Cannibalistic rat mommies...

[Ginevive]

Ah, cannibal rat mommies. I have a litter right now that, the individuals, are just around 2 inches long (not counting tails.) Their mother was viciously eating her babies; I watched her rip one apart before my eyes. I left her in for a few days because the babies are, well, too small to be weaned really, but the carnage went on. Once half the litter was dead, I had to do something, and that evil wench is now in rattie heaven (or hell, lol!) Now what I am doing is, giving them a low-hung water bottle and moistened lab blocks for food. They ate it all overnight and appear to be doing very well so far; if I had left the mother in there, they would probably all be dead now.
I never have this happen; I have about ten regular breeding females and none of the others ever did this. Any ideas why she did? The babies appear healthy and active, and don't look sick or deformed.

[Adam_Wysocki]

Was she a young mom? I've seen it happen with first or second litters pretty often and then they stop doing it.

You could have fostered the pups out to be nursed by another mom.

-adam

[$nake$]

Sometimes rat mothers do this with their new born if they feel threatened and sometimes young mothers get nervous and do that for some odd reason?!

[Ginevive]

The thing is, she had a few good litters before. She was not a first timer. I try to minimize stress by putting cardboard between the tanks (I use 10g tanks for the mothers with young; one mom per tank.) And I do give the mothers a week or two of time off before putting them in with my stud. No sudden food changes either.. I am just lost as to why this happened.

[frankykeno]

We just did as Adam was saying and had another rat mother raise both her young and another female's young (totalling 16) and it went perfect. The original female was not eating her young but refused to nurse them or lay with them and literally jumped out of her ten gallon maternity tank the day after they were born and ran off. We recaptured her 3 days later and she's "no long with us".

Maybe some of them are just not great breeders.


~~Jo~~

[rabernet]

We recaptured her 3 days later and she's "no long with us".


~~Jo~~

No longer with you???? Why, where-ever could she have gone???

[rabernet]

You're not buying the innocent and naive act are you? LOL

[frankykeno]

Not for a second! LOL


~~Jo~~

[Jeanne]

I think some mothers just dont make good mothers at all. But since we know she raised other litters prior to this, it makes me think she was stressed for whatever reason despite all the great things you do to minimize stress or... there may very well be something wrong with the babies that you cannot detect with yur eyes... rats will kill thier young if they "feel" they are week and unable to survive... but I have wondered what it is that makes them decide to do it cause I have had babies that outwardly appeared fine and I finished raising and they did fine... guess we will never really know. But I think you did the right thing by getting rid of her for the reason you have, just replace her with another breeder female.

[frankykeno]

It has been a bit difficult for me, since I actually quite like rats to feed off something I thought I was getting to keep around but I had to toughen up a bit LOL. Can't keep a cage of non-breeding/poor mothering female rats around and still be financially responsible and all that. I'm glad that rats generally are extremely good mothers and I've only had to deal with anything going wrong with a litter due to the mother, once so far.

The only issue I have now to decide on is what to do with females once they've reached the end of their breeding life. Kind of hate to feed them off since they've contributed so much good to our collection (and heck I've named them okay!) Perhaps as I breed more rats I won't get so attached to those that spend such a long time with us but somehow I doubt it. I'm such a softie at heart.

~~Jo~~