Hello everyone, I have been breeding rats for a little while to feed my snakes of course. Last night I had a new mom have a litter and she does not seem to be taking care of the babies. She did not eat the placenta off any of them and there are no milk bands, no nest built, they are just scattered in substrate and she does not seem interested in nursing them. I have put older moms in to see if they would help but they do not want anything to do with them either.
Is this just something I cannot avoid and just happens sometimes or is there something I could have done to avoid such a situation? Should I try breeding the mom again?
@stewart_reptiles I know youve bred a lot of rats in your time, any advice?
It’s always a tricky situation if you do not have multiple females giving birth at the same time, if you do you can divide the babies and have other females foster them, if you don’t you are out of luck.
Females are either good moms or bad moms usually it’s rare to have a bad ones. It’s probably because it’s her first litter I would give her one more chance and if it happen again I would retire her.
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ok thank you. I do have her sister thatt should be giving birth any day now so maybe I will try to foster them out if she gives birth soon enough. Thanks for the advice.
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I’ve had that happen when breeding rodents and what I notice is when the mother is under alot of stress when pregnant or giving birth she will sometimes not care for them. It’s rare but does happen like @stewart_reptiles said. It can also be if the babies were messed with too much but there could be alot of factors at play. The advice you have already gotten was spot on. Good luck!
@maxmawler any update here? Im interested to learn how/if you were able to get this corrected.
Thank you for asking. I did not end up getting it corrected unfortunately all of the babies died. I was hoping the sister would give birth and take them in but she did not. I suspect she is pregnant but nothing ever happened. It was kind of sad the trio just ignored the babies until they all passed. I am going to see what happens from here with the mom and the sister. See how they treat their next litters. Hopefully it goes better.
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