Good mother rats

OldRebl · 05-13-05, 02:58 PM

I had tried to start a new colony of breeders recently and the group would always kill the babies off eventually over the space of a few days. Needless to say I wasn't happy about that so they are destined to become snake poop very soon. In the meantime there was one last litter born in that group and instead of losng the second half of the litter that I didn't discover in time, I put the remaining babies in with the "good mother" group and they accepted them and treatd them as their own.

Is that common behaviour for rats? Both from the bad and good angles of the equation? It just seemed like the bad ones I had just were born that way. I gave them several chances to straighten up but they wouldn't raise their babies themselves.

Linds · 05-13-05, 04:28 PM

Sometimes something just isn't right with them. Though it isn't typical behaviour, it does happen. Only thing you can do is to start over with a new bloodline and hope that it is better blood.

OldRebl · 05-13-05, 05:50 PM

I am going to try to keep the male and put him in with three other females I have that are showing good instincts. There hasn't been too much inbreeding with this group and the bad mothers were from the initial breeding of my original pair. The siblings from a later brood seem fine so far so they are spared the freezer for the time being.

Thanks Linds

The Dragon Lady · 05-13-05, 06:34 PM

We have quite a few colonies, we only have one bad mother in the bunch, she does not eat her babies, but if there is another mother with her she will sleep all day and ignore her babies. Letting the other mother take care of her litter. She likes to nip people, but she produces 16 to 19 babies per litter. Now that she is by herself she seems to be getting better.

OldRebl · 05-13-05, 07:30 PM

I think that it is neglect rather than eating the babies I plucked a lot of corpses out of there. I like the idea of a 3 to one colony, usually there is a nipple available at any time for a hungry baby.

sapphire_moon · 05-15-05, 10:24 PM

i wouldn't use the male, as these traits could be passed down from him to the babies, and any babies you chose to use as breeders in the future could show the same tendencies.