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Murderous male

F

Flagg

New member
I've heard of this happening with mice but have never had it happen to any of my breeders.

A week ago I retired my original African soft furred rat male and replaced him with one of his offspring, raised up within the colony. The old male was removed and everything seemed fine. Now today when I was cleaning the cages I found the entire existing litter dead, obviously killed by one of the adults. Now I'm wondering if he's going to kill the next 3 litters as all 3 of his harem are pregnant from the previous male.

Well, if he does then the whole colony is done. I need the cage for a new colony of solid colored ASF's anyway. I've been figuring out the ASF color and patterning genetics and need the space.

I always thought that was a myth about a male killing offspring sired by another male, but apparently it does happen.
 
With rats and mice I've had males kill off litters, but never by a son raised in the colony. I've only just started breeding ASF mice so I don't know if it is particular to this species? I'm not sure what evolutionary sense it makes to kill off your siblings or half siblings to mate with the females. I'd be interested to hear what happens to this colony if you keep them.

Will an adult male ASF mouse tolerate his adult son or will he kill him? I sometimes keep a young but mature rat or mouse son for a time and never had the older male kill the young one, so I was wondering if the ASFs are the same.
 
The only other incident I have had with them was when I was setting up a new colony and mistook a young male for a female. I don't recall if they were siblings or not, but they probably were.

They were fine for a while, several weeks at least, but I eventually found one of the males pretty severely injured, his back end torn open and a large patch of back skin above the base of the tail missing. So more than 1 young adult male in a colony, big no-no. I haven't had any issues with multiple juvenile males and one adult male. I make sure to either cull or remove males before they reach maturity.
I don't need any feeders that big yet so I don't usually raise them up to maturity unless they are going in a new colony.

Yet one more reason that I don't mind at all culling or feeding off ASF rats, which makes them ideal feeders for me to breed.
 
Very strange, especially if the male was raised within the colonny...my adult male is super protective of the babies..even thought those from the first litter are not his...

Perhaps it was just because the litter was in there already and maybe he won't kill off any new babies that are born in his "reign"...

I know that some males just aren't "family men"...maybe you just had bad luck in picking the wrong male to take over?
 
i am worried whether this will happen to my colony. at them moment i have 2 mature females that are both pregnant and one juvanile male that gets along with them very well. the male is very young and the females should give birth before he matures but will he be bothered that they are not his babies?

thanks for the help

lee :cheers:
 
If you are talking about rats I don't think you will have a problem...problems like this are rare with rats...especially if they have been raised in the colony.

And quite frankly, I don't think males "know" when the kids aren't theirs...I dont think they look or smell different to any other rat pinks...lol

Proof: I had a young male, not adult yet in my colony (of 2 rats lol), I bought a new female to add to it. She had babies the very next day! All the babies were fine and all the rats were supportive even though she was new...lol
 
Basically, if you introduced a male to a cage with existing babies, he's likely to kill them (he "knows" they can't be his).

However, if he's in the cage with pregnant females who then give birth WHILE he's living with them, he's not as likely to kill them - because he may think they're his.

And I've been keeping two adult male Multis in with my breeding colony - and Boy and Boy II (who is Boy's son and has lived with the colony for his entire life) do not fight that I can tell. Boy II is only very slightly smaller than Boy, as well - now, what I don't know is whether Boy II is allowed to mate with the females.
 
I had the males fight when I started a new colony accidentally with 2 males.

Never had issues with the current new male as he was growing up within the colony with his old father male, and towards the end the new male was definitely mature enough, though not as large as the old male. And of course no litters were harmed until almost a week after the old male was removed.

When I first got the ASF rats I was told by the breeders that they didn't have these kinds of dominance issues, I guess they were wrong, in certain situations at least.
 
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