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Surprise in a box!

Arcanefate

Arcanefate

Cold Blooded
I was changing and cleaning the cages of my two hairless rats today. They are a male and female and they are the best of friends. So I usually put them together during changes and "special" feedings. A special feeding is when they get the leftover food that my Sugar Gliders don't eat. They love the applesauce and the grapes.
Well anyway, as I was taking them out to put them back in their own cage... low and behold a little surprise in the hide hut.
Ratbaby1.jpg
DSC02676.jpg

They have been together for the past 3 months and I have been trying to mate them, but this was their first, and at an unexpected time.

I hate to point out the gruesome part, but I will anyway. If you look at the bottom right corner you will see the unfortunate mishap.
Ratbabyanddead.jpg

There were originally 7, but it seems all but one got burried under the bedding. All intact and not eaten, just burried.
But, I guess it must be because this was the female's first litter. She may have been slightly unattentive.

The male was sweet, though, not to my boyfriend. If you look closely you will see tiny white shreds. The male likes to climb around in the cleaning tub. So I put a book up there near the edge of the cover to keep him from climbing out. He slowly pulled a sheet of paper from the book until he got about 21 sheets into the tub and ripped them to pieces.
He made the female a laying nest out of them. Unfortunately it was my boyfriend's Kanji (Japanese Language) book that he has been taking to class with him. He now actually has the excuse, "But teacher, my rats ate my book!" Though at 30 he is a little old to be making excuses like that.
 
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Unfortunately the hairless gene is usually weak (it took alot of inbreeding to come up with hairless rats).

Its quite common for litters with hairless or even rex to be weak, undersized, and small. This doesnt happen on every litter. I have a rex line ... and I end up having to cull about half of the litter due to undersize. Im slowly culling out the weak adults when I find them.

Bryan
 
Ratsicles said:
Unfortunately the hairless gene is usually weak (it took alot of inbreeding to come up with hairless rats).

Its quite common for litters with hairless or even rex to be weak, undersized, and small. This doesnt happen on every litter. I have a rex line ... and I end up having to cull about half of the litter due to undersize. Im slowly culling out the weak adults when I find them.

Bryan
Click to expand...

Yes, unfortunately that is true with hairless mice as well. We breed them at work, they are called "Nudes" in the trade. They are knockout mice, if you know what that means. They have been specifically bred to have low or no immune systems. That, for some strange reason, also affects hair growth.

This makes it difficult to breed them, one because you have to keep them in a very clean and even sterile conditions or they will die of infections and other common viruses. And two, the life expectancy even in the best conditions is usually only 4-5 months.
e189070a.jpg
 
Well...
I don't know if the stress of moving would have been too hard on the female and pup so I left the two of them in the changing tub. The tub is 32 gallons, so by far not a small container.

This evening I went to check on the pup and it was gone. Completely. No parts, no blood, nothing.
I know it happens a lot in mice, I breed them at work, but rats are not supposed to be as canibalistic with their litters.
Maybe because she is a new mother she just didn't know what to do? But usually they just leave them there to die not eat them.

Oh well... maybe next time will be better?
 
My hairless rat has a tendency to her eat babies too. She's a good mom when she doesn't eat them though. She also has smaller litters than my other rats. Her first 3 litters were normal, 13-15, but her litters after that have all been much smaller, 4-7. More like a gerbil than a rat. She is also allergic to CareFresh, so I have to use aspen for them. If I had more corns and really needed the pinkies, I would have culled her a long time ago, but I only have 3 corns and lots of mice too. She is just around because she is the sweetest thing. Last time she had a litter, she went into heat right afterwards, which is normal, and mated with my male, but it didn't take, and she didn't get pregnant. Next week she was in heat again, so we'll see if this mating worked out. Those are just my experiences with my hairless girl.
 
I am under the impression that hairless females should not be breed. They do not posess the belly coat to protect them from the babies claws. I believe that most breeders sell most females as pets or food only. They breed hairless males to het hairless females inorder to get more hairless animals.
 
The deceased baby looks like a stillborn to me. You can usually tell the difference by the texture of the bodies between stillborns and born alive and then dead babies. The stillborns are like little flaccid sacks of skin. No composition or firmness, like they've already started to decompose within the womb. Compared to born alive babies that usually end up stiff once they die. The dead one looks a bit on the flaccid side to me, and still bluish from never having breathed.

I just think hairless rats look like shaved testicles and are entirely too ugly and inbred to bother with. They don't even fall into the category of "its so ugly its cute", they skip that entirely.

I've also heard that most hairless females either have no functional nipples or only a couple, and aren't capable of feeding an entire litter if they should happen to have more than 6, so in the event you do have one to breed its pretty much imperative you have a haired female who can take over the nursing off the offspring.
 
Arcanefate said:
This evening I went to check on the pup and it was gone. Completely. No parts, no blood, nothing.
I know it happens a lot in mice, I breed them at work, but rats are not supposed to be as canibalistic with their litters.
Maybe because she is a new mother she just didn't know what to do? But usually they just leave them there to die not eat them.QUOTE]

Its quite common in rats to eat a baby that dies, even to eat still borns. Its a great way for them to replenish their protein. Chances are the baby died and the female "cleaned up".

One of my friends has a hairless male in with his breeders. He also has rex females (Rex is the indicator for the hairless gene or HET ::grins::). In seven litters of hairless babies he only had one that survived and became "large" sized.

Ive never heard of hairless females not having functional nipples. If this was the case Id think it would show up in rexes as well. And all of my rex females are able to nurse off all teats. The part about the belly coat makes sense ... but ...

Bryan
Click to expand...
 
Ratsicles said:
One of my friends has a hairless male in with his breeders. He also has rex females (Rex is the indicator for the hairless gene or HET ::grins::). In seven litters of hairless babies he only had one that survived and became "large" sized.

Ive never heard of hairless females not having functional nipples. If this was the case Id think it would show up in rexes as well. And all of my rex females are able to nurse off all teats. The part about the belly coat makes sense ... but ...

Bryan
Click to expand...

Actually, the rex gene is completely separate from the 2 different hairless genes. You may be thinking of double rex rats as "hairless" but they're not the same. There are 2 distinct types of hairless, each with their own gene.

As posted above, hairless females have trouble feeding due to the lack of a coat to protect their bellies from the pups claws.

Your friend's rex female is probably also het for the same hairless gene as his hairless male.
 
Taceas said:
I just think hairless rats look like shaved testicles and are entirely too ugly and inbred to bother with. They don't even fall into the category of "its so ugly its cute", they skip that entirely.
Click to expand...

:rofl: I've seen a few that look um... this way, but I had a male that was actually quite cute. We mated him with a darling Rex who had and ate a huge litter. The pinks were very small and didn't "look" right. Needless to say that was the last time I mated them. Great pets though!

-Tonya
 
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