• 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.

Hairless Rats?

Fuzzoodle

Fuzzoodle

New member
I got a yearling corn from a friend of mine recently, and she seems to have an aversion to fur. She weighs 46g currently, and was given to me because previous owner was having a hard time switching her to fuzzies. I've had her for a few weeks now. The first week she settled in, then ate a rat pink for me. Next week offered a mouse fuzzy, she wouldn't touch it. A few days later offered a rat pink, she ate it right out of my hand, and she's blue to boot!

So now I'm looking into breeding hairless rats, and was wondering if anyone here does? Are they any harder to breed than regular ones? A couple sites say females have lactation problems, true or false?

If they do have lactating problems, what would be the best way to go about having a breeding trio? If I get a hairless male and breed him to a regular female, then keep two female babies from the litter and breed back to the male, there should be hairless babies right?

Do they need to be kept warmer than others? Our regular rats are in our basement now, and they have been doing well down there but it can get a little chilly during cooler weather.

Any and all info is greatly appreciated!
 
I do not breed rats, but I am an experienced rat keeper (and rat nutrition expert).

Hairless rats do tend to have many problems! TRUE hairless rats are very rare, though. Most "hairless" rats are just a double rex rat.

If I were to go about producing hairless rats, I would simply pair up rex parents to produce the double rex babies rather than risking the problems that hairless adults tend to have.

As far as temperature, it's just important to have places for them to cuddle up like piles of fleece, etc.
 
Myca said:
is a fuzzy rat too large. Maybe she just likes rats.
Click to expand...

That is true! I read that going from rats to mice sometimes isn't successful because rats are... tastier?

Maybe you could just offer her the proper sized rat pups from now on instead of adult mice? Or maybe nutritionally, that isn't a good idea?

I'm not sure as I don't have my snake yet! All I can offer is advice on the rats themselves.
 
Rats are quite a bit fattier than mice and not as recommended to feed all the time. It can be very difficult to switch a rat loving corn over to mice.
 
I was feeding my hybrid cornsnake rat and had a very hard time switching back to mice. She would chow down rats and absolutely refuse mice of any size. It took me quite awhile and a ton of patience to switch her back. I think rats are like chocolate to a cornsnake ;)

I switched back to mice because I was told rats are too fatty for a cornsnake. However, I've heard many others disagree that rats should be avoided. Another debatable topic although I've talked to some that have fed their corns strictly rats and have never had an issue with weight or health. Others say different, so again, it comes down to personal preference.
Regardless, I have no issue with rats besides the fact that making the switch back to mice was difficult. When I got my snake in Jan '13 (who hatched july '11) she was only 29grams. I fed her rat pinks and pups for 3 months and she is now upto 70+grams and is beautiful and healthy. Never had a shed/feeding/health problem with her.

I know nothing about hairless rats, but I've heard breeding rats vs. mice is much easier, as they are not only less stinky (?) but also less cannibalistic.
 
Rub the fuzzy mouse on a rat to scent it, then see if your snake will take it. After a few of those, you may be able to get him to feed without the rat rub first.
 
I had to brain a rat pinky and rub the fuzzy mouse to get her to eat it (she wasn't too enthusiastic about it either). I tried the following week w/o braining...Fail. For her to eat a mouse, it had to smell like rat lol. Took about 5 weeks, but now she's downing mouse hoppers like a champ, thank god!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top