Wow the biggest litter I've seen is 18 and I thought my rat, Alita, would burst! It's great you had another female to foster some of that huge litter off on.

Here's some pics of stages of rat development. I've been promising the Admins to do a sticky pictorial following one litter of rats through birth to weaning. I really need to get that done!

Here's a few pics though from my files. Hope they are helpful.

Example of a "pear shaped" female indicating pregnancy. This one in particular delivered about 5 days later....


Heavily pregnant female rat. This is the one that delivered 18 pinks later that day....


Nursing newborn pinks. They tend to come out very red in color at first.


Circles indicating visible milkbanks in newborn rat pinks. Shows momma rat is doing her job!


Four days later the pinks are showing their eventual coat markings.


At about 8 days of age they become rat fuzzies (aka crawlers). They still have their eyes closed and their ears flat to their skulls but have developed lovely silky coats.


At around 15 days of age their full coat comes in, their eyes open, their ears become erect and they become rat pups. I don't have any good pictures of rat pups because they will NOT stay still LOL. This is the best I can do right now.


I wean our rats around 5 weeks of age. Here's a pretty typical male rat weanling.