• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

a little nervous

C

cemf123

New member
ok so i have about 50 rats to keep as breeders the rest are feeders and i have never raise them in a colony type setting. so im nervous about it. im afraid the male will eat the babies and that they will be too wild. if there anything that you can share with me that would be great. also any tips and horror stories, mishaps, and all that would be appreciated. also how do you know how to set them? i mean like how many females per male? my rats produce on average 10 pups per litter. i think that is an ok number. for what reasons do you cull?
thanks
 
In general, I have found the rats to be far less likely to eat the babies. Provided they are well fed and watered of course. Male rats are usually fantastic fathers and I have NEVER had a male (or female for that matter) rat eating young.

The only thing that might cause a problem is rivalry between males.

I'm not sure if you want to keep all 50 together but I would recommend rather splitting them into groups of 1 male and 4-6 females (I am referring to adults here) and their young. Young males can stay in the colony without problems until they are bigger. I haven't had any problems with males fighting as I usually cull the male youngsters first so never had two adult or near adult males together.

I have found 1.5 ratio to work best. Male has enough energy and "supplies" to cover all the females adequately and I have consistently large litters. Fewer females also shouldn't be a problem but I wouldn't recommend keep 1 male with 7 or more females as fertility rates may start to suffer a bit.

I must add that I am HORRIBLY allergic to rats but just can't bring myself to getting rid of my breeding colony as they just breed so incredibly well and are much more consistent than my two mouse colonies. :)

Best of luck! Hope this helps a bit!
 
Oh PS: I only have room to keep 1.5 breeders so I cull anything that's born basically, unless I have to replace an aging breeder. I have different snakes at different ages so the age at which I cull the babies depends largely on what I need at the time. I just freeze excess so I always have a supply of the correctly sized prey. (I kill them humanely first before freezing).

I have 3 snakes eating large rat pinks, one eating large rat fuzzies and one eating weaned rats.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top