any rat breeders?

[ginevive]

Care to share advice? I have restarted my rat breeding colony, after becoming discouraged by an aging, nonproducing population. Now I've got some month-olds (three females and a dude) that I will breed when they're ready.
Anyone have any advice on male-to-female ratios or stuff of that nature?

[Kiote9]

2 females to 1 males works ok, I rotate the females through the males cage (only really need 1 male....rats are great breeders), you only need to breed the females for a few months then feed them off. Raise your own next generation. If you keep your rats strong you should get decent size litters and be able to fill most of your need with just a few animals. I believe they breed on a three week cycle. (I used to work in animal research in the reproduction department with rats mice and rabbits.) My girls spend a week with the boy, then go to the female enclosure. I've only fed off a couple of them. All the pinks get eaten right now...that's why I breed, fresh pinks.

[jlconstrictors]

I agree with Kiote9

A good rule of thumb,
“Keep one female rat per snake that you have” :!:

[sputnik]

Personally, I use aquariums for rat breeding. Depending on the size of the aquariums, 20 gallon and larger I will use 1 male with 3 - 5 females.

20 Adult rats can easily produce 100 to 200 pinks in a month is the experience I have had. Sometimes way more!

[diggy415]

I raise my own and to rotate the females in the males cage I wait until one litter is fuzzies before i start to breed another and so on. Im raising up 7 girls now and two males, my expectant mom rat died of complications and ruined my whole plan, now i have to wait until my males grow old enough to breed. My mice are taking off though. I find giving rats a variety of human food works well with the size of litters i get. Then i don't feed human food and it's lower, been doing my own study so i have my ratio of how I feed and what i get from it.

[diablodragon]

I have 29 girls and 4 males. I put the male with the female untill one or more look pregnant but you don't have to. Females go into "heat" every 6 days, so they should become pregnant if you leave the male with the girl for a week. I keep 4 females per bucket, and 5 girls in an old 29 I have. I keep the males in their own bucket when they aren't breeding.

I feed the girls cheese for the first couple of days after a litter is born, it seems to help. Every once in a while they get bread, plain pasta, and veggie scraps.

These are my buckets;
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v203/diablodragon/rattanks001.jpg

The 31 qt. bin costs $3.40 each at walmart, the water bottle cost $1.99, and the screen was $5.00 for a 5 foot roll. I just cut the top out leaving 3 inches around the edge and fasned the screen on with zipties from the inside. They work really well, are cheap, and easy to clean. Each bucket fits 4 females. I use the 52 qt. one for "storage" of the wiened rats.

[TekWarren]

nice setup, that's almost exactly what I do with tubs, but less females per tub, I've had a few instances where multiple females caused two whole litters to be destroyed so I keep them as happy as possible.