access to momma's milk, turn into really chunky monkeys.

Pics????

[Entropy]

Sorry for the lack of photos. I practically got done posting and then had two more litters on the ground! So four litters of rat pups. I made a boo boo with two of the girls that I THOUGHT I hadn't put in with the male...could be that Ryan thought I was rotating them and did so a few times...
Soooo, I had two girlies give birth in the main 'house'. All babies are good, lots of baby stealing going on and I finally had to intervene and do some baby swapping. I know I know, don't mess with the moms but the final litter is the newest and they were getting shorted on dinners. So I just gave two of my girls some extra pups and everyone is doing fine. Next time though this will NOT happen.
This time I'm including some pictures so it's not a total waste.

[frankykeno]

Awww I love that fuzzy stage, so darn cute (the hardest stage for me to feed off to be totally honest).

With mice and the african soft furred rats, I wouldn't be touching any babies but my regular rats I'm never worried about. Most of my breeding female rats are pretty tame all in all and I've yet to have a mother rat reject babies due to my smell on them. I actually try to seperate every mom from her litter within the first 24 to 48 hours and get a quick hands on look at each pink just to make sure they are feeding well (obvious milkbands) and there are no physical deformities.

The only issue with that is to watch that momma rat isn't a bit nippy. Even the most even tempered rat can be different when she's got a litter nursing so I'm careful of that just in case.

[Entropy]

I love breeding rats. They are very forgiving critters. The only one who gets nippy is the girl with her nose in the camera. She'll happily take a chunk out of you if she catches you touching her pups. She got my sweatshirt today and I'm just thrilled it wasn't my hand.

[frankykeno]

I've had a couple of nippy momma's in my time. What I do is get one of these from the dollar store, distract her with something moving so she turns away from you, then quickly tail grab her and dump her gently in the container (I put some bedding in there first). Don't dangle her a long time, just have that tub right there beside her enclosure so it takes but a second really. Snap down the lid and there you go, no rattie bites. When it comes time to put her back just lower the tub in, unsnap the lid and gently slide her out (that way she can't turn and nail you in the close confines of the holding container).

Ratties are tricky, but I'm trickier!

[Entropy]

I have some tubs very similar to that. For transport and holding while cleaning the cages. If I'm forced to grab the tail I try to grab as close to the base as possible.

And actually my last litter which I fed off some pinks from are no longer rat pups. They are rat SAUSAGES! Good gods I've never seen such fat rat ....sausages.

[frankykeno]

LOL I know how that is. I have one mom on a litter with such fat babies that they move like seal pups! It wasn't a large litter to start with and I used a few to feed the milksnake so I think there's only 4 or 5 fuzzies left with mom to get all her rich milk. They are definitely little fuzzy rat sausages LOL.