Breeder female Dies whils pregnant

[Beardedragon]

Natural selection is powerful when dealing with large numbers, and Mike C. certainly deals with a pretty large number if ASFs.

Natural selection is when the animal dies from reasons out of our hands, not if we just kill breeders because one died. Asfs are also a totally different thing than normal rats. Id trust mike with anything to do with ASFS, but I have delt with hundreds of litters with normal rats so I know a fair bit about what should be done and what not.

If the only reason you have them is to provide feeders then it never makes economical sense to try to fix a broken breeding group. Much easier to replace and be done with it.

In the OP case sure you could keep a female baby in the group and let it grow up to breeding size, but if you did:

1.) it would take FOREVER for the baby to get up to breeding size. don't know why but I have documented that in this exact scenario, the baby takes way longer then usual to get to size.

2.) I have also documented in this scenario that for whatever reasons, often times that baby never will produce babies, and if it does it is likely to be smaller then usual litters at first.

3.) Once the baby finally grows enough, and has a few small litters and starts to have normal sized litters, it is time to retire the rest of the group. So you have effectively wasted a huge amount of time, and the living space that has not produced the number of babies each space is supposed to produce.

Mike, are we talking about the same thing here? Im saying if in a breeding group, an established one, if one of the breeders dies...you'd kill all of them? I never keep bad breeders, and normally my breeding groups are unrealted to the other rats in the tub so they are never from the same litter, so any bad genetics would not be a problem with the others if it is with one.

I think your saying that if you lets say have a group of 1.2 and a female dies...youd just get rid of the whole group because 1.1 really is a waist of space.

I normally keep 1.4... so if one gos I either replace it or just keep 1.3 going because that will produce plenty enough pinkys. Maybe thats where we are confused, because if something happens to one of mine I still have a good group going, but if something happens to his he only has one female.