The Time Has Come To Start Breeding My Own Rats (Open To Advice & Recommendations!)

[the_rotten1]

The first thing you'll need to know is that you'll need more rats. Remember, they're not going to have a litter every week. The soonest is every three weeks, but that pace isn't very healthy. Six or more is better. When I started off I thought I could get by with 1 female rat for every 2 snakes, but the thing is, you can never predict their breeding cycle perfectly. Sometimes a female won't get pregnant right when you need her to, or litters are small. If you use the wrong food or bedding that can also cause unexpected deaths. It really is best to have 1 female rat for every snake if you want to be able to feed your snakes consistently without having to buy feeders elsewhere.


Scientific rat breeding cages are tiny and overpriced. Racks are great. I started with commercial cages myself, but now that I have racks I wish I'd switched sooner. They're so much easier to clean. You might be able to find them on Craigslist from time to time, or at least find someone in your area who makes them (or you can give rack building a try yourself). I don't have the tools, so I had one made for me by a local guy. It has casters, a watering system, the whole 9 yards.


As far as bedding goes, I'm stubbornly sticking to carefresh. It's expensive, but I can't stand the smell rodents make on wood shavings. I'm in search of cheaper options and I'll probably give pine pellets a try next, but I really don't want to compromise on odor control since I have nowhere to put the rats except inside the house.


Doggy Bag from Tractor Supply is great. I can't speak for other dog food brands. I started out on stuff like Oxbow and Harlan Teklad/Native Earth, both high quality rat foods, but the former is expensive and the latter is hard to come by. My supplier quit carrying it earlier this year. I switched to rodent food from a local grainery for awhile, but some of my rodents did horribly on it. So I switched to Doggy Bag a few months back and there was an instant improvement. Bigger litters, no more babies born dead. They've done as well on Doggy Bag as they did on Harlan Teklad, and it's considered one of the best rat foods out there.


If I were you I'd get 14 females and 2 males (what you need + a few extra, just in case), and a 5 level rat rack made with medium cement tubs. You could put 2-3 females in each tub and raise the boys in the cage you already have. Then when they're ready to breed, just rotate a male or two through the tubs as necessary. Whether you want to leave the females together to give birth or not is up to you. I've tried it both ways and leaving them in together only seems to work when the females get along really well. Usually you either have to raise them together, or keep them in related groups (I have a few mother/daughter pairs, and a group of three girls who grew up together). As long as the girls get pregnant and give birth about the same time there should be minimal fighting and no losses. Otherwise, split them up. I still split most of my rats up and give each girl her own nursing tub, but that requires another rack, or more cages if you prefer them.