OK her is my set-up for rat breeding. The rats babies are currently being used as snake food. Also sorry for the blurry photos the dang rats just would not sit still for the pictures.
This first picture is of my male....
This is the picture of my newest addition to the breeding project. She just had her first litter.
Here is the soon to be retired breeder, shes a bitter.
And for the last photo here is the newest females first litter.
I will try and get some better quality pictures up on here a little later maybe after I get off work and the rats are a little more settled down. As you can see her first little is very tiny. I have not figure out if this is because I have a bad stud or if it is a first litter things. The parents that the newest female came from is a steady producer of about 13-20 babies every litter. So I am giving the male one more chance soon to see if it is actually him or not.
Here is an update picture of the babies. Their eyes are not quite open yet but will be opening in the next few days. After their eyes open they will probably have about 1 week before they meet the gas chamber and then the freezer.
id say keep the babies and work on building a breeding stock. I wouldn't kill till i had a ratio of at least 2 sets of 2.5
I just say this as that is how i ran my rodent business in Alaska.
great work!
Rage, Well I will be keeping one of them if there is a female in this bunch. There seems to be a greater chance of the babies being a male as compared to females. With two females producing around 15 babies around every few months my freezer gets full really fast. And since I only currently use 1 rat per weak I have no need to get any more rats.
Also since I am getting a kestrel as my first bird I may be getting a 1:4 ration breeding stock just to get a little hawk food going.
Post by HawkingRage on Jan 9, 2007 11:06:04 GMT -5
that sounds good.. some reason i was thinking you where going with a Red tail. Good job. I would still say that a 2.5 would be better cause the 2 males will almost politly compete for breeding rights. they both will get the chance but you will find less times that the females dont breed. save a male baby and let him grow up with the pack. shoot, if you need to sell any, get to the pet store and tell them you will sell them for a buck a piece. they will for sure take them for that price and now you have a little savings going for when you buy new falconry gear.
Rage, Oddly enough the pet store will not buy the extra rats that I usually have. They say that there would be a chance that the rats I would be selling them would have a disease and they just can't take the chance. I will call them up again and ask them though. Well if I am going to expand my colony, I guess I will have to buy a few more cages. Since I am only having one rat per cage I have been keeping them in a 10 gallon tank. I am thinking though to get one large cage so they can all be together, and then just take out the females once they show sings of pregnancy.
Post by HawkingRage on Jan 9, 2007 20:14:18 GMT -5
dont take out the females. put 3 females to 1 male in a ten gallon cage.. that works fine..you will have faster breeding and social animals that will help rear the young.
Rage, To address what you said about not taking the females out when they show signs of pregnancy. I have gotten better results in the way of larger litters if I give my females about a 1 month break to recuperate from the birth and rearing of their young. Also a ten gallon tank is way too small for 4 rats. 2 rats in my ten gallons tanks is really pushing it. The rats will not have enough space to get away from each other when they need some time away. Also they will get obese very fast since there will be no room for them to roam around and exercise. Also when I take one of the females out I do give her a cage mate to help rear her young and so she does not get lonely.
Jake, No the male rats will not eat the young. Eating of young is very uncommon in rats. The only time the mother or father will eat her young is if she thinks they will otherwise not survive. Now if it was mice we were talking about it would be a whole different story. When I was breeding mice I think I only had 2 babies get large enough to feed my snake. Out of around 60 or so babies the female ate all but 2. I think though this was a very rare case and is not in the norm. Also this female mouse killed the male mouse in the cage. So she got to have a meeting with my cat .
I live right next to the town of Corvallis. I am hoping to upgrade to bigger cages sometime this month, maybe two very large rubber maid containers will do the trick for 8 rats. Also that white one with the beige head she can go at any time, very nasty one and beyond the breeding age.
I will be taking a trip to Petco in the next few days to pick up a few more females. With only one female my supply will probably be going down at a too fast of pace to keep up with. So probably in about 20-40 days I will have about 10-30 extra rats that I can sell.
uhhhh, those rats give me the ???heebitajeebites??? i dont know how to spell that lol I hate mice and rats and your talk about them eating each other... snakes and mice it's to much to handle!!! rabbits i can handle and birds but ooo I am a chicken about Rats... my moms fault she screams bloody murder when she sees one and when I was little she did it and I started balling.!!! they are really cute from a reasonable distance... also know as a pizilized photo.!
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