Need help organizing my rat breeding operation...

[cchardwick]

Rats are extremely social animals. They need other rats with them. I currently have nine female rats that I'm raising up or resting, and three males - That way, I have the males together, and none of them are ever alone. A rat by itself can get stressed out, and from what I've heard, may kill it's offspring as a result. I'm no expert - but I was reading up on this in the past few months, and the recommendation I've read is to keep rats in threes. That way, if there's any conflict between two of them, the third acts as a moderator, basically. I would suggest getting more females, then take one female and one male each week, put them in together for a week seperate from the rest - rats are supposed to have a 5-day fertility cycle, so one week should be enough - then put the female back with the females and the male back with the males. Once a female is looking very pregnant, then put her by herself to have the litter. That way, there's no risk of females harming the pups by arguing over them, and it minimizes time that she's by herself. When one female comes out to be with a male, another one goes back - or push it to one female in with one male every two weeks, so that they're spread out more.

That's a great idea! Looks like you would need more than three females or in a few weeks you wouldn't have a female tank, they would all be nursing young. Maybe 5-6 females at least, then while some are nursing young you would still have multiples in the female tank, probably a max of three nursing moms in separate tanks, a male tank and a female tank (5 tanks total). Plus you would need some for the offspring. Sounds like I need more tanks LOLOL You could always pair up one male and two females to increase production and put the females back in the female tank to save room, then just pull them when they are ready to have young. Or just drop a male in the female tank and have babies come out of your ears LOLOL.

Here's another question, can you feed all the young to snakes and have the female just stop nursing? Is that bad for her? Should she at least nurse a few young all the way to weaning age every time she has a litter?