getting serious about keeping rats

[grdn1014]

next reptile swap in my area im gonna get a male and a few females. sure ive read the basic cookie-cutter care sheets but i wanna hear true advice from the experts!

ive never kept for anything furry before I want them to breed so i dont spend all my money on feeders.

 

[GHostCornSnake]

tried for three months never got anything..so i fed them my snakes and given up on the whole bredding idea..

-good look to ya

 

[Lore]

tried for three months never got anything..so i fed them my snakes and given up on the whole bredding idea..

-good look to ya

LOL! Sounds similar to my situation... except it was with Mice. I had them for 3 months, gave up on them, fed the Male to one of my snakes on Friday, Monday I went in to take out one of the females and ... low and behold... she had a litter of pinks under her

 

[maegann]

i breed my rats and have had good success. the only peice of advice that you might not find on a care sheet is to make sure you give them atention. you will want your male and females to trust you so you can move them to different cages and so the female wont bite once she has her litter. when my female is in the last week and while she is nursing i feed her kitten food since it is high in protein. also, treat them to fresh veggies, fruits, and other things to make sure they are getting the right nutrition.

of course...i have been known to spoil my animals, lol

 

[Flagg]

I've found that some females just bite when they have a litter and you invade their cage. I have a couple females that I raised from birth, so it's not a matter of trust. They are handled daily and they are the sweetest pets. Then when they have a litter they bite any hand that goes in the cage. If you pick them up outside the cage they are just fine, but put it inside, and they bite. This only lasts a few weeks and is completely gone by the time the litter is weaned. I've read that it's a hormonal issue. It's actually kind of funny, they are fierce in protecting their cage, and if I put anything like a piece of paper towel through the bars they run and grab it. This is why I always put pregnant females in their own small nursery cages. When checking or handline the litter I just lure out the female and put her in a different age so I can handle the litter.

Apparently this behavior tends to be genetic so some lines of rats don't exhibit it.

 

[CaptainJack]

Rats are simple to care for, I think. Make sure they have something to entertain themselves. Rats are surprisingly intelligent and can become easily stressed from boredom. Too much boredom might cause them to start attacking each other or damaging themselves. So give them a wheel or something to play with and make sure that they have things to chew on so their teeth don't grow too long and kill them. I know that last one is common sense, but you said you have never owned a furry animal before, so I thought I would mention their need to chew. Apart from that, I owned rats as pets for years and you just keep them clean, fed, watered and entertained and they're happy.

 

[maegann]

i guess i am just ucky that my female is such a sweety. she has never bitten me with a litter, so i guess she is just extra sweet, lol

 

[grdn1014]

Rats are simple to care for, I think. Make sure they have something to entertain themselves. Rats are surprisingly intelligent and can become easily stressed from boredom. Too much boredom might cause them to start attacking each other or damaging themselves. So give them a wheel or something to play with and make sure that they have things to chew on so their teeth don't grow too long and kill them. I know that last one is common sense, but you said you have never owned a furry animal before, so I thought I would mention their need to chew. Apart from that, I owned rats as pets for years and you just keep them clean, fed, watered and entertained and they're happy.

thats all good and well, but did they have lots of babies??? :cheers:

 

[CaptainJack]

I was keeping my rats as pets and thus I kept the male and the female seperate. When the female came to me she was already pregnant and had a litter of 14 pups. But we bred rats in a biology class I took and it was the simplest thing in the world for us. They bred like rabbits. Everyone has a different experience with them, I suppose, but when we were breeding them after less than a year we had three tanks full of rats. I would guess that as long as your females are healthy and happy you should have no trouble with them.

 

[Bobo's Mama]

My rats have more babies than my mice do. I've had up to 17 rat babies, with an average litter size of 14. With the mice, I've had up to 15 babies, with the average litter size being 12. But mice females do breed earlier than rat females. Earliest mouse bred was only 3.5 weeks old. Earliest rat bred was about 7 weeks. Males of both species always needed to be about 2 months old before they were fertile. In my case, if I hand-raise the females, I haven't had any trouble handling their litters with them there.

 

[LUBU]

Breading rats is good for nutrion for your snakes but it wont really save you money.

 

[grdn1014]

of course it will save money, otherwise people that sell frozen mice/rats wouldnt do it cuz they wouldnt be making a profit

 

[Jessicat]

When I bred rats I had the most untame female in the world. She came from a pet store and never seemed to get over it. She never bit me when I reached in for her babies. But yea, trying to take her out of her cage for cleaning and stuff was just down right SCARY

Get some dog food for them. Make sure it has no red dye as that can be harmful for snakes. I fed my rats dog food for a while and then switched to commercial rodent food. As soon as I did my production came to a halt. You can supliment the dog food diet with other veggies. I gave my rats some timothy hay from time to time too. I'm not sure weather they eat it or not but they'll use it for a nest....as well as everything within grabbing reach of their cage.
If you get a wire cage don't put anything you dont want shredded next to it. :grin01:

You might want to line the cage with cat litter. The kind that absorbes oder is the best. It will cut down on the smell. This REALLY helps with mice and sort of helps with rats... lol. It does help a little though.

One more thing, rats like "hides". I ususally used small leftover cardboard boxes that were laying around. My roommate at the time drank a lot of soda so I'd always snatch up the cardboard from that when she was done. (The long ones worked great).

Good luck!

 

[Flagg]

It depends on what you mean by
"commercial" rodent food. If you are referring to seed mix or Kaytee lab blocks, then I can understand the drop in production. If you feed a GOOD quality lab block like Mazuri or Harlan, production will be just fine.

As for the cat litter, don't use any of the clay based cat litters, they're way too dusty and can cause respiratory problems or myco flare ups in your rats. About the only cat litter that is recommended is Yesterdays News unscented paper pellets. That will work quite well on odor control and won't cause respiratory problems.

 

[CaptainJack]

I would just use aspen for the rat bedding. You probably have it already for the snakes and the rats would probably like it better than kitty litter. I had many rats for a short time after my girl had her litter and never had a problem with smell. As long as you clean their cage out once a week they don't produce any bad smells that I noticed. I never tried feeding them dog food. I fed mine a pelleted food (not seed which is just empty calories) plus vegetables and other table scraps. They'll eat just about anything. GiantBlueBerry also brought up a good point. I know that you are not getting these rats to be pets, but you should handle them before you buy them to see how firendly they are. Most of the rats that come from pet stores are horribly wild and crazy and will make trying to clean their cage or handle their offspring a complete hell. Good luck!

 

[PikaBun]

Wow, really? I work at a pet store and we breed all the rats we sell ourselves and only the odd male or female is one you have to keep an eye on (and those are breeders). I have yet to be bitten by a baby rat (any for sale).

The most evil rodent I'd like to sell as feeders would be hamsters (which we also breed on location). The cuteness is to lure you in to be bitten. And bitten...and bitten. I think my current record it 8 to 3, with bites winning. Even the hoppers bite you. Nastly cute critters.

 

[CaptainJack]

Maybe a small pet store that breeds their rodents have tamer ones, but I am fairly sure that large chain stores don't breed the rodents in the store. And the couple rats that I have bought from one were as wild as you could imagine.

 

[Flagg]

I bought my first rats from Petco and Petsmart, and they were quite tame and socialized, though they all had respiratory infections when I got them.

 

[Jessicat]

Flagg, yea I'm talking about just the typical brand of food they supply in the pet store.

Erm. Just to clear up a possible misunderstanding. The cat litter shouldn't be the only substrait..... but lining the bottom of the cage with it then putting whatever bedding you like on top of it sure does help with the smell.

 

[PJ FF]

Last season I had great luck with my mice. I had 2 males and 6 females...... I think. I quit breeding them because...... I have NO clue. Maybe because im an idiot. Any ways, now that I have 2 snakes that are on rat pups, im going to try and breed them.