two moms..

[Ginevive]

I had two preggo rat moms in a 20g long tank; meant to get a 10g today and seperate them.. but both of them had their babies and now one mom is hogging them all.. the other mom has one or two nursing only at any given time.
Should I leave them as they are, or seperate the moms aid divide the babies up?

[mlededee]

i always divide the babies because the moms tend to either scuffle over the babies which results in scrapes and scratches on the delicate pinks or one mom basically dominates the other and takes and keeps most of the babies. if the litters weren't too big the pinks that are being nursed by the dominating mom are usually okay, but if both moms had 15 babies that's just way too many for one mom and the pinks tend to suffer--the stronger ones get all the milk and the weaker ones get none.

once i tried to keep two moms together that didn't have too big of litters because they didn't seem to be scuffling, but the mom that only got 2 or 3 babies of her own seemed to get really depressed. seriously--she got poryphorin all around her eyes and just laid there on her pups so sad-like. i removed her and gave her equal pups and she perked right up, the poryphorin went away and everything was fine.

[frankykeno]

I'd just seperate them hon and divide up the babies equally. The momma rats won't care who actually gave birth to who. I've tried communal moms and they did that too. One did all the work and in my case, the other female just laid around and didn't help (lazy thing!). I will sometimes double up moms and litters that are almost to weaning age in big tubs as the females don't mind the company at that point and the big pups like to play with each other.

[Ginevive]

OK, I will be definately doing that today.
Although, I had a horrific thing happen to my colony overnight (I will make a seperate thread..) I am really upset now..

[Ginevive]

Think it'd be OK to just leave all thge babies with the one mom? I did seperate them, and the mom that had no babies nursing on her today was completely ignoring her set of babies, while the other one was nursing just fine. I have had girls with litters as large as 20, with no problem; the amount here is around that; haven't counted exactly yet.