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Rats don't add, they multiply

Sinsational

Sinsational

New member
My husband and I got 2 girl ratties a couple of months ago. We then decided we were going to start breeding as pets, so we got 2 boys. We decided we would like to add one more girl and one more boy to our colony, so we bought little peaches a gorgeous little baby girl. Katie and Roxie are almost 4 months old, and Katie about 6 weeks old. Katie and Roxy kept fighting and beating up on poor little Peaches. She has so many little bite marks. We came to the conclusion today that they are not going to get along.... So, of course off we went to the local live feed store to pick up a friend for peaches that is more her size.
Somehow, we ended up walking out of the store with 2 new additions! How does that happen? I swear we went in there for 1 more rat, and even that was not in the plans. But we fell in love with 2 of them! I will post some pictures. We don't have names for the new little girls yet, but they are all curled up in their hammock together. Too cute!
 
Its hard to introduce singles into an established group. I've culled males out of a harem and then re-established a new harem and added females before with success. But the way I have always done it to avoid the fighting is to add the group females to the single female. Then after they become accustomed to each other, I add them into the males cage. Seems to work for me.
 
I started out with one rat that I adopted and I then bought two babies to introduce to her but one got really sick and I didn't think she would make it so I bought another one to add in with the two babies incase the one died the other wouldn't be lonely. Now I have four and I work at a petstore and always want to bring more home lol.

Introducing rats can take a bit of time and patience, some will have no problems others (like mine) can take months. Introducing my babies to my adult, Cinnamon is slow going because one of the baby rats, Hazel is super hyper and wants to play all the time which annoys the Cinnamon who then bites the baby. I put them together in a neutral place once a day for awhile, then if that goes well I put them all in the cage the babies are in and that normal goes well for a few hours then Hazel and Cinnamon start fighting again. Hopefully one of these days I'll get them all together, I really want Cinnamon to have friends.

Can't wait to see pictures of your ratties.
 
Rats certainly do multiply! We started out with two, and now we have five. Had seven, but Robin escaped and was stepped on/played with to death by puppy, and Sedoso died of unknown causes. We always seem to come home with one more than we intended to get. Went to get Glia, and got Glia-and-Braille. Went to get Robin, and got Robin. Got Willis to accompany Robin a few days later. Went to get dog food, came home with Choline and Sedoso.

If they multiply when you buy them, I can only imagine that they grow exponentially when you breed them ;)

(But seriously, I'm going to get a litter between our cream berkshire girl Braille and our russian blue dumbo male Ranvier. Someday. When the animal room isn't quite so.. full. Or stinky.)
 
ComoxCorn said:
Its hard to introduce singles into an established group. I've culled males out of a harem and then re-established a new harem and added females before with success. But the way I have always done it to avoid the fighting is to add the group females to the single female. Then after they become accustomed to each other, I add them into the males cage. Seems to work for me.
Click to expand...

The problem was that I was trying to introduce a tiny baby with very fragile skin into 2 sisters that have been together since birth and are now 4 months old. I think they were fighting to develop hierchary but peaches is getting bitten so bad she is bleeding and scabbing for weeks. They almost bit her tail off yesterday, so I seperated them. I know if I worked for months and months they may become friends and be able to live together, but I didn't want peaches to be alone for that time. So now we have 2 females together in a cage, and 2 males together (soon to be 3 I hope.) and then we have the 3 baby females in another cage. We're keeping the males and females seperate as we are trying to selectively breed, and not that often - we're not looking for food, we're looking for pets!

My only hope is that the new boy (baby) will fit in with the 2 boys we have now. They accepted peaches but of corse we can't leave a 6 week old female in with 2 males for the rest of her life! Darn fertile rats.
 
Iguanagirl8662 said:
Introducing rats can take a bit of time and patience, some will have no problems others (like mine) can take months. Introducing my babies to my adult, Cinnamon is slow going because one of the baby rats, Hazel is super hyper and wants to play all the time which annoys the Cinnamon who then bites the baby. I put them together in a neutral place once a day for awhile, then if that goes well I put them all in the cage the babies are in and that normal goes well for a few hours then Hazel and Cinnamon start fighting again. Hopefully one of these days I'll get them all together, I really want Cinnamon to have friends.

Can't wait to see pictures of your ratties.
Click to expand...

I hope that you are able to get Cinnamon in a cage with other ratties. You are more patient than I am! Good luck :)
 
Wow, we had 5 rats, and now we have 8. I sure hope that Katie isn't pregnant, or we're going to have a LOT more.
 
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