Rodents

[Wizwise2000]

One of my females (Ripple) gave birth the other day to 11 babies, my other female (Flake) gave birth this morning. Ripple's been taking Flakes babies, so she has something between 15-18 babies and the rats aren't sharing the hide, they have seperate nests. Should I seperate them? Or can Ripples take care of that many babies without any of them being malnutritioned?

Thanks:)
Shane

[mykee]

I have many of my females take all of her babies and a complete other litter (20+ babies) without any problems. The other mother will eventually take some back. If not, the one mom will take shifts feeding.

[annieb_mice]

The babies will be fine. My rats and mice commonly have large litters, sometimes up to 25 babies at a time each, and have no problems feeding them all.
Good luck.
Take care
Annie B. <:3 )~~

[justinO]

we've had a LOT of trouble with this problem in the last month when all of our girls started having babies....... they were all in large cages but could not keep thier own babies. The sealing was getting out of hand and a few were lost due to "tug-of-war" when the mothers were stealing back and forth.

Our major problem started with a litter of 13 & 18 babies, the one mother taking all 31, and couldn't possibly feed them all, plus one being ripped apart, and another dying due to fighting right over the nest area. The same thing ended up happening with all the mothers (with at least 10+ dead) and was a complete mess.

The advice I was given every time was to separate them, which I did and had cages, rubbermaids and every dish in house all over the place with all the different mothers and their babies. If you only have 2, I say separate them.
Under some circumstances, I would think nature would work itself out, but sometimes nature sucks. So unless you have a snake that's a pinky pig (like our hoggy), gashed open babies cuz of fighting will be no good for you!

We built a rat rack for under $100 and holds 10 single rats with a litter (cycle around males) with our old cages to grow up to different sizes, seems to be working perfect and takes up VERY little space. Depending on how many you plan to keep/raise, you might want to look into something like that.

Good luck! Write me if you want to know more
:)
Jessy

[Wizwise2000]

Thanks for the replies, I'll leave them for now, the group is 1.5.
I'll be moving on monday and I'll be building a rack with rubbermaids and the groups will be 1.2 - 1.3. Sofar none have seemed to have died.

Thanks again everyone!! :)
Shane