I’m curious to hear what people’s experiences are using maternity boxes vs colony breeding for feeders rodents. Maternity box system being where the female is pulled and set up in her own cage to have a litter and the colony system being where you have a small group that lives together 100℅ of the time.
I’ve done both and my data shows the maternity box method produces more rodents more consistently.
I keep mine in colonies, my female rats consistently have 18-22 per litter and only have about 1-2 losses per month with over 60 breeding female rats. I have tried to put a few in the maternity boxes and found that it takes too much time and then after I return the female to the colony, she fights with the other females. It my opinion, it was way to much work to separate each female.
I’ve tried it both ways and found that either style works well as long as the females get along with each other. If they don’t get along you’re going to have problems whether you are keeping them together to raise babies or putting them back together after they give birth. I like to holdback 2-3 females at a time, raise them up together, and keep them together for breeding.
If you want to add another female into an established group (because sometimes fertility and health issues happen) it’s best to do it with a freshly cleaned cage and a male rat. The male should keep all the females in check long enough for the girls to get to know each other. Don’t ever put a new female in with females who are pregnant or nursing, as they will attack any rat that smells different to protect their litter, or soon-to-be litter.
As long as the girls get along, I don’t notice any major differences in loss of babies, whether they are separated into birthing tubs or not. But if they are fighting separation may be necessary to save the babies and prevent injury/further injury to the mother. For that reason, I’m currently using maternity tubs for all my rats. Some of them have done well in communal birthing tubs in the past, but some don’t and I don’t want to chance higher losses while I have BP eggs in the incubator. Gonna need all those pinkies and fuzzies.
I came to this same conclusion
Separate mothers. Too often I’ve seen that if I’ve had one litter one week, and another in the same tub a few days or weeks later, not very many of the new pinks survive because they’re all in one nest and the bigger babies are pushing them down to the bottom.
Great topic. I just got two racks and im figuring things out. In gonna try maternity boxes first and go from there. Whats are your ratio male to female?
For rats all my females go in a individual maternity tub when pregnant than it’s communal nursing when the pup are 5 days or older. (I rotate females not males for breeding)
I allows me to track production per each specific female knowing that females are retired when production drop below 10. It also prevent females from fighting over babies which can injure them severely leading to death.
Also not a fan of back to back breeding.
Ultimately I produce what I need each year with minimum loss and that’s all that matter to me, like everything else you have to find what works for you and your animals.
You should not need to separate them. They are colony rodents. If your females are good mothers they will help to raise all the babies together. If you have a female that isn’t nursing or is killing babies I would cull or feed her off immediately.
I’m comming across a good bit of expierence and info that says it benefits the female by letting her feel secure and nest with her babies in a smaller area. And some that say after the first few days you can throw them back together and let them do thier thing as a group if you want. Also it would be an easier way to monitor individual litters and first time mothers.
I put all the nursing females and babies in one tub. When your breeding a large number it would take an incredible amount of space to give them there own tub. Up to 6 females nursing in one tub.
In my personal experience, separating pregnant females gave me the best results. Overall production was better, not by a whole bunch compared to harem breeding and leaving them all in there together but definitely better. With ASF’s, you can’t do this but with rats separating then reintroducing was not an issue at all. All the rodent breeders that I would go to for bulk said the same. They’d separate the pregnant females, let them nurse until the litter was weaned then put them back in the group. For me, it was easier to monitor which females weren’t “up to par.” Good luck whatever route you take!
There’s a few good points in this post that I think might help you out too!
Maternity boxes vs colony breeding
I don’t know where but one person said they seperate thier ASF they have the babies they raise up then they put the mother in an all female tub and same with the males. He said after a break he makes new colonies of 1.2 and in his words they usually have no problem, he said they’ll scuffle sometimes but rarely fight. I thought that was interesting.
I’m gonna start with 3 or 4 females and see where I want to go from there. I’m not sold on the maternity bin just because of space but if it’s something beneficial. I thought about doing it. But even spaced out births between bins I would need a ton of maternity bins.
I keep my in breeding groups of 1.4 in lab cages. I have a separate maternity/feeder rack. Once a female gives birth I move her to the maternity rack. I keep mothers with similar size young together. I will put up to 6 mothers in one tub together. So the mothers might not necessarily be from the same breeding group. Once the young are weaned I pull the mothers and out and put them into whichever breeding group doesn’t have four females. Every ball python breeding season I replace my breeders out slowly. And add a few new rats from other breeders or from pet stores to keep my blood lines fresh. This has always worked for me. I always have way to many rats lol. I try to have at least one rat per snake. So if I have 60 snakes I will have at least 60 adult female rats. And I don’t do asf anymore those guys are crazy lol.
I keep 3 females together and rotate males. So its not a huge colony but its not just one mom. They share babies and if one female has a large litter they can split up babies. The way I rotate all moms have litters about the same age so I don’t see issues like larger pups pushing smaller babies away from nursing. Males are in for 2 weeks and then get rotated out. Moms have babies and once all babies are weaned the moms get a 2 week break before males go back in again. We’ve had this system for about 2 years and are happy with it.
I’m extremely back and forth on rat setup. I’m trying to budget and can’t decide tubs and if I’m going to do individual maternity bins or not. I honestly might build a small individual birth rack and then move them back together to raise up. Not have them raise the litter on thier own. Mainly for monitoring, @stewart_reptiles touched on this from the split thread. I would only need enough singles for each tub that’s birthing that week. I’m going to start with a single breeding tub and work up gradually filling racks. and Like @saleengrinch said if I have 60 snakes I’ll want to have rat per but I’ll never have 60 birthing the same week at the most 20. That’s not too bad on individual tubs but I’m not even near those numbers yet. I don’t think it’s so much for the birthing rat as it is for me though.
I was first breeding rats when I was 16, stopped for a few years and I’m about to start up again. I’ve never had a large scale production, and I also never had any problems leaving my males in with my females.
I always kept one male with one or two females, as long as they are well fed and have enough room they are fine.