This post is pretty gory, so if blood and guts scare you, I would not read on.
I am completely disgusted right now. I had my breeder male in a large 30-long tank with three females. I have been breeding for over two years with this method, and never had any problems other than minor squabbling when putting in new females.. (I remove females when they're preggo, put in a seperate 10g tank, and leave them til they've finished nursing babies and recuperating..) so now I go into the rat room today and the male is dead. Most of his head is gnawed away to the bone, and there's one female crouched over him eating his brains. The other two females were in on it too but scattered and jumped up when I entered b/c I was feeding them then.. I had just fed them last night and they were all their usual selves, hopping up and active. This was NOT a case of starvation, b/c there was still food leftover from alst night in the corner and scattered around..
They had food, and the water bottle was full.. why would they do this? I promptly put down all three females; I want no cannibals in my colony..
The only thing that might have some bearing, is that the male was getting a little old (about 2 yrs.) Maybe he was dying anyway of natural causes and the girls just went nuts? I don't even know..
Any advice as to why this happened? I was used to there being minor scuffs when I put a new female in with the male for breeding, but this bunch had been together for two weeks.. so now half of my colony is gone.
I am just GLAD that neither of my two females with the babies have had anything wrong happen.. I am going now to seperate those mamas.. I just ahd to type this b/c I am very upset now and shocked.