only leave a little water in the dish! Why not try a water bottle?
peanut butter can choke a rat
If your mothers is eating the babies, it could be because she isn't getting enough food!
Rats have high metabolisims and NEED access to water and food ALL THE TIME.
I may not be as expierenced as mykee, and I may be partial because I own rats as pets, but I have also bred them for food for snakes!
This will work if you only want one colony, or a 1.4-1.6 group
What *I* did (everyone is different) is I had a LARGE ( I mean it was huge, lol) sterilite container, about 2ft tall 4ft long and about 1.5-2ft wide.
I cut most of the lid out
used 1/2 inch galvanized mesh for the top.
Used 1/4 mesh to creat a tube like that would be the feeder basket.
used remaining 1/2 inch mesh for the bottom of the feeder basket (so they could get the food, but the food wouldn't fall out the side)
Everyone has their own opinion on food. if you feed a block make sure to give it some kind of meat protiene, especialy the pregnant/nursing mothers.
I used ol roy bites and bones dog food.
I made the basket so that it would be about 6 inches off the floor, low enough for babies to get it, high enough so that adults wouldn't perform amazing back turning stunts to get to the food
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lol.
Don't forget how much litter you have in the bottom will make the floor level higher.
then I attached the feeder basket, cut out the hole on the 1/2 mesh on the top to put the food in.
I drilled 2 holes in the side, got some picture hangers from wal-mart, attached those, put water bottle nozzles through the holes, used a bit of chain (like dog chain) and that held the bottles up.
There were some knobs in the cornors but I used a sodering iron and melted those out, nothing to chew on, so they didn't chew on the plastic.
http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/sh...cat=998&page=1 (sorry don't remember how to post pics!
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)
There should be no problems with handling the babies from day one. If the mother is agreesive put her in another container while you count, cull, whatever needs to be done.
If mother rats always got stressed out and ate their babies becuase someone handled them and "Human scent got on them" then there wouldn't be many pet rats, as breeders ALWAYS handle them from day 1 to make sure they get to be well socialized babies.