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Moms in labor now. Not sure when she started, I hadn't checked her since around 10AM. She's only had two so far, so she'd got a long way to go. This was her this morning:  Aaaand these were taken about 5 mins ago:    I'm gonna leave her alone for now to do her thing; this is her first litter so I don't want to get in her face too much. I'll count the babies and check sexes tonight once she's done, and I'll get some better pictures then. Right now I'm mixing up some Ensure, baby cereal, fish oil, and chicken baby food to give her a boost once she's through.  edit: aaaaaa 3 more popped out while i was posting this, theyre all big and fat and look great Supercondescending fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Jul 28, 2010 |
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Jul 28, 2010 20:05
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Ok i lied here are some more       I wanted to get video too but my camera died and needs to charge now 
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Jul 28, 2010 20:29
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daggerdragon posted:God, they're so ugly they're cute 13 total.  Pics incoming as soon as photobucket stop being retarded
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Jul 29, 2010 01:08
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Okay, got pics. Mom is haggard and skinny but she's eating well and all the babies have milk bands. She's being an awesome mom for her first litter, the labor was really easy for her and none of the babies are particularly bruised or bitten. I'll probably definitely keep her around for a few more litters, I'm very impressed with her for a first time mom. There are 7 females and 6 males, so a pretty even split. I want to keep a few females for breeding, so that's nice. PICS:            The girls:    The far less cooperative boys:    Girls on left, boys on right:  I'll try to get pictures every couple of days as they grow. I'll be handling/interacting with this litter a lot more than future litters: since I will be keeping a couple, I want these guys to be relatively friendly.
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Jul 29, 2010 01:32
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CompactFanny posted:Eight weeks is practically adulthood. Anything in the OP is fine except Oxbow Regal Rat which for some reason is 4 months+, I really am not sure why. Someone tell me! I have never heard this. I'd be interested in knowing why, too.
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Jul 30, 2010 05:01
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sushisleeper posted:I found my girl scuttering around in the bathroom... thank god. but now my neutered boy is going to town on her. Is this just a dominance thing or should I be worried? They made rat love about 20 times in the past hour. The probably just smells weird, my dogs do the same thing to each other when I bathe them or put Frontline on them.  Slidje posted:
The male is neutered.
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Jul 31, 2010 17:36
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sushisleeper posted:Haha, absolutely not. No way in hell do I want a 100 baby rat army in my tiny apartment. The male is neutered as stated above and he has only been so for about a month. I put them together about 2 weeks after his surgery to make sure that he wasn't fertile and the boy bits were all healed up. It's not dominance. Neutering doesn't completely eliminate interest in mating (in any species.) It does reduce hormone levels and it will reduce desire to mate to some extent, but he doesn't know he doesn't have balls anymore and it probably still feels good. If she's cool with it and isn't freaking out about it, it's no biggie.
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Jul 31, 2010 22:08
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Slidje posted:Yes I read that but I still didn't understand whats going on In my experience with mixed sex groups, there is VERY little dominance behavior between the sexes- it seems to primarily play out with both sexes having separate hierarchies. Rats also rely more on forced grooming, controlling access to food, marking, and flipping each other over than they do on humping as a dominance behavior. I *have* seen it but rarely, and even more rarely between the sexes. I've seen very little humping behavior between males/females (and even between females; who will hump each other to relieve stress while in heat) that wasn't mating related. If dominance humping occurs it seems to be primarily between males and even then I haven't seen it often. There are exceptions of course, but that's been my overall experience. Supercondescending fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Aug 1, 2010 |
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Aug 1, 2010 02:06
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dog days are over posted:
Hope they've got mega-colon free lines, those dominant blazes are horrifying.
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Aug 8, 2010 04:19
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dog days are over posted:What do you mean? Dominant blazing (which those roan babies have) is genetically linked to megacolon which is fatal. Affected rats will develop early onset around weaning, and late onset as late as 6 months-1 year of age. Because of this certain high-white markings are very risky to work with as there are only a handful of lines that are megacolon free (and even then it's just a matter of it not showing up yet.) Now, there are a couple of different genes that cause roaning in rats- the UK gene does not seem to carry the risk of megacolon, but most American roans come from piebald high-white genes, which DO cause mega-colon. If she's working with UK roans they're probably fine, but most American breeders promptly cross UK roans with American roans and other at-risk high whites the second they import them, thus undoing the whole "not at risk" thing. (I am desperately trying to force myself not to go into another rant over breeding for color aaa  )Basically, just ask her about occurrences of mega colon in her high-white lines. If she sperges at you about it, cool. If she doesn't know what you're talking about, run.
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Aug 8, 2010 19:30
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rear end Crackers! posted:Why are you posting without including pictures of adorable baby rats? I have indeed been slacking, I'll try to get some today.
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Aug 9, 2010 18:04
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BABY RATS They'll be 14 days old tomorrow, which means we should see eyes start peeking open tomorrow. One died a day or two after they were born (a PEW male,) I didn't see anything wrong with him and he died with a full milk band so I think he just smothered. Other than that they've done great. Sorry the pictures are total crap, I couldn't get good lighting today. There are 6 PEWs, 1 Agouti Berk, 3 Black Berks, and 2 Black Variberks. I'm keeping the Agouti and one of the variberks. The two keepers, both female:        The whole pile:       Here's Dad  Aaaand bonus pics of Frankie + Magic and Judge:         He knows live rats are not food, only ones that don't move anymore, so he's never quite sure what to do when they're out playing. :iamafag:
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Aug 10, 2010 19:56
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So, I'm weaning this litter early for their mom's sake. She's done such an awesome job with them and pays so much attention to them that they're huge for their age and are already out of the nest and almost exclusively eating solids except when they all decide to mob her and pin her down to nurse. Ideally they'd nurse for another week at least, but they're all so huge and taking so much out of her that no matter how much she eats she simply can't keep up with them and they're really, really taking a toll on her. I'm putting her in her own cage for a while to recover; and in a week or two her two daughters that I'm keeping will join her. The babies are getting access to adult food and supplemented with a KMR/baby cereal mixture. I'll probably put the mom in to nurse them and spend some time with them once or twice a day, because they are VERY young to wean and I wouldn't do it if I wasn't concerned about how much weight the mother has lost. She just really needs a break. I've had to do this a few times before, sometimes babies just grow really fast and moms can't keep up. Anyway, here's some pics of them from today:      
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Aug 16, 2010 19:28
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lol welp here is a bunch of spoilered text killerwhat posted:
They're euthanized at different ages depending on what people need them for. (Different sized reptiles need different sized rodents etc.) My dogs eat raw and I try to include as much whole prey as possible so these are dog food, and will be done at 6-8 weeks. I want them slightly larger than large adult mice, for a variety of reasons- one being that that's pretty much the perfect size for my flat-faced Boston to eat with little difficulty, another being that after maturity males get really musky and the dogs don't like them, and another being space issues. Also, my method of euthanasia is risky and less humane on larger rats. dog days are over posted:Sorry to ask this, I'm just genuinely curious.. put in spoiler tags since it seems polite, it's about feeder rats. Most large feeder rodent producers use CO2 chambers, and I've made homemade CO2 chambers in the past, but now I use cervical dislocation and it's very quick and humane and over instantly.
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Aug 16, 2010 22:24
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Haha, looking over the babies today, looks like 2 of them may molt out to be siamese. VERY RARE AND THE FRIENDLIEST BREED OF RAT GUYZ
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Aug 17, 2010 22:57
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They are absolutely lovely. As much as I bitch about breeding for color, a mega-colon free black-eyed-white is secretly my dream rat and something I've never had, so I do love safe high whites. Good luck with them.
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Aug 18, 2010 01:03
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Robot Girlfriend posted:No offense, but it seems really awful to post pictures of your adorable baby rats then talk about how you kill them. I know it was spoilered text but still. It makes me sad to see how cute they are and know they're going to be eaten. Uh I just answered questions people asked, I didn't post pictures of dead rats. I am specifically raising my own rats because I don't like the way large suppliers produce them. I don't have the means to raise all of my dog's food myself, but this is one very large part of their diet (probably 3/4 of the whole prey that they get are rats) I CAN control the production of and raising rats so that they get a decent diet that isn't comprised of lovely blocks (therefore passing said lovely diet onto my dogs when they eat them) aren't housed in poorly ventilated overcrowded bins, bred and rebred so that they're constantly pregnant until they die, never handled, never given anything to play with, never given proper nesting material- is important to me. I love rats, I've had them my entire life and there was a time when I thought the concept of ~omg feeders~ was repulsive, and I spent years breeding ~responsibly~ and doing rescue so I get the aversion to seeing cute baby pictures when you know they're going to end up food, but by doing this I'm ensuring that the food my dogs get had a good, happy life, and a humane death. I think it would be very safe to say that my feeder rats have better lives than most pet rats in the world. This is how feeder rodents are commercialy raised and housed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UndW7_Gc_kM I would rather not contribute to this if I can help it. 
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Aug 18, 2010 15:45
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Shadow0 posted:Well, like the above person, the rat's mother was raised for food, but it gave birth and my friend was trying to get rid of them, so I took one since I had a place for him. I suppose I'll see if I can get him/her (I just look underneath and I should be able to tell, right? Haven't tried) a buddy. It's not much more work to take care of two, right? 2 rats are definitely no more work than one. Just make absolutely sure it's the same sex as your current one.
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Aug 19, 2010 00:30
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Baby shampoo is fine; but I would avoid bathing rats unless they got into something gross. Shampoo strips their coats of oils and dries them out and can make them itchy/flaky. Baths should never bee a regular thing for them.
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Aug 26, 2010 07:37
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Yeah, porphyrin doesn't turn the eye itself red. Could be be the start of a retrobulbar abscess. (Pics in the Figures section of this page, though I'll warn that they're pretty  pics of infected rat eyes: http://ratguide.com/health/integumentary_skin/abscess.php )Definitely vet ASAP.
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Sep 2, 2010 13:34
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CompactFanny posted:It pretty much comes with the territory, imo. I can't decide if a four year old rat would be really cool, or if it would be like having a 110 year old grandma. She just isn't fun any more now that she can't walk, eat solids, poop in the toilet or remember your name. One of mine that made it to a couple of days shy of her 4th Bday was totally spry and with-it mentally up until the day she died. She shrunk a bit, and lost some weight, but she still tore around her cage and beat up the younger girls and stole their food and was an absolute terror. One day I just found her lying in a puddle of drool, unconscious but with her eyes open, and she died in my lap about 10 minutes later. Most of them do descend into a slow and miserable spiral of old age, but the ones that don't are cool as heck.
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Sep 15, 2010 13:57
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Rats don't make crying sounds, she's probably sick. Vet.
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Sep 16, 2010 14:42
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RAT LOAF I've got a 1.5 week old litter of 12 right now, and they're doing good. Need to get pics. Also today Petsmart had some fat hairless dumbo someone brought in for adoption and I kinda want him. On the one hand, I really don't NEED more rats, I've got my 2 pet boys and a handful of feeders and that's plenty, on the other, I haven't had a hairless in years and he was nice. Plus, Judge is nearly a year older than Magic and will almost certainly die before him, so it'd be nice to have a third so Magic won't be alone when that happens. I dunno, I'll think about it.
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Sep 21, 2010 23:55
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CompactFanny posted:I found Noel dead last week, on the same day my boyfriend's mom backed over their deaf outdoor cat. Noel was about 25 or 26 months old. Goodbye, froglegs. Ughhh that sucks, RIP lil buddy.  So, I went back to Petsmart today to see if they still had the lil nekkid dude, and they did, so I got him. Whoever had him must have handled him a good bit, he's really floppy and friendly and nice. I'll try to take some pics tomorrow.
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Sep 23, 2010 02:57
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Ruptured tumors are some of the worst things. They're one of the reasons I decided to learn to do home euthanasia because they tend to rupture at the worst loving times and having to wait hours for the vet to open so they don't have to suffer anymore is awful.
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Oct 6, 2010 00:18
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Dupree9973 posted:
It really isn't a big deal if you have to "settle" for pet store rats. The only difference between pet store rats and rats from a breeder is *usually* socialization. That's a big difference, but not one worth driving across several states or the country for. Dr. Spaceman posted:I need some help! My rats are about 9 months old, neutered, and I adopted them two weeks ago. One is a sweetheart but the other is really nervous and bites HARD. Rats that bite often and hard are usually aggressive rather than truly fearful, especially in males. Does he bite even when he's out of his cage, or just when he's in it? If it's just when he's in it, it may be territorial aggression and that can be fixed to an extent, but if he bites at random, that may never really stop. If that's the case, I would try forced socialization (put him in a hoody pocket or on your shoulder and carry him around with you for an hour or so twice a day) and see if it helps, but in my experience, males who bite hard enough to draw blood at random kind of never stop completely. If it's only when he's caged, make sure that when he bites you, never draw your hand away, flinch, or react in any way even if you're gushing blood and do NOT remove your hand from the cage, as that will just reinforce to him that biting works and he should do it. Leave your hand there, keep touching his stuff, keep messing with things, until he stops coming back to bite you. Easier said than done, but working with chronic biters sucks and that's part of it. Good luck, I don't know a ton of people who have had success getting chronic biters to stop 100%, but with a lot of work you can reduce the frequency of bites.
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Oct 16, 2010 15:19
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squidtarts posted:All three of our rats are pet store rats, and we went ahead with getting them after hearing everyone talk about what a dumb idea it is, because there are no breeders remotely in our area. All three of our girls are friendly, smart, and able to free range without getting into too much trouble. We took them all to the vet for checkups and our vet was amazed at how great their respiratory health is. Maybe they'll end up being tumor machines in their older age, since you don't get a health history guarantee with pet store rats the way you do with breeder rats (supposedly), but in the meantime I'm glad that we rescued the three of them from their tiny Pet Smart bins. Our hairless was actually there for a month after we got the first two, and we felt so horrible about her still being there that we scooped her up too. We would have gladly taken rats from an actual rescue as well, but there weren't any of those in the area either. Between breeding, rescuing, and just owning rats in general I've had literally thousands from every background and situation imaginable pass through my hands, and yeah, there really is marginal difference in the health of pet store rats vs. rats from a breeder. That's a very sad and stark thing and it shouldn't be that way, but it is. Temperament is more of a crap shoot but if you look around you can still find very friendly pet store rats- in fact, I'd say I've seen more aggression and temperament issues in show lines than I have from pet store/rescue rats combined. Definitely more cancer, too.
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Oct 16, 2010 15:55
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Hat hammocks are a great idea, I may have to try that.
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Oct 23, 2010 22:20
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Part of Everything posted:So I adopted a 1 year old female rat from the humane society last weekend, a new companion for my current rattie (her sister died last week of heart failure). I never thought I'd have the opportunity to say "my new rat may be a hermaphrodite". I once had a male pet store rat with nipples. He always stayed the size of a smallish female, had soft female fur (no course guard hairs, or buck grease, or anything) and he seemed to go into heat every few days at which point all the other males would go nuts and be all over him. He definitely had male genitalia, giant rat balls and all. He lived a normal lifespan and when he died I opened him up and he had a single weird, malformed uterine horn and one really weird looking ovary. It was cooooooool.
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Oct 26, 2010 17:41
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Smee posted:
Dear lurkers: For the love of god please do not do this
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Oct 27, 2010 19:15
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ElectricSquire posted:
Nope. I made this assumption once years ago and it resulted in a 3.5 year old female magically popping out 3 babies. She never showed any signs of pregnancy, and she was very, very lucky not to have any complications at her age. The babies were all very small, and she didn't produce much milk so they had to have supplemental feedings until they were weaned and it was a HUGE pain in the butt. Luckily, this was when I was breeding and she was a rat I'd bred myself and she'd had a litter when she was younger. If she'd never been bred, fatal complications would have been almost certain. Don't risk it.
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Oct 28, 2010 16:47
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Deadly Chlorine posted:My rats were about 3 when that happened, I think. He bit my finger and drew blood, but he mellowed down really quickly and everything was back to normal, until a week later when he suddenly killed his brother. Are you positive he actually killed him? A lot of times when rats pass on their own, cage mates will start consuming the bodies after a few hours. Dead things attract predators and in the wild they'd remove the body or at least stay away from it, but in captivity they often attempt to dispose of it the only way they're able to. I've seen a lot of cases where people think one rat killed and ate another, when in reality the rat just died suddenly and by the time they got home from work/school it was partially eaten. Extreme aggression in rats is very much genetic. Extreme genetic aggression in adult males is something common in A LOT of show/pet breeder lines and it's something to look out for when getting rats from a breeder- ALWAYS ask about the temperaments of adult males.(Ideally you'd want to see/handle them to avoid the breeder lying their asses off about their temperaments, which they often do, but with a lot of ratteries being closed ratteries that's often not an option.) As common as genetic aggression in males is, killing cagemates is still a very extreme thing and I think I've seen a rat blatantly, verifiably, and intentionally kill another rat only once and it was actually a batshit insane rescue female. All the other cases were just mistaken instances of a cagemate consuming an already dead body.
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Nov 13, 2010 16:52
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I'm sure squirrels would appreciate it as a nice boost to their winter diets maybe
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Nov 21, 2010 00:04
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Erotic Thomas posted:Hello! I'm in the middle of this and I was wondering if there's a quick way to tell if a pregnant rat has given birth yet. I've been listening for squeaking (babies are noisy!) and looking for bloody bedding, but if there any other indicators that are obvious at a glance, that would make things easier. Check to see if she's been nursing. The area around her nipples will be wet if she is. If it's at all possible, separate the babies and mother from the other rats. Rats prefer to give birth alone because other females will attempt to steal and nurse their babies (it's a hierarchy thing, they'll still try even if they can't feed them) and if she's in with males, she'll be *immediately* reimpregnated otherwise. Being around other rats while nursing a litter is incredibly stressful and it's one of the only things I've seen lead to litter abandonment and cannibalism in rats. You can absolutely move the moms and/or their babies. Rats are very resiliant, protective mothers and won't cannibalize at the drop of a hat like some other rodents will. In fact, you *should* be handling the babies if at all possible the second they're born, as it will hugely contribute to socialization later on. If you have multiple rats giving birth in a cage at the same time, you'll probably find that the babies have all been dumped in one big pile that the mothers are fighting over, resulting in a lot of babies not being fed enough, if at all. Just divide all of the babies of roughly the same age among the mothers who are nursing when you separate them. They won't notice that they're not necessarily their actual offspring and in a situation like this there's no real way to tell.
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Nov 23, 2010 16:57
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Erotic Thomas posted:You mentioned females trying to steal babies, though. That being the case, should one not immediately assume that the female with the babies is the mother? One case in particular that I'm thinking of is a female and her litter was removed from a female general population cage, but the vet on site said the assumed mother still looked pregnant. Yep. Any females around will claim any babies they see regardless of who they actually belong to. They'll fight over them and constantly move them around and constantly attempt to steal them from each other and the result will be a big ol' pile (or a few slightly smaller piles) of babies who aren't being properly fed and a bunch of stressed, crazy moms (or wannabe moms) constantly squabbling over them. If the "mom" still looks pregnant (and the babies are under 2-2.5 weeks old) then she probably is, and those are probably not her babies. If they're older than that; it could be a previous litter she's still nursing while already pregnant with the next. 
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Nov 24, 2010 06:19
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Slidje posted:Thats what I do. I wont eat anything without saving the rats something. I get stared at when I wrap up bones in a tissue to take home. This is how I feed my rats too. I rarely even make grain mixes anymore and 90% of what they eat is what I eat. If I happen to not have anything to give them for whatever reason I'll just cook some oatmeal or toss them some veggies. I only resort to grain mixes if I happen to have a large number of rats for some reason. That's how I've done it for years and mine do great.
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Nov 28, 2010 00:12
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Big Bug Hug posted:
Yeah, that's a fawn.
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Nov 28, 2010 07:50
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Yeah. Again, that's just a fawn with some darker ticking. Basically, a poor fawn. Definitely ruby eyes. He looks somewhere between fawn and cinnamon because he does have some excessive darker ticking- making him just a very poor fawn. Peace Fire posted:I actually have a little lady who's confusing me right now. Until she opened her eyes I was SO sure she was Fawn. Then BAM! Black eyes (totally appeared red or ruby before they opened!). I was so excited, too. Fawn is my favorite color! But she's still beautiful! Just not Fawn. Post pics. I'm interested in how a baby who formerly appeared to have red or ruby eyes could magically have dark eyes after opening, it's rarely an ambiguous thing. If there was any ambiguity, it's most likely she's a very dark ruby. Post pics and I can tell you what she is.
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Nov 28, 2010 08:07
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Peace Fire posted:Well I'm pretty sure at this point that she's Cinnamon Pearl, though genetically there is no Pearl that we know of (and we can trace back about 4 generations on both sides for this line). Mom's an agouti and Dad's a mink so originally I believed this litter to be a mink, agouti, blue and PED carrying litter. Possible colors would be mink, lilac, agouti, cinnamon, champagne, fawn and silver fawn, given the pedigree behind it. We figured somewhere along the line Pearl was thrown in and not documented. Hmm. I guess the determiner will be her eye color- if her eyes are *truly* black, she could be a cinnamon pearl, but if they're ruby (I really, really suspect they are from the first pic) she's a cinnamon. I have a feeling she's a cinnamon as based on the first pic, I don't think she has black eyes. If you're really not sure, take a pic of her eyes with the flash on- if they flash red they're ruby, if not, they're black, and that will be the determiner. quote:But while we're playing the guessing game, any ideas on this guy (from the same litter): He does look pearl, but he's got that darker undercoat- maybe he's lynx? What color are his eyes? Lynx rats have very dark ruby eyes, so determining eye color is very important there again. He's interesting, because the yellowish/reddish tone to him does make me want to say pearl, but the undercoat is throwing me off. Since pearls always have black eyes and lynx always have dark ruby eyes I'd let that be the determiner. Again, you caan use a camera flash to solve that one. 
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Nov 28, 2010 09:11
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 11:57 |
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I have no patience for medicating rats. I scruff a rat, stick the syringe behind their teeth, squirt it in, and continue scruffing them until they inevitably swallow. Dicking around mixing it with stuff and trying to get them to politely eat it is so much  in comparison.
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Dec 2, 2010 05:11
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