OK scratch the idea of two males together with breeding females! Thank you for making sure I didn't make a rookie mistake like that.

Well mom moved long enough to get a rough count this morning and it looks like 9 or 10 pups! Not the 12 or so everyone talks about, but not bad for a lab rat. We are building putting 3 females per tub. If we get 20 rats every other week that would be just enough to handle our live feeder snakes. Two of our snakes eat Frozen Thawd, so we plan on buying those and then using any hold overs to start the second colony.