A Couple Rat Breeding/Keeping Questions

[nixer]

Man, I wish I had found this site/section a few weeks ago! LOL I bought an established colony of 10 females, 4 males, along with a nice rat rack/setup. The rack is tall, and hold 6 large bins. For the time being, I have 5 females and 2 males separated into 2 tubs. The males know each other, and I've not had issues so far, but I'm wondering if I should be concerned about this later on.

So far, my females are doing fine: I had a litter of 7 about a week and a half ago, 11 almost a week ago, and 7 born today. But I'm just concernd about having the 2 males in there with the moms and babies (trying to produce as many as I can for now, until I can get my stock built up on some of the larger rats to feed my larger snakes). There seems to be mixed reviews on keeping 2 males versus 1 male in with the moms and babies according to the people I've spoken with, and I'd like to get a general consensus here, since there seems to be more rat breeders here with a bit more experience.

For the time being, I have my rats on Purina dog food until my Mazuri arrives on October 5th (my local feed store had to order it). The Purina has no red dye #40. Is there anything else specific I should keep an eye out for in the food?

Any other tips/advice anyone is willing to share would be greatly appreciated, as I am very new to breeding rats. I wouldn't even have gotten into it if my local breeder hadn't decided to get out; around here it is almost impossible to find young rats to feed ball python babies (only mice are available), and since I've started my baby snakes on rat fuzzies/pups this year and had such a great growth rate, I really don't want to switch back to mice.

i have never really kept 2 males with the females and babies i just keep mine in groups of one male and 3-4 females depending on tub size.
keeping 2 males compared to one will not really increase production. if you wanted an increase you would just have to put more females.

since you already have some babies i would keep back some females. and look into more caging. its a good practice to keep females your growing up away from the males after they are weaned. also its a good idea to never leave a rat in a tub by itself, they can get depressed.

rats dont need light to breed, but production will slow if its real hot. 50-70 degrees would be ideal, but some do just fine till around 80 degrees

you did a good move by sticking with a rood without dyes.

also i would watch which rats you hold back. personally i only hold back hooded rats but it would be good to read up on megacolon.