Glad to hear the female is doing fine with her pups Gerry. They will seperate their litters, espeically bigger litters a lot. Seems to be their way to make sure all pups are getting a chance at the teats (normally 12). When I first started breeding rats I would run to move the babies back until I figured out the mother knew best how to manage her litter. Turns out Emily did the same and we had a good laugh over our trying to help a female rat who was likely pretty ticked off with our stupid human interference LOL.

If your rats are used to you there's no need to worry about your scent on the young ones. Use the gloves if you like but it's not the norm for a female rat to reject her young ones because of human scent on them. I check every one of my pinks the day they are born to make sure all are lively and have visual milkbands and I've yet to have a female reject her young. Actually just did the first check of a new litter....Midnite popped out 14 live young early this morning (her first litter) and they are all squeaking madly and have tummies full of milk. Now if only her breeding buddy Alita would drop her litter....she's so huge I think she's gonna explode LOL