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Bonus

Bobo's Mama

Bobo's Mama

proud corn mommy!
When I bought my two female pet rats I had no intention of breeding them. But now, a mere 5 days after I got them from the petstore, one of them has given birth to a huge litter! I suspected she was pregnant a few days ago, but wasn't 100% sure. I was comparing the two and the female that gave birth seemed so much fatter. I'm now convinced that the petstore kept the rats all together and did not separate the males and females and also explains why they only have pinkies sometimes and not all the time. Anyway, I consider this a bonus to me and a loss for the petstore. I will be honest and say that I don't have the resources or the time to start breeding rats. Because I definately could start quite a few colonies now if I wanted to. So my question is, are rat pinkies the same nutrionally as mouse pinkies only larger. I'm thinking that I should wait until they are at least fuzzies so that they are nutrionally better for my snake and that way once I am through feeding fuzzy mice in a few months, then I can move up to these fuzzy rats that I will have instead of hoppers. Any advice would be helpful. Also if I do wait till they are fuzzies to cull them, would the freezer be okay for fuzzies? I don't really want to go to all the trouble of making a gas chamber if I'm just going to do it once.
 
I'd say nutritionally, rat pinks are the same as mouse fuzzies. They have more protein, bone, everything. Mouse pinks don't have that much calcium, because their bones aren't fully formed yet.

Depending on the size of your snakes, you can feed off the appropriate sizes they need. But do be aware that rat fuzzies are about small/medium adult mouse sized. So you have to take that into consideration also.

Also, I wouldn't recommend freezing rat fuzzies. They're large enough that it would be comparable to freezing an adult mouse, it'd take a while due to sheer body mass. Their skulls however are still softish, so you can bop them on the head and make sure they're dead before freezing them.

I freeze mouse/rat pinks and mouse fuzzies, but they don't take very long to expire exposed to the cold. Everything else gets bopped on the head and arranged on a tray before freezing.
 
I have no idea on the breeding mouse/rat thing. But I feed Rat Pinks (FT purchased) to my yearling corns. They actully seemed to grow much more than the ones I feed just mice too. I have no proof that it was the rats but just tend to think that. Also I do have one snake that will now refuse anything but a rat. Which is difficult because rats are bigger and she is way small. So one rat pink is equal to a fuzzy in my book.
 
Well, I ended up coming home last night and separating out the mom to see how many babies she had. There were 11 healthy pinkies and 2 that didn't make it. So I now have nearly 3 months worth of free food for my single snake. I made sure to give them a whole day to get their nutrition from her and they did. Each babie had a nice looking milk band. If anything, the mom looks kind of relieved not to have them around. I can't imagine what would happen to the babies if someone without a snake had bought her and she'd had all those babies, they would surely be flushed or worse. I feel I did the right thing.
 
Well done on the free food! I say 'If it's free, it's for me!'


You could 'spare' one of the male pups and cull off the others when they reach the right size for your snake -be aware, if you let them go 2 days over they can grow a great deal...

Then in a couple of months time you'll have another clutch or 2 fathered by your keeper boy and thet'll be your next few months of food!

If you don't want a full on ot of control breeding scheme going on, perhaps you can find a friend who would like the boy as a pet and you can borrow him for 2 weeks every 6 months or so to inseminate the girls and then give him back.

That's for sure what I'd do if I could breed my own again...
 
:grin01: They're already RIP in the freezer. I tried leaving one of them in, of course I don't know which it was, at a day old, it was kind of hard to tell what it was, but yeah, I tried leaving one of them in with her, but I think she was a really young first time mother. The girl at the petshop said they were about 10 weeks old. I know that is old enough to breed, but still young. Anyway, I tried leaving one in with her, but she didn't know what to do with it and ended up just carrying it around in her mouth and wouldn't set it down so it could nurse. I took it away from her because she was hurting it, its leg was all bloody and twisted from her dragging it around, so I took it and put it with the rest in the freezer.
 
Mice and rats generally can't raise a litter of only one or two babies, there's not enough stimulation to keep the momma producing milk. Sounds like thie momma was looking for the rest of the babies to put the one baby with them but couldn't ever find them.

It's good when you can get a bargain like this one though!
 
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