No, not at all. I breed for quality and quantity. There are many great advantages to knowing if your rats have bred. If the females are plugged I’m able to pull them and put them together in the same bins, this way all the babies will be born at basically the same time. If I didn't check the plugs some females might be sitting around not pregnant for a couple weeks.
I can also tell if the male is doing his job. If I have a tub of females and there doesn't seem to be as many babies as the other tubs I can separate those females at the next breeding and see who is producing less.
Knowing how many prego females I have allows me to have a better understanding of what my inventory will be in the coming weeks.
Using this method also allows me to keep just 1 male for every 35 females.
Quote"LMAO! Oh man. I couldn't imagine checking all 600 females this way LMAO. Umm..."Yeah honey, won't be able to make it for dinner tonight...have to probe a few hundred rat vag's" LMAO.
Actually it doesn't take all that much time. I can usually check a tub in less than a minute, but it’s not something I talk to my wife about at the dinner table.