Finally

I have two pregnant rats, after waiting for ages. My poor male keeps chasing the two pregnant females around trying to hump them, which makes them angry enough to jump on him and start a fight, even in their large bellied awkward pregnant stage. He hasn't gotten his sister pregnant, and shows no interest in her at all. He mostly ignores her. He's curled up asleep with one of the pregnant females now. It's so cute. =^.^= But I know when they wake up I don't want to be around, he's always causing a ruckus, which causes loud rat squeaking and fighting for five minutes. Which wouldn't be so bad, except it's over and over, and he never gives up.

On another note, we're almost done tiling the first floor, so we'll be moving into our new house soon. Yay!

Congratulations!

The small hooded female hasn't had a big belly for more than two days, I get home from work, and there are pinks. I'm about to disturb them and do a count. She's laying on top of them, and most of them are going to be feeders anyway.

8 babies! They are larger than I expected. Isabelle can eat them, but my amel isn't that big yet.

I took them out and looked them all over, two of them have red eyes, or well I think so anyway. Which would prove the hoods are carrying albino somewhere. I can see six of the rat babies eyes underneath the skin, they are dark blue, almost black. But two of the babies, have no color underneath the skin where the eyes are. So I'm just guessing, red eyes. Since I just got a shipment of frozen rat pinks and mice fuzzies, I've decided to let them all grow for now. I do have the adult black rats to eat them when they get older. They're SO adorable. I now remember why I loved rats so much when I was younger.

red eyes could be albino, or if they are a little darker "ruby" eyes it could be buff/red eye dilute.

Though if they look obviously pink it's probably albino.

I've had some show up that I thought were albino but were actually a combination of red eye dilute and blue. Both dilutes combined make the color almost completely white.

I have a dumbo hoody this color now and he has a very faint almost indistinguishable hood thats just barely silver grey.

As for the pinky size, mine are always about 7g or mouse fuzzy size.

These are a just a little bigger than the mouse fuzzies I regularly feed. She's also being a good first time mom, she's always feeding and cleaning them. They all have milk in their stomachs. She tolerates me touching them and looking at them, even though one of her babies mysteriously went missing last night. :grin01: I didn't realize she was going to give birth so early, I thought the albino female was going to pop first, she's huge! I'm still waiting for her, maybe she'll have more than 8. Well, now I have 7 babies, and Isabelle has a full stomach. A rat pink is the max she can eat right now, and Corrigan is a little smaller than her, so I have to thaw his mice. Hopefully he'll start growing for me.

I've found it helps to feed the mothers extra protein and fat. Egg is good, scraps of cooked meat. I also give them a small amount of dry kitten food daily. I gave her a few live mealworms the other day and she went crazy for them.

As for the litter size, first litters tend to be smaller than later ones, though not always. I don't breed my rats constantly, my current litter is the 2nd from this female. First was 16!, this one was 14, but she had this litter fairly soon after the last one since I'm trying to get blue dumbos. Her last litter I moved to another mom so she could have a break before being bred again.

Rats tend to be very good mothers, though I had one that had small litters and abandoned them, even pushed the pinkies through the cage bars. She is no longer around as I don't want that trait in my rat lines.

So what colors and markings were the parents? Is any color showing up on the pups yet?

The father is a black hooded and the mother is hooded, but her black isn't nearly as dark as the male and his sister. She's a much lighter black if she is black. Then the other expecting mom is an albino. I thought the three hooded rats may be het for albino (if that's the right term) because they were mixed in with black hoodeds, albinos, and brown rats. Two of them are definately brother and sister, the new mom is probably closely related, but she was much smaller when I got them and was the youngest (ironic she's the first to give birth) the albino came from a different source entirely. I really like plain white red eyed lab rats. I had a male when I was in high school that got HUGE, and he was so sweet. No colors are showing up on them at all, I only fed off one of them, so I've got 7 left to see what they grow into. My guess is two albinos and the rest will probably just be black hooded. I saw some cream hoodeds at the pet store the other day, it was SO tempting.

After two or three litters I'll probably retire these females, and get new breeding stock. I may keep the male (he also reminds me of another rat I had in the past... of course he isn't NEAR as friendly, he's a nibbler). But I definately want other colors.

Within a few days the skin should be darkening on all those black hoodies.

Mine currently are all blue (gray), black and buff (beige) with a mix of hoods and berkshires. I started getting some dumbos with the latest matching.

I've also recently acquired a male hairless that could carry pretty much any color, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I get when he gets old enough to sire a few litters.

Rat genetics is interesting, with a much quicker turn-around than corn snakes.

The albino female had her babies today, all of them are albino. The five dark eyed babies from the first litter are all hooded. The hooded mom who had been sweet before won't let the albino mom anywhere near her babies, and bit me today over them, twice.

BTW: The albino female had a much bigger belly, but only had 7.

Some of my females are like that when they have a litter, they bite and attack anything in the cage. Once you get them out they are fine as usual, but put your hand in the cage when they are there and they try to protect their young. It's a hormonal thing.

Are you sure they are ALL albino? that seems sort of odd unless the father was albino too. If he was a carrier then 1/2 should be albino. Is it that easy to tell when they are newborn?

All of them have red eyes. The first litter has 5 hooded, all with black eyes, because you can see through the skin. The other two don't have black eyes, and have developed no color. The second litter, all seven resemble the two with red eyes and no color. I guess I'll see when they get older.

The mom didn't try to protect her own babies, but she stole the albino moms babies. She lets the male and other female come near her, but she bites the albino female when she gets close. I haven't seen her even leave to eat, so I fed her in the nest last night, which made her happy, and she's since stopped biting at me.

Now I'm worried I may have to cull quite a few of the babies. The mom isn't making enough milk for her babies AND the ones she stole, lol. Her babies had huge patches of white on their bellies form being full yesterday. Now all them of them just have a tiny little bit of white. I think it would be best for me to cull at least 6 of them. Possibly 8.

At least the mom isn't biting anymore. I gave her some egg earlier and she left the nest to eat and drink, I took the babies out, she saw they were gone and is gorging herself right now. I guess she figures when they're gone she gets to leave the nest for a longer period of time. I don't know if she knows or cares where they're going, just glad she's got a babysitter. Even with breaks to eat from the babies, she's getting really thin, and I don't want her to have to support 14 babies her first time. She's also the youngest female I have, so I don't want to stress her too much.

The albino female hasn't shown much interest at all in attempting to rescue her babies today. Everytime the hooded mom runs out of the nest and a baby is still attatched she goes over to it and licks it and usually gets chased off. But she isn't trying to get in the nest anymore, I'm worried about her not nursing too, it would take strain off the other mom if they shared feeding duty. Try explaining that to a neurotic rat mom though.

I haven't seen that happen, but then I always separate pregnant females a few days before birth and put them in smaller solo "nursery" cages so that doesn't happen, as well as preventing the male from re-impregnating them immediately after giving birth.

I gave a few of them to the albino mom in her favorite spot (the freshly emptied food bowl, where she apparantly gave birth, there was a little blood on it yesterday) and she let them nurse, but the hooded mom immediately missed them and went searching, and took them away from her again.

I decided to put the pinks in the freezer. She hasn't fed them all morning, she just sits on them and licks them. I keep looking at their stomachs, but the milk bands they had yesterday aren't there. I think she may not have any milk left, or at least, not enough for double the amount of babies she had. I'm going to be starting over with new breeding stock in a few weeks. The only one I'm keeping is the black hooded female that hasn't gotten pregnant. She's the most tame, and I'm actually quite attatched to her. The male is slightly tame, and the other two can't be handled at all. I just decided that hand raising half of these babies that probably have bad traits passed from their mothers isn't the way to go. I'll probably get a new male tonight to go with the female I'll be keeping. I might get a female for the male too, I don't know yet if I'm keeping him or starting completely over. I was entertaining the thought of hand raising these babies (they make such wonderful pets that way) but they'd probably still grow up neurotic, lol. As it is, the two females will probably meet a pillowcase. Rat pups are nice, they're the perfect size for Isabelle, and Corrigan will be eating them soon. But I'm also looking at what should be past that. Eventually, the snakes are going to get bigger, and having bigger meals is a plus. Besides I was going to let at least four of them grow to adulthood for the two black rat snakes I have. I'm not trying to breed on a large scale, to feed my snakes all the time. More like a side project, and to replace f/t with f/k sometimes.

The mice STILL aren't producing. I haven't seen the beige mouse yet this morning, but from what it looks like she's huge and holed up in a toilet paper roll all by herself. So maybe she'll be a good mom. I doubt it though, she'll probably eat them right away, but I can hope, lol.

I would have suggested separating the newer mother with her pinks, and handling them daily. They'll be perfectly tame that way.

I've never had to seperate rats in the past, they've always done well raising the babies in a colony. I don't want to have to seperate every pregnant mother until they give birth. It takes up too much time and space.