Yay!! It would only take between 25-40 rats to pay for themselves at normal prices bought locally. Mine have saved me about $180 so far. And that is not counting today, which is a TOTALLY my own bred rats feeding day! Whoo-hooo. And what I LOVE about breeding my own is that the rats are soo fat and healthy. The store bought ones are ust puny in comparison. I have even started buying extra when I have to buy, so I can fatten them up for a week. For the savings in cost you can sometimes get them almsot a entire size bigger in just a week or so, and if you buy 50lb bags of rat chow and suppliment with whatever you like, they grow tremedously fast, and the cost of the food is MORE than offset by the cost of the larger size of rodent.
As for pushing the babies out? I have several that will scatter larger litters to feed them. I am always finding one or two tucked away somewhere weird, but she will shift them around later. I haven't had any non-mommy raised ones yet. No real problems, except I did have one HUGE batch of about 16 babies, where two pinkies died. They were tiny compared to the others though, and I assume they were just weak runts.
I love raiseing my own rats, it takes some upkeep to clean out the bins, but with WildBill's bins, that is not really a huge chore, and I can keep a BUNCH of rats in a small space.
Wolfy (Grinning at her rats)
p.s. I also have a huge tank on my kitchen tabel with 4 hairless rats that my hairless pair gave me. All females, I also have the 2 boys, but they are not in with their sisters. The hairless ones did well, mommy fed them fine, although the litter was small. The mommy is going to a friend that wants a hairless, and probaly one or both boys as well.