When to separate females?

[Skittles46]

Right now my rats are set up in totes with 1:6. I'm wanting to pull the pregnant females into their own smaller tote before they deliver, but wondering when along the way that should be done.

I don't want to make them be by themselves for too long before hand, but I do have one or two that are starting to look rather pear shaped. I can get pics if it would help, I just found myself unsure when to separate them to avoid back to back breeding.

Thanks!

[MarkS]

I seperate when they start looking real big, when it's very obvious that they're expecting soon. I also like to set up my pregnant females in pairs if I can. When they have their babies they'll usually both help with raising them together. Sometimes they'll squabble with each other stealing and hoarding babies, but most of the times they'll work together.

[Skittles46]

Thanks. I keep hearing different things on whether to house them together with another female or not. At this point for us it may happen by default, but we'll see how it goes.

[Dcommander]

IMO the best way to go is separate them untill both litters hae opened eyes, then put both litters and mommas together, that ways they dont steal that much and little ones are safer

[Gloryhound]

By reading the sticky's above we figured we would set up six nice size tubs with 3 females in each. Then we will cycle a male through leaving him with each group of 3 females for two weeks then on to the next. Once in the last tub the first groups babies will be weaned and gone and they should have had a couple weeks to rest, so he will go in with them. He gets 2 weeks to knock up as many of the three as he can!


Since we are starting our colony with store rats and have no idea what age they are, we plan on establishing a second colony with the off spring of the first and then eventually working back and replacing our girls and boy who are of an unknown age.