Final Rat Pup Count

[Jay_Bunny]

I posted a while back about Gazelle letting her babies die. The final count is 2 alive. Out of a litter of 13, only two survived. They are two black hoodeds. I think they are females. We want to use them as future breeders. I'm going to give Gazelle one more go with a breeding and if this happens again, then she is snake food and none of her babies will be used as breeders.

Doe, my beige female lost one of her babies but I think it was an accidental smothering. There are a lot of berks in her litter and two that have a silvery coloring to them. Very dark dark silver, but beautiful. I can't wait to find out what sex they are. If they are females, they stay!

Oh and in further news, we have another dumbo male. His name is Roo and he is currently Monk's roommate. He is a berkshire if I have been told correctly what a berkshire is.

[kc261]

Well, at least the 2 strong ones survived. Not what you wanted, I know.

Have you been weighing these 2? Is their growth normal? Or are even the ones that survived not thriving?

If these 2 did grow normally, I'd tend to lean towards it being more of a problem with the babies (illness or genetics or who knows?) rather than a problem with the mother. But I'm not even close to an expert. Just guessing really. I guess when you give the mom another chance we'll all find out. I would suggest using a different male, just in case it is genetics.

The 2 silvery ones in your other litter sound exciting!

How did the sick older rat do? The last I saw she was improving but still sounded pretty ill.

[Jay_Bunny]

She's doing great! She's not sneezing or anything now. Very active and acting like herself again. No other rats are showing signs of illness, so I'm hoping it didn't spread to anyone and I got her into QT quick enough.

I'm going to put Gazelle with another male if I can. The thing is, the two males I have won't be 16 weeks old (the recommended age for beginning the breeding career of a female) till the end of May. Does it matter for males? Their testicles have dropped and I would love to start breeding my two young boys as they are both dumbos.

[frankykeno]

The males can start younger, Jay. Sometimes a much smaller male will get sort of kicked away by a big female but most manage to get the job done after they bug the females enough LOL. Just keep a check on the male that the females aren't picking on him overly. I generally like to put my brand new male breeders in with a few females that have bred before. They seem less bothered by a new and slightly stupid male rat who hasn't quite figured out what end of a female rat is what and is way over excited about being around females.