Looking at a rack for rats!

[Gloryhound]

I'm looking at getting a rat breeding colony going. I was going to build my own rack with watering system, but my time is already tight with building snake enclosures. I started shopping around and found the Freedom Breeder Rat Complete seems to be the most complete ready to go system around.

Here is a link to it: http://www.freedombreeder.com/cage.php?cageID=19

What I was wondering is how many breeding females will I be able to put in each tub. I plan on doing the 12 week rotation method with 12 of the tubs then using the remaining 9 tubs for different age feeders. I was hoping to get 3 females in each, but I don't think that will be enough room for 3 females to ween their young in. I am thinking two is a better number. Will that work in 21.5" deep X 16" wide X 7" tall tubs?

Thanks in advance!

[Stewart_Reptiles]

You can keep 1.4 per tubs for breeding purposes and 3 females per tubs for birthing.

You can also check this rack http://www.arscaging.com/ars3021.html

[Gloryhound]

Thank you! I think we will start out with only 0.2 per tub and if our demand goes up we may shift to 0.3 per tub with 2.0 rotating through. Right now we are only feeding 4 adult BP's and 7 Juvies. I would think 2 litters a week would be more than we really need at this point. Main problem we have right now is nobody local ever has any weened rats, so we end up having to feed 2 large mice in its place.

I like both the racks any pros or cons you would point out with one over the other?

Figure once we get the rack we will go to a reptile show and see what the rat breeder their will sell us. We just have to get this up and going by summer hopefully.