Found a sad and odd thing this morning. Alita, one of our experienced rats, who birthed a litter of 10 had buried half her litter. They were all dead, not a mark on them and not looking in any way sickly other than they would be considered slightly smaller than the survivors. I found them all buried very deeply down in the bedding. We've noticed Alita acting odd with this litter, very nervous and hyper (not her usual way to manage her litter) and she birthed some really big litters. 10 is nothing for Alita to manage.

I'm wondering if she was running out of milk or something so culled out half her litter? The remaining live ones look great...nice big chubby fuzzies. Just to be safe we've removed the survivors and fostered them with another experienced female rat who has fuzzies the same age. Alita's officially retired now (this was to be her last litter anyways) but I'm quite surprised. I've never seen this before in our colony where I've found viable fuzzies suddenly dead and buried like this.

Any ideas folks?

Alita is now caged in with HoneyChild our other retiree female and some other females that are resting between litters. She seems absolutely fine and I'm clueless why she would have lost or destroyed half her litter at the fuzzy stage.