I house my males together when they are not currently breeding. I do not tolerate fights. I move all my rats around to whichever bin/tub I please with no introductions and they will behave. If they can't cull them.
For mice I do 3-4 females per tub with one male. If I find I'm not getting babies or not many anymore I feed off the male and replace. I also have the tubs setup so the top ones are the oldest and young ones go to the last unoccupied tub down the rack. This way I feed off the old ones and replace with younger ones as they get older.
I have my personal rats that I breed for improvement and another hobby (dalmatian line, marble line, silver mane line, and burmese line). Those I breed as I need new litters to replace parents/improve. Then I have a rack solely for feeders only. Still holding back females and growing them up. But it's a 7 tub rack. A male will be rotated through the levels every (from what I remember of my plan) 16 days which gives them 3 1/2 months from being bred to being bred again. So they get three weeks gestation and then the month to raise litters (if they don't get fed off already, and then another month of downtime. Plan is three females per tub for 21 breeding females. I'll have a bunch extra to sell off to local people and have litters every week and a half or so. Not all the females always take at once so they should be a bit staggered.
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