Quote Originally Posted by stupidcracker00 View Post
Ok so how long does it take for them to be sexually mature? And if I do separate them, is it ok to swap out pups with other moms? Like move all the female pinks to a mom and all the males to the other mom?



So does the mom wean the pups naturally? And what size are the pups when you feed them off? I want mine to be medium to large.
And about the staggering... thats why I want to have mine very controlled to where I have 1 female giving birth every week. Ill put a male in with a different female every week rotating the males every other week. That should give me pretty consistent litters.

Thanks for all the replies!
To answer your questions, I understand that rats become sexually mature between 6-8 weeks. I haven't really paid close attention, but that would be my estimate. Yes, it's ok to foster rat pups to other moms. They will generally take them in no problem. I don't know about separating by sex at birth, but you could do so after a couple weeks.

The mother rats will take care of the pups and will wean them. You'll notice at about 4-5 weeks, the rat pups will start eating the solid food and drinking from the water bottle. They could probably be separated from the moms at that point, but I've also heard to wait until at least week 6, but if they're just getting fed right off, there's no hard and fast rule. I typically feed when the rats are 50-75 grams, so technically probably considered small rats. I have some bigger girls who could take bigger meals, but I prefer to feed two smaller rats that pose a smaller threat to the snakes (since I feed live).