Can I put a female rat in with a group of four male rats to breed her?

[cchardwick]

Personally, I isolate a female in the last week of pregnancy in a cage by herself, with nesting material. I don't put her and the pups with any other rat again until the pups are about two weeks old. I keep my females in groups of three, take one out to keep with a male for a week, put her back in, then take her out when she's about to give birth and put her in a different cage. I also keep my rats in tubs, rather than tanks - I do have a tank, and I plan on phasing it out to replace all the tubs and tank with a rat rack, as soon as I get one built. I made the mistake of breeding all my females at once, when I started... now I'm doing one at a time, with a six week break between weaning a litter and being bred again for each female, so they can recover and fatten up some before the next litter.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have to go back to breeding mice. Ugh. I do not like breeding mice. They stink MUCH worse than rats do.

Why are you going back to breeding mice? I found that only the male mice really stink, the females don't smell hardly at all. I like the idea of keeping only one male mouse and moving it around tub to tub, keeps the smell down to almost nothing. I bought a box of seven adult male mice from the pet store to feed my ball pythons, the stink was so bad in my truck that I had to pull over and put the box back in the bed of my truck. WOW

The only reason I have seven rats is because when I bought them at the pet store they were too young for us to sex them, so I figured with seven I'd for sure get some males and some females. Now that I know what sex they are I'm just trying to figure out my breeding plan. I really don't need that many rats since I have mice and ASFs in the mix, I could even get away with just one or two pairs. Although the pet store said they would buy my extra rats, maybe I can trade them for some bedding or something too.

Here's another idea: How about three female rats in separate tanks and one male, I could keep the male with each female for three weeks (or 2.5 weeks) and move him to the next female right before she gives birth. If there were extra young they should be weaned by the time he goes back to the first cage. I could do the same with my mice, except with my mice I could run three females per cage. Not sure I need four male rats, seems like a waste of food.