Rats are great pets, they are also great breeders and normally produce good sized litters that they raise without muss or fuss. Do have a second maternity 10 gallon handy for the female to go into when she shows signs of pregnancy. As has been said the male will reimpregnate the female right after delivery and having a female rat pregnant and nursing a litter at the same time is a lot of strain on her. Since you are just doing a small home rat breeding, you probably don't need back to back breeding which will only wear out your female. You'll see the female start to look chubby and pear shaped as she approaches delivery. Some don't show much at all until they are very close. Just make sure she's got lots of extra food and water so she can produce a good litter for you and nurse them well.

As far as feeding off rats you bred yourself and the way a snake takes it's prey....I pretty much look at it this way. One, I know exactly the quality of the prey my snakes get and I like that....Two, I eat meat and in our antiseptic, plastic coated world we forget that every hamburger was once a pretty cute beef calf so it reconnects me to the real world of predator/prey...Three, snakes are probably the most "humane", cleanest predator that Mother Nature ever designed, watch your pet cat with a mouse someday....now that is a messy kill....Four, granted a rat is a pretty smart creature, that's a given...however like every creature it was designed to be part of a cycle of life...my concession to raising my own rats for snake food is to house them and treat them in the best possible manner while they fulfill their natural place in the order of things. I know that my rat's efforts directly help me have the snakes so I appreciate and care for them to the best of my ability.


~~Jo~~