Goosemoose Pet Portal

We had a thread before the forum went down where a few brave souls posted their personal stories about breeding.  I'd like to re-create that thread here, so that others may learn.

 

I'll start.

When we first got into rats, and before we found this forum, we decided it would be a good idea to breed our own rats, as the ones we were getting from the petstores always seemed to be sick when we got them (should have been our first clue).  

We thought we had the perfect candidates. Katt was the sweetest thing, and she even purred when we held her.  She never had respiratory problems, so we figured she'd be a good candidate, even though she was a petstore rat.  The male was laid back, and one of the healthiest, so we figured we were doing good.  Katt had a beautiful litter of rittens, and we were thrilled.

We ended up keeping almost all the babies, as we discovered a disturbing lack of homes after we bred.  I'm thankful for that, at least.  We didn't put anyone else through this heartbreak.

As Kat got older, she started to waste away.  No external tumors, she just got skinnier and skinnier.  We gave her all the high calorie foods we could think of, and tried to keep her weight up and keep her happy.  Eventually, she died of cancer that just ate her away.

And then we watched all her kids die of the same thing.  Every one of them wasted away, even the 2 pound boys she'd given us.  It's not something I ever want to experience again.  We lost 11 rats in a 3 month period to this.  And to think, if I'd have just done more research and found more information, I never would have bred.  We had the best of intentions, but that just isn't enough.

I work in a petstore. A lady constantly brings in rats, and claims she "doesn't know how to tell the difference between males and females". She got quite irate when I explained that GENERALLY, the ones with the large balls are the males.

The last lot she brought in included a pregnant [8-week-old] female. I took her home. She was very weak, and so thin aside from her enormous belly.

She had a litter of nine. One was stillborn. She didn't know what to do with the little ones, and scattered them all over the cage, with placentas and sacs often still attached. There was a lot of blood everywhere; all the bedding was soaked in it.

I cleaned the babies up, removed placentas and sacs, and changed the bedding.

Over the remainder of the day, I watched three more of the babies die. I watched it happen, and there was nothing I could do. Every hour or so I'd have to reach into the tank and remove yet another cold body. I had no way of knowing if any of the babies would survive, and even with the mother, it was touch-and-go if she'd pull through. Gee, that would have been a really lovely experience for somebody's kids.

In the end, five survived. They are all very small. The mother, also, survived, but I doubt she will ever grow any bigger than she is now. At six weeks old, after six weeks of advertising, I only have a home for one.

The miracle of birth indeed.

Edited, 12 October 2004: Gryphon died at the age of 1 year and 5 months from myco.
Egan died at the age of 1 year and 6 months, exactly a month after Gryphon, also from problems stemming from myco.

There is also this:

http://www.jotenheim.com/ratrescue.html (http://www.jotenheim.com/ratrescue.html)

If that doesn't discourage people, nothing will.



*Edited by Dearpie to say that this is a dead link.

Ok that last link was just nasty.  Those poor little things.   :sad2:

As I have done rescue work for years I cannot recall how many times I took in litters..with the parents..as people thought it would be so cool for their children to witness the miricle of birth and such only to be left with a dozen rats and no homes for them. Rats do make the best pets in the world...but not all of us should be breeders. It takes so much work and knowledge to do it right.
Marianne

A little over a year ago, I allowed 2 rats in my classroom to have a litter (Eloise and Dexter)  Eloise was a double rex dumbo and Dexter was a blue standard fur dumbo.  I thought I knew enough about where they came from.  They had 9 lovely babies.  Three were hairless and the rest rex.  These ratties have great personalities.

However...........

Dexter and his brother Dewey died young.  Dewey had neurological problems.  The vet wasn't really sure on Dexter.

Claire just died at 16 months - pituitary tumor.

Claire and Daphne developed mammary tumors at around 14 months of age (young) Daphne's will  hopefully be removed next week.

One of the brothers I adopted out died very young.  Unknown reasons.

I love these babies to death, but will never breed my own again.  I'll leave that to people who know more about the health and backgrounds of their babies.

I never meant for Zylle to be pregnant, but an idiot co-worker of mine put her in the feeder bin and Voila!  Fifteen little squeakers.  I am keeping three, and three more have found a home with a WONDERFUL person a few hours away.  That accounts for the girls, but I have had no luck whatsoever placing the nine boys.  Next week they are going back to my workplace if I don't find homes for them.  I can at least guarantee that they don't go as feeders but I can't screen the potential owners... *sigh*

No health problems have developed yet in either Zylle or the litter, but I'm making my emergency vet fund bigger because I'm fully expecting them. :(

i got my first rat when i was 12 and the pet store owner said it was definitly a male...little did i know. then about 3 months later i got another male for "him" and i noticed a big difference if you know what i mean then 2 months later she gave birth to 11 black hooded babies...i had to give 8 of them to ACC and it was heart breaking and 2 others were givin to a friend who unfortunalty couldnt keep them. but it was terrible because i didnt know enough and just made alot of stress because i had to worry if they were going to get good homes or not...sigh...regrets....

After discussion with lots of experienced folks, I know now that what I've done was wrong, but here's my experience:

Back in October, I began my Science Research class. I thought it would be neat to breed rats to observe and determine genetics. I'd been keeping mice for years, so rats wouldn't be much different, right?

I got my three rats from the local petstore, who i later found out gets their animals from a mill.

My parents said I could keep them in my room until the end of the school year, and I'd have to find homes for them all.

I didn't think it was a problem, and asked around to all of my friends, and came up with about 10 homes.

I didn't do much research before allowing the female to breed with the males, and the research I had was from a bad source. ALWAYS, ALWAYS use more than one source... I ended up with 5 pretty babies, whom I handled as often as I could, but I didn't seperate them soon enough, and both females ended up pregnant when they were only about 8 weeks old.

I seperated them, but by then it was too late, the damage was done.

I had two girls pregnant much too young to be healthy, and my parents flipped when they had their litters and I ended up with 16 babies, 24 rats total.

I had overcrowded cages for a while, and it was all I could do to keep them all fed.

Both moms started biting every time I would get near them, and they could not be handled. The two friendly rats seemed to turn feral. It was difficult to handle the babies, but I did the best I could. To this day, they still nip, and it's going to take a LOT of effort to get them used to people again.

Once they were weaned, I found homes for many of the babes, and several adults, but not all. It took months to get down to 7.

Every single one of the homes I had lined up in the fall fell through. I had to start from scratch to find the homes I did, and I thank everyone out there who took one or more of my kids.

My parents don't want them in the house, have threatened to let them go, all kinds of things.

It's been REALLY hard, all because I didn't do my research. If I had known how hard it was to care for this many animals, i would NEVER have bred them.

Luckily, my parents are letting me keep two females, so I only have 5 to find homes for...

All I can say is that I wish I had done my research. I really do. I learned my lesson... and I will never jump full force into something like this..

And I'm very thankful to have found this board and all of these people who have helped me get through this whole mess!

I have never wanted to breed, as much as I love rats, I figured I didn't know enough, there was too much risk.
Seeing and reading the stories, it reaffirms my belief that it is not right for me, thank you everyone for sharing your sad stories.
Lets leave it to the experts!

I got 2 dumbo females and a dumbo male from a breeder about 6  and a half hours away.  That was the closest I could find any.   I decided I would breed them so I would have some after they originals got old, plus they were DUMBO and should be easy to give away.    One female turned out already pregnant and only had a few standard ear babies.  I kept 2 and the rest died.  The other female had several dumbo babies.  I couldn't give away any near by.  I ended up driving to Florida (10 and a half hrs away) to give away some (I think I gave away 3 or 4) and I drove to Lexington (4 and a half hours away) to give away (4 I think).  One of the females I gave away ended up having to get spayed due to medical problems (not sure what they were), luckily the person I gave her to was able to get it done and loved her dearly.  I haven't heard anything about the boys so I don't know their health.  I ended up with 3 left over.  One female and 2 males.  Both males got out one day and died the female is 2 this month and has had a mammay tumor removed about a month ago.  The father died at 2 years and a month.  The mom is still alive, she is 2 years and 4 months.  I was just sure it would be easy to place dumbos because every where I looked online someone wanted one.  All the homes I had lined up before they were weaned fell through.  I didn't give one single rat away near by.  While I am glad I have Rattilda (the female dumbo I kept) I will never breed again even if the rats come from a breeder.  

Belinda

I did a lot of research and talked to a lot of breeders before I started breeding last October.   I picked a big gorgeous doe (RTR Tamara) and one of my favorite bucks (OSED Logan).  It was going to be the perfect litter.  I had the genetics all worked out and quite a few homes lined up.

Well, things didn't turn out the way I had planned.  Tamara gave birth to 4 babies, then her labor stopped.  She continued to bleed, so I brought her and the babies to the emergency vets.  They gave her two shots of oxytocin to start labor, but it didn't help.  She started to go shocky, so she needed a C-section.  She had another 8 babies in her and we were able to revive 4 of them.  Tamara wasn't able to take care of them, so I hand fed them, kept them warm and they each got a shot of sub-Q fluids.  The next day I brought them to a foster mom, where one by one they died.  They just wouldn't nurse.  Their foster mom kept them warm and tried to take care of them, they were just too weak.  Plus the vet mentioned that the doe didn't have colostrum in her milk anymore, so even if they didn nurse, they weren't getting all that they needed.

Tamara survived her ordeal really well.  She's gotten kind of fat, but she's healthy and  you can hardly see the scar on her belly.  She's as sweet as ever.  

I felt very guilty for a very long time about putting my girl through this, and for the loss of the babies.  Not to mention the $540 hole in my pocketbook.  But by talking to others, I realized that what happened was quite rare, and that there wasn't anything different I could have done.  There are stories of 'breeders' letting their does die rather than pay the costs of sugery.

I bred again in February.  Leda had two healthy babies and was a great mother.  Her sister had a single still born.  Again, that was hard, but Io got over the birth very quickly and was back to her old self in a couple of hours.  My third litter is nine big fat pups with a great mother.

Breeding isn't for everyone.  It can be so heartbreaking, not to mention expensive.  And you have to have the room and time for every single pup you have, just in case adoptions fall through.  But looking at my babies really makes it seem all worth while.  I just dread having to let most of them go to new homes.  I haven't had to face that yet.

Okay...my turn...

I had a friend in college who's rat had babies. The mama was from a pet store, and I'm not sure where the dad came from. Probably the same place. There was this runt that I fell in love with. She was so cute, but EVERYONE wanted her. So I offered my friend $20. Of course she said yes, and after getting the okay from my husband, Robert, I got him.

I mentioned to Wolfchan that I was getting this runt and that I was thinking about getting her a friend. At the time she was working at Evil Petco and she was able to give me the "nappy" (read: rex) looking rat for free.
Robert named them Yin and Yang. (The runt was very dark, and the other was white.)

Then, due to unfortunate circumstances Kathy wasn't able to keep Dexter anymore, and so I took him in, and bought Yin's brother, Cid as a buddy for Dexter.

All was seemingly well until one day, I picked my little girlie runt Yang, only to discover she was a he! His testicles dropped at eight(8) weeks instead of the standard four(4). I didn't separate them soon enough because I thought that Yin would beat him up if he tried anything, and a friend mentioned that he should be sterile. This of course was foolish on my part.

Yin had eleven(11) babies. Six (6) girls and five (5) boys. Seven(7) of them went to my family while I kept the rest. Things seemed fine for a while until slowly but surely the tragedies started to happen.

-Cid(m) at 6 months old had a tumor removed and was always getting respiratory flare ups. Later he developed a tumor inside his bladder that was inoperable. It made him lose all mobility in his hind legs and often he would urinate blood along with a grey and dark grey matter that smelled. He died at 11 months old.

-Yokiko(m) died of myco (possibly pneumonia) at 6 months.
-Katra(m) died of myco at 12 months.
-Toki(f) died of a pituitary tumor at 19 months.
-Jumper(f) had a tumor the size of two golf balls. She died of severe heart disease at 22 months.
-Squeaker(f) had a tumor the size of 1.5 golf balls. She died of severe heart disease at 23 months.
-Sniffles(m) had diebetes, an eye that hemorraged, and died of a possible heart attack (uncertain) at 23 months.
-Junior(m) had melanoma, a slight arythmia, and a tumor removed from his throat. It came back fast and he died at 23 months.
-Yang(m) had chronic bumblefoot and heart disease. He died at 26 months.

-Yin(f) has a tumor literally the size of another adult rat, another tumor above her bladder, and heart disease.
-Washu(f) had a tumor removed. She now has another as well as cataracts and possible heart disease or sleep apnea.
-Smoothie(m) has chronic bumblefoot.
-Ashi'taka(f) has had 6 tumors removed. Not all were mammary.
and last but not least;
-Ogre has had 2 tumors removed.

Some have had problems with abcesses, and ALL have had respiratory infections off and on all their lives.

Every single one had (or have) wonderful personalities and made great pets. After experiencing this heart break, which isn't over yet, anyone who isn't a knowledgeable and reputable breeder should NOT be breeding. I firmly believe that all rats deserve top knotch genes not the crappy ones that are perpetuated by mills, backyard breeders, and people who want "cute babies" and see the "miracle of life."

My poor babies did not deserve what they got. They deserved better...

I don't have any personal breeding stories, but take a look at some of the pics of rats posted on this forum that are from real, dedicated breeders. Lonestar, for example. They are BEAUTIFUL rats. Not that petstore rats arent sweet and cute too, but the quality of animals that CAN be produced becomes apparent when real attention to breeding is done. Great idea for a link mods.

Oh, such a HAPPY post.  :(

Well, Me being the lovely unexperienced moron that I was just 6 months ago, I didn't give anything a second thought. My 6 month old male was in one cage (even then I knew I shouldn't keep him alone, but he wasn't one for appreciating company) and my 2 month female in another cage. I opened my Girl's cage to go fill her water bottle. I came back and noticed that the male had excaped. Didn't give it a second thought. I put him away and went on with doing whatever it was I was doing.
And my female never looked large, never changed her eating habits...

Then one morning I was laying in bed debating wether to get up or not, and I noticed a lot of squeeking in my girls cage. And even being a moron, I quickly concluded that those were baby squeeks, therefor she must have had babies. I got up and, indeed, there were 9 babies. It lookes like it had happened hours ago. Any blood in the cage was dry and chop was asleep, while 8 babies fed. The other, off a little ways, I figured was stillborn. I did know a good bit about taking care of baby rats, since I was, and still am, obsessed with learning everything about rats. I was more afraid of my mom being upset then I was of anything else. I took the day of school saying I didn't feel well and watched the babies and choppy for hours.

Choppy was not much of a mother, I didn't think. If she felt like getting up, she'd just up and run off, dragging 5 or 6 babies with her. If she wanted to lay back down, and all the babies were scattered from her doing this, she didn't retrieve them. Several times I walked in to find a baby cold and half dead becasue she was not going and getting them.

So, for a week, every 15 minutes, I'd go in and make sure all 8 babies were there.  At about a week and a half, I noticed they all looked malnutricioned. Choppy was to young and didn't have enough milk. So I started aiding Choppy by feeding the babies 8 times a day along with her feeding. Then at 2.5 weeks, I noticed 3 were simply dead. I removed them from the cage and checked on all the babies very carefully. They looked normal.

Then at 6 weeks, after everyone was seperated, another one was getting very very sick quickly. Within the hour she was to the point of not being able to walk, not opening her eyes, and hardly breathing. I didn't have the kind of parents who would take me to a vet at 10 at night, so I force fed her some water and held her close to keep her warm. I put a heating pad under her cage and put it by here, and watched her make no improvement.  I fell asleep during my watch at about 3 AM.

I wook up the next day at about 8, and was so afraid to lift my head up, just KNOWING she (Oh, her name was clay, by the way) would be dead. But I had to get up. So I looked, and couldn't see her because the otehr 3 rats were atop her keeping her warm. This was probebly the ONLY time I'd seen their mother acting like a mother, and the sisters actually acting like sisters. I still thought she was dead. I carefully pushed some rats off her. And to my surprise, little clay raised her head, annoyed at me for disturbing her, then got up ant acted as any normal rat would. She stretched and ran over to another one of the rats. I picked her up and played with her, and she was normal as ever. (BY THE WAY, if you know what could have been wrong, PLEASE tell me!)

And to this day I am having constant problems with the babies health. Since they had an inbred dad and an underage mom, they simply are not healthy. They are all drasticly smaller then they should be, and each of tehm has there own little defects. But I kept the 5 little babies and love them all dearly.


And, As a ncie little ending, all 3 of my boys are getting neutered soon!

KD

I'm the worst one here. The whole thing started with Meeu, who I bought Feb 13 of last year and I knew she was pregnant. She had 11 babies, I kept one black self (Dante) and gave the other 6 boys to a girl at Petsmart. The 4 girls all went to a "breeder" whom I got Jinn and Zeke from later on. Carmelita got out into the woods and was never found, and the other 3 girls were so aggressive they had to be seperated because they almost killed a pregnant himilayan they were housed with until she had her babies. After that, I got Gracie from the girl.. already pregnant. She agreed to take all the babies, 6 of them. After that, Mala and Salem got out and she had a litter of 13 I think. Megan worked at a petstore where she found homes for her babies at, so I gave her Mala's litter when they were weaned. I thought it was the end of pregnant rats and babies but I was wrong. Gracie got in with the boys one day and ended up pregnant with 8 that time. While Gracie was still nursing her litter, Jinn (my little hairless) slipped through the bars of the crappy ferret cage I had seperated for the two sexes (girls on top, boys on bottom.. 2 solid shelves were bwtween them) and got Mala and Meeu pregnant. Together they had 26 babies. Mala had 9 and Meeu had 17. Kim was nice enough to take 3 boys, and 3 girl's from Gracie's last litter. I still had 22 babies (I kept Beans from Meeu's litter).. so I contacted everyplace I could and asked if they sold rats for pets, not feeders. I posted around for weeks but no one wanted them.. and at the time I had over 30 rats. I finally found a store that guarenteed to sell them as pets. They took them all in and I never seen them again.. as I've never seen the other rats I gave away (except the ones that went to Kim who lives like 10 mins away). It was the WORST experienece ever.. and I feel so horribly guilty I couldn't stand to look at myself for the longest time. :'(

Edit- I also wanted to add that I received some heartbreaking info awhile back and just forgot to post it here. The babies I took to the pet store that said they would be sold as pets, were infact, sold as feeders. I talked to someone who went to that store sometimes and said all the feeders were PEWs PLUS black berks and hoodeds.. just the type I dropped off at the store.

I don't breed, and I never will.. but I have had experience with two "accidental" litters...

the first one, was with my second rat, Blueberry.  The father was my step-brother's rat, Digger, who always escaped from the tank.. since my step brother never closed the lid all the way when he was done holding him.  Anyway, the rat escaped, and got to mine..  I found them together and freaked out.  of course, a few weeks later, I had 7 babies.  

I kept one female to house with my girl, since the female she was housed with originally had died of cancer not long before this happened.  The second female, I gave to the special ed classroom at my high school.  what a mistake...  I finally started hearing about them swinging her by her tail, poking her with things, and abusing her.. and almost no one would actually HOLD her because she "bit".   So when I heard this, I took her back.  She was extremely afraid, but never ever bit me.   she just would sit in my arms shaking ...   Her mother and sister seemed to recognize her immediately, and started grooming (not power grooming, either) her, and they all slept together immediately...   Mimi died before her mother (Digger, the father, was a poorly bred feeder rat)... and both her mother and Ash (who was also ridden with cancer, while the mother just had a bit of arthritis and that was it) were put to sleep during that whole ordeal I had..  

the second litter I had, was a pregnant himalayan rat I bought from a pet store.  I had NO clue she was pregnant when I got her... but I wound up with 15 babies, one stillborn.  I kept two girls from this litter, gave one to a person I knew online, another Suebee helped transport, and the rest went to an absolutely wonderful woman I met online, who I later got two rescue rats from years later.  

Well... the mother bit badly, and constantly.  I handled the babies every single day, but they still wound up being extremely skittish rats, and one of them that I know of, wound up being a biter, as well...

I would never breed intentionally.. and my rats are absolutely 100% not allowed anywhere near the opposite gender..  the same goes for the mice.  trying to find homes for that many rats is next to impossible!  
 

Although I have never bred rats, I want to plead to anyone considering breeding their rats, to please think about it some more. If you want more rats, there are so very many without homes, who would be overjoyed to share yours. Remember that even if you find homes for all the rats you breed, those are homes that could have taken in rescue rats instead.

All the brave people who are sharing their stories here, are hoping that others can learn from their mistakes. Don't let them down.

I thought I'd "share" my story here too as well, since I've recently had a new litter born, to one of my rats.  This has been the first litter for me & so far it's been quite a positive experience.  Having already owning several female rats (all from pet stores, including some I've "saved"possible reptile food) of various colors & ages & all mostly in very good health, I was interested when I saw an ad posted in a local grocery store several weeks ago, advertising that someone privately was giving away rats, so of course I had to check it out and ended up w/2 more rats (a male & a female) both approximately 5-6 months old.  The male, Tiny, (who was already named when I got him) male is a very hairy all black boy, and the female Nikki (whom I renamed from "Nokia", which was her original name & I really didn't care for it too much, so decided to name her something quite similiar to "Nokia") is a pink hairless female.  Since I already owned a younger female pink hairless rat, Bo (whom is absolutely adorable, both looks & personality wise) I couldn't resist getting another hairless one, and I also really wanted to get a nice healthy young male rat, for breeding purposes (BTW Tiny has a great personality, except for one small thing I'll explain about later).  Anyhow not too long after I got Tiny & Nikki, I decided to put them together, and after a couple of weeks, Nikki started to look fat, so I figured that she was pregnant.  I then seperated them and house Nikki in a special "maternity" plastic enclosure that I had (& really "pampered" the little mommy to be, by offering her extra food & a few "goodies", etc.).  Anyhow I work a night job PT at a group home (my shifts there are generally from 11pm to 7 am), and two weeks ago on the evening of April 7th/8th I worked and, after I got back to my apartment I went to sleep in the morning, to get some shut eye.  Anyway I woke up @ about 3pm to what sounded like baby birds,  and got all excited.  I went to Nikki's enclosure & she was giving birth to her litter!  So far she had 5 babies and over the next hour or so had 6 more babies, all alive at birth.  She appeared to be doing an excellent job, cleaning the babies, (& I know that this sounds gross) eating the placentas, and nursing right away.  I was thrilled and examined the new family and the babies all seemed to be really healthy, so I let them be for the next day.  However the next day one of the babies had died, so I have no idea what happened other than I suspect that it possibly had a birth defect (though the baby appeared to look fine).  Anyhow the rest of the babies grew rapidly. except for the smallest one which is really a runt, so I was quite worried about him (& I did sex the babies right away), and didn't know whether he was going to make it or not, but a few days later when I was away for several hours visiting a friend, I came home to find another baby (not the runt, but a good sized one)dead, but it was under all of the other babies and looked like maybe it had been crushed or suffocated or something as to put it bluntly, it was flattened out.  Anyhow the rest of the babies (now 9 total) are doing fine, including the runt (who though is still very small appears to be healthy & vigorous), and Nikki is a great mother rat.  They'll be 2 weeks old tomorrow and I'm not quite sure as to what to do with the litter (though I do definately want to keep at least one on the males for possible future breeding purposes to my other hairless rat, Bo, whom is completely unrelated to Nikki) and will try to find homes for the rest.  The babies are all dark and appear to be just getting their fur in.  Three of them have curly whiskers and one of the males seems not to be growing very much if any hair yet, so that's the one I'll probably keep.  There's a Pet Expo (where I got my very first 2 ratties, Velma & Daphne , over a year ago) nearby, that says that they would take the babies to sell them there, and then give me store credit for each rat I'd give them.  I also may let go of a couple of other rats, including Zoe (Bo's sister), who is a grey Rex, simply because I haven't had very much time to spend socializing her and she is a bit shy & "skittish".  I've also put Tiny with Bo, and hopefully she'll produce a litter too as well as I'd like to keep a male from her litter to breed w/Nikki, and then possibly give Tiny to Pet Expo too is well, since he's still quite a young rat.  BTW Zoe & Bo are both about 4 months old now.  What I basically want to do is try & get rats that are 3/4 hairless by breeding Nikki's & Tiny's male offspring w/Bo and breeding Bo's & Tiny's possible (yet to be) male offspring w/Nikki, and even though this may sound a bit complicated, there wouldn't be any inbreeding involved as I find that I really love my hairless girls (especially since they both have such great personalities, very, very friendly & loving) and would likr to possibly produce some young to share with or introduce other owners the joys of owning hairless rats.  As I had mentioned earlier there was a bit of a problem w/Tiny (& I sure hope that it isn't inheretid or anything) and that is even though he's a real sweetie who loves to cuddle & such and that is that he has a poop problem and deposits big stinky turds just about everytime I take him out, so I don't know what to do about it.  At first I thougt that maybe it would pass w/time, but since I've now had & handles him for almost 2 months, he still does it.  The place where I got him from though, I don't know if the former owners, handled him very much, especially since they had several other males all in the same enclosure, and they apparently had a favorite.  Well I've got to get going now and I can't think of much more to say, but I just thought that I'd share my fairly positive story (so far) about my first litter of baby rats!

T/C,
Sue

Sorry about that last post there as I apparently got unexpectadly & rather harshly flamed for it, in what I thoght would be a positive posting.   :'(

Not here on the MB's but in a chat.

Ratfan- read this http://www.feycat.net/blue-velvet/breed_rats.html

the rats I bred are not from any pet shop.

or maybe I'm just too innocent to know everything  :sad2:

The intent of this thread was to give members a chance to let others learn from their mistakes with regards to breeding petstore rats.  Breeding is best left to those who are willing to make the time and money sacrifices required to improve the species, and not just "witness the miracle of life."  I'm sorry that was not made clear in the beginning of this post.


I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.   ;)

I read the article and if I can't get homes for all of the babies, me as well as several members of my family are certainly more than willing to keep the little ones as long as there is more than enough space & love to go around for them with my family & friends, as that's the type of a background I'm from.  In the past I've had and have bred & raised other pets (mainly dogs, cats & rabbits and I never had any one complaining to me about being ignorant for raising them)  previously & was always very responsible for the offspring.  Though this isn't really related, quite recently I nursed Knee Hi, a very sick (& quite old family pet housecat, that may have died if I hadn't taken some specific steps in his care) so I am a very caring & nurturing person when it comes to just about ALL animals.  BTW Knee Hi isn't exactly crazy about my rats, but he's never shown any hostility towards them at all, but I am very very careful about this.

The point is that there are too many rats who need homes, and breeding non pedigreed stock with unknown backgrounds is highly frowned upon.

 :worry:  I'm very very sorry if I misinterpreted the original intent of the thread as I certainly didn't mean to deliberately cause anything to happen here, since I just posted about having rat babies "in general" (& didn't know that it was really meant for negative rat breeding experiences), and hopefully will learn from this lesson and try to move on.  So I hope that I can be forgiven for having made such a serious error.   ???

It's okay, ratfan (now jagu). In general, this board is quite against amatur breeding, and some of us are against all breeding, but you couldn't be expected to know that. It's just that, as you can see, so many people have witnessed the suffering that can be caused by breeding that we take it very seriously.

A lot of us are also involved in rescue work, and we know that every baby bred on purpose will take up a space that could have gone to a homeless rat in a shelter. I think a lot of people would rethink breeding if they had access to all the information we do, and spreading that information was the purpose of this thread.

Oh ok then do you mean sort of like the same extent of humane society shelters being so full of dogs & cats, and puppies & kittens?

I'm going to ask that this thread not be hijacked anymore :)  I'd like to keep it as relevant to the topic as possible.  Maybe starting a new thread would be the best solution?  Thank you.

Exactly. Please see this thread http://www.goosemoose.com/rfc/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=4807
to continue this discussion.

Well, going back to the theme (but maybe not QUITE the point....), I have never had an experience with breeding, although I have had 2 pregnant scares...

One day, I would LIKE to breed...just one litter is in my plan, but definitely not until I have the time and the money to devote a lot of it to gene research and health research and health care (just in case) and just plain research in general, etc.  (not for many, many moons my friends!)

Threads like this one (thank you!) are ones that make me realize a) how horrible irresponsible breeding can be and b) how wonderful responsible breeding can be (oh, and c) how devastating breeding can be altogether if complications arise)

May I just say that all you responsible owners/breeders are wonderful and I am glad to have so many awesome people who are willing to share their experiences (sometimes good, sometimes not so good) for the purpose of educating the unknowledgeable!

I havent had much expireance with rats. Though I currently own three of them and use Rat Fan Club as much as possible. I am still looking into Vets though. Right now they all seem to be heathly and happy rats.

Though when I got them I thought that both of them where pregnant. I used the help info on RFC site to find out what the signs of pregnancy where, only one of them turned out to be pregrnant.

I was pretty worried about it and how the mother was doing due to she wasnt doing normal things such at nesting and I had gotten nesting bedding just for her. (it ended up being all over the cage) When Colly finally had her litter I was worried because I could tell she was having problems. That and I had to remove the other female  Harilequin(hooded rat) due to the fact she wouldnt stop bouncing on Colibume(shes a burk rat).

Appearntly she went though 4 hours of brithing, something was wrong all the babies where dead on brith. I was really upset due to after a while I was kind of looking forward to it, but that happens sometimes. Though was up set me the most was the fact I was really scared that I would lose Colly as well. Colly didnt like giving up her babies I checked them all and all of them where dead. She kept trying to warm them, I found out that is natural for even rats to do sometimes. Thankfully Colly is still alive very heathly, shes active and loves getting out the cage as much as possible. Though Harilequin has turned into being shy after the deth of the babies.

I just wanted to share this with people, I was really lucky with Colly. But not everyone is lucky, I dont really have any real plans to breed Colly or Harlly any time soon. Though I am sure I will when I get more knowage about rat and care for both babbies and mothers. Though I am pretty stickler about them already, so the likely hood of breeding them is not in light at the moment. When I have more space for them then yes maybe. Right now I am working on getting money from my parents to get my only male snipped and looked at. He is very skiny and would of been snake food if I hadnt bought him.

:BlueDumboBigEyes:

Wow, what an educational thread! Thanks so much for encouraging these brave folks to post their negative breeding experiences. It can't have been easy relating these stories. My hat's off to all of you who used your bad experiences to educate the rest of us.

I decided at the outset that I would never breed my rats for a number of reasons: too much can go wrong and I'm scared one of my girls would have a dangerous labor, it is logistically impossible for me to successfully house a couple dozen rats no matter how much I love their little selves, and lastly, I can't assume I'd find homes for them. I will spend any amount of money (not that I have much!) to have my pets treated by a vet should there be a problem, but why buy trouble?  ;)

It seems that all I do is thank you folks for your insight and wisdom, but I'm getting ready to do it again: THANK YOU for this enlightening thread! There is no telling how many problems have been avoided because of these courageous posters.

I realize the goal of this thread is to post negative breeding experiences, but the horror stories posted here are not the experience of every person who breeds.

When I got my first rat, Ramona, better than ten years ago now, she was very young, and unbeknownst to me, pregnant.  She had a litter of twelve about two and a half weeks after I brought her home, and every single baby was healthy and thrived.  They were exceptionally well socialized and LIVED to be with people.  I knew that homes would be hard to find.  I did find homes for approximately half the babies and the rest I kept, purchasing new cages and making space in my room for them.  The kids grew up fantastically healthy and all lived beyond 3 years of age.  Sometime during their lives, realizing what healthy, wonderful rats I had, I decided to breed Midnight, one of Ramona's babies, for one litter, to continue this exceptional line.  Midnight had a litter of eight, again without a hitch and all were healthy.  I continued this line through four generations breeding one litter from the pick of the rats each time.  I checked around and found healthy bucks with owners who wanted some of the kids, and the other babies all stayed with me.

I stopped breeding the line after the fourth generation, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't find a buck who I knew would sire a healthy litter.  My last rat from that line passed away four years ago this month.

Last year I rescued two mothers and their litters from a pet store with the intention of turning them into ratsicles.  I had a total of 22 rats.  I've found homes for eight of them and invested better than a thousand dollars in vet bills, cages, housing, etc in the rest of them.  I would never, NEVER consider breeding from these rats, because their health is poor and I've watched each of their mothers develop tumors and abcesses prior to one year of age.

At any rate, what I'm trying to say is that the stories here are truly horrifying.  Irresponsible breeders cause a lot of heartache and euthanised or 'feeder' rats, and stretch the resources of good-hearted rescuers.  But these situations are not necessarily the norm, and a lot of the health problems/deaths described in this thread are experienced by reputable "professional" breeders everywhere.  By no means am I encouraging you to breed to witness the miracle of life or for the sake of making money (you won't, in case you were wondering), but if you seriously research, take into account the ramifications of choosing to breed, and are willing to accept all of the responsibilities - including having a population jump of up to 22 rats which will likely mostly stay with you - I don't think that some of the harsh comments here are deserved.

rq

i have, in the past, taken in several girls that i found out later were pregnant.  at the time, i had a good friend at a local pet store who took the ones i could not keep and made sure that they were sold as pets.  (i have known her to turn down suspicious "pet rat" buyers and others who refused to get the proper things for the pets they were interested in.)  well, anyway, the ones i kept were always healthy and lived to a good age.  so i decided to breed one special rat, and borrowed a male just because of his looks.  well, mama had 14 babies and was all gung-ho about nursing and raising them, she refused to lay down at all while they were nursing and always kept them together when they wandered off.  when they were old enough to be weened, i took all of the males and all but three of the female babies to a prearranged foster.
fast forward 14 months, (14 months of fun and love).  angel, one of the babies, developed a uteran tumor.  i discovered it too late and she died in my hands after a brilliant but unsuccessfull spay/tumor removal. (too many organs had been compromized) i schedule the other two daughters to be spayed but harley died from a resporitory infection after the surgery.  baby lived to just shy of two years.
less than a month afterwards, mama died of nothing more than a broken heart.  there was absolutely nothing wrong with mama, and even though i had lined up an adoption for keeping her company, she would not wait.  the adoption search is what led me here. i know now that borrowing the male based on looks was mistake #2 (breeding just for a mother/daughter pack was #1).
but now i do have my three rescued/adopted rats who chose me this time.

i say if you want to raise babies, volunteer to help a reputable and resposible breeder.  that way you get to have all the fun of watching the babies grow, without all the worries of genetics and finding homes (that's the breeder's job)

Ratqueen, my understanding is that this thread isn't necessarily to scare people into not breeding, or to make them think that all breeding is bad. But since so many people think breeding rats is so easy, and people rarely understand the consequences of breeding, we're just trying to tell people this CAN happen and trying to tip the scale a little. Yes this happens to the best of the breeders too, but we just want to encourage people to do their homework and know ALL sides of it before they get into breeding, which unfortunately isn't the case most of the times.

We can discuss the ethics of breeding in a new thread if you want to, but I believe the purpose of this thread isn't to say what is right and wrong, but to help people understand the full scope of what can possibly happen and hopefully get people to learn from others' mistakes.

BabyBlue, definitely fair.  Breeding isn't and shouldn't be for everyone.  Research is the single most important aspect of breeding.  i respect that this thread is trying to show all the different aspects and possible outcomes of breeding, which is why I chose to post my own experiences.  By the same token, a lot of the users here are likely well enough rat-educated to recognize the complexities of breeding being as they're already here on a rat-lovers group.  I do hope that people who consider breeding do consider the different things that can happen, because it really isn't something a lot of people should do.  

rq

Actually, you'd be surprised at the numbers who don't give it a thought until it's actually done and too late.  And unfortunately, just being a member of this group doesn't grant us all omniscience as far as rats are concerned.  It'd be nice if it did.  :)  I'm glad you were able to share a positive story.  I'm sure that for every negative there are plenty of positives, but people need to think about what CAN happen, and be prepared if they're going to breed, and that's the real purpose of this thread, to make people aware that it's not all cuteness and light.

After all the horror stories, I'm wondering if I'm the only person with a positive breeding experience - although it was accidental.

I originally owned 3 hooded agouti females, then I was given 2 hooded agouti males by a friend who was moving to an apartment where pets weren't allowed. I had 2 nice big cages, so everything was fine until my young niece let them all out ......

Well, I ended up with 21 babies from 2 mothers, and fortunately they and the mothers were all in good health. I couldn't persuade any of my friends to adopt a rat, and there was no way I was going to let the pet shop sell them as snake food, so I ended up keeping all 26 of them.

That was two years ago, and only one rat has died so far - he lost most of his tail when he was very small, and he died of heat exhaustion in January of this year (it was about 47C the day he died). There hasn't been a single tumour, or any mycoplasma cases, so I can only guess that I was lucky and fluked a good genetic combination.

IAN

One of my rats was mated with one of my boys.  I was very certain that the mating had been a success and that I would have a healthy litter on the way.

Anyways, she was not getting as big as she should have been, though she was putting on weight. I had some other more experienced breeders look at her and we all said she was definately pregnant.

Well, she built up her nest and I moved her to the loungeroom so I could keep an eye on her.  She started bleeding and I thought it would not be too long until we had a couple of pinkies (only expected 2 or three due to her small size).  Well... they were not forthcoming.  She was having contractions but there was nothing else going on.

We ended up taking her to the vet where they examined her and said that although she was in labour, she appeared to have miscarried halfway through the pregnancy, but her hormones carried her to term.  Her body absorbed the birthing remains.  She was put on antibiotics and mde a full recovery... but it was very scary.

------------------------

story two.  A couple of female rats came to live with us after their owner's job started sending him overseas for months at a time.  they came to us in a very small cage - but we did not have a spare at the time.  

Came home from work one night to find that one of the girls was missing  She had learnt to open her cage :(  Anyways hunting high and low we could not find her. we turned the rat room  upside down to no avail.  I was distraught so went and cuddled some rats - only to find the little girl in the boys cage.  

She had opened her cage, run across the room, climbed up a curtain, jumped across a table and forced herself into the boys cage (the bars are wider on the boys cage).  The poor little thing had been mated what appeared  to be numerous times :(  She had plugs coming out of her,  she was red and raw.  I cleaned her up, gave her some nutrigel and locked her cage.  

The next morning I check on her to find that her vagina had become swollen and infected.  She SMELT BAD!  I rush her to the vets.  She had to go on special antibiotics because we assumed she was pregnant.  23 days later she had a litter of 11 wonderful babies who were very healthy.  they all thrived.  But when they were 5 weeks old a couple of them started getting myco.  

We believe that because of the infection she had, the babies immune system was comprimised in the womb.  regardless, all bar one have found homes.  I still have one boy left though. Black Jack has battled Myco on 3 different occasions now...  he'll probably live forever with me unless someone takes him.. not that I am worried, he is gorgeous...

I'm very ashamed to say that I started off as one of the worst kind of breeders. Breeding before I even knew how to look after rats at all. I had a cage full of mice which I bred. My ex flat mate had a deal going with the local pet shop which has a very bad reputation. I can't pretend I didn't know anything about it as they'd already sold my ex flat mate(Z) a bearded dragon with gangerine and told her it was pregnant!

Anyway, I got home one day to find Kulz and Iska in a cage in my bedroom. Although I've always wanted rats and Z mentioned she would get them for me before.  They were very nervous. Iska became very tame eventually but Kulz was always very nervous of people and so was his daughter Tinsle. The problems started after the pet shop failed to take all the first lot of babies in. I was left with  5 females I named Tinsle, Trickster, Tracy, Tasha and Tessa and a male I named Tom. Tom went to join his dad but not before Kulz had made all females including the 5 female babies pregnant. I just panicked. We were planning to take them to the pet shop plus the males as well and let them deal with it. I kept Trickster and Tinsle. Tinsle actually gave birth to the babies in a small box waiting to be taken to the pet shop. I'm not too sure what happened to Tracy's babies. They were probably used as snake food. Tessa's  and Tasha's babies may have been sold in that conditon as they weren't too obviously pregnant. At least when Z took them to the pet shop. 10 of Tinsles 12 babies were murdered by being put in a freezer. I was told at the time this was a painless death. I know better now. A friend of Z did it. I didn't like the idea but I'm afraid I didn't do anything to stop it happening as the cage was full with Iska's 2nd litter of 13 and I couldn't come up with a more humane solution in time.

Tinsle wasn't looking after the 2 remaining babies. After the first one died I tried to feed Kadra with a seringe only I wasn't doing it regularly enough so she also died. I meant to keep all Trickster's babies and not tell Z about tehm. Only Trickster wouldn't look after them properly. Z found out and all Trickster's babies went into the freezer.
Iska's 2nd litter were  taken to a differant pet shop.

This whole experience made me feel terribly guilty. :'( I stopped breeding after that. I was latter sold a pregnant female from a private breeder. Fortunately she only had 4 babies. I kept Dreama, gave Nicodemus to mum and the remaining 2 to another pet shop which did not deal with reptiles at all. All the rats have since died between 13 and 30 months from Tumors and/or chest infections. Nicodemus is the sole surviving rat and he has 2 cage mates called Poppy and Honey.

I think you should be required to have a licence to breed animals as there are far too many bad/ignorant breeders around. That goes for all animals, not just rats. It's good to have a thread where people can show the pitfalls in bad breeding. I'm planning to get more rats after I finish college. I'll try to get them from a refuge if I can get transport to go to one. I love baby rats but won't breed any more although I might rehome a pregnant or nursing female and keep the whole litter myself.

WOW after reading some of your stories I feel fortunate that my forst rat I got from a pet store lived to be healthy and died at the old age of 4.5 and its brother lived to be 5.

I plan not to breed my rats at all. Since I read about these stories
I glad that I have made a right decision.

but there is true to about going with proper breeders and envold the pet store ones.

I have 5 rats.  4 of them are pet store ones.

Then I got Daphine & Josiephine... they were surpose to be females.  Daphine had a cold, and the nurse told me that  I had
boy.  Lucky for me, because I did separted them in time and no litter.   Daphine became Daffy..

Daffy had is blind in one eye with catract.  the other is aways swolling.  but other wise he is just a great guy.

Josiephine got an inner ear infection and now has a lend. but other wise she is fine.

a feeder rat, name Pinky, that a couple couldn't feed their snake.  He is my healthy one. I got him free.

then I got Storm from the animal shelter in town and she seem to be doing well.  don't know if she is pet store or not. the family couldn't take her with them..
 
go figure...  

I have a couple of accidental breeding stories.  The first story involves the second pair of rats we owned.  The first pair of rats we owned (2 boys adopted from a junior high dairy council experiment) passed away, and we missed the lil' guys so much we went to a pet store and bought another pair.  We purchased what we were told by the pet store workers were a pair of brothers...but obviously they weren't, if I'm posting to this thread.  ;)  Eddie and Timmy got along just fine and we didn't have the experience to know that "Timmy" was a female until she'd already become pregnant.  Timmy became Tina, and eventually had a litter of 14.  Because she was no more than 7 weeks old when she had the litter, she was too young and small to be able to take care of them, and many of them were stillborn.  I think that having such a large litter while so young also stunted her growth and caused some other sort of injury, since she didn't really grow after she had the babies and one of her back paws didn't function properly and she had trouble walking.   :BlueDumboBigEyes: We tried to save who we could, but only 3 of the babies lived, 2 girls and a boy.  We gave the boy away, and kept the baby girls in with their parents (the father having been neutered by this time), and felt very lucky when all of these rats lived to at least 2 years of age, and Tina became the longest-lived rat we've have to date (she lived 3 years).

The second story involves a rat we adopted a few months ago.  My mother works at a high school, and in late January one of the students thought it would be "funny" to buy a rat at a pet store and drop it in the school courtyard to scare people.  :'(  Fortunately, one of the teachers saw the kid do it and we were able to promptly rescue the poor thing (who we later found out hadn't been fed or given water in almost a day, since she was "just for a prank").  Mom adopted the rat (who we named Nezumina), and she was rather nippy for a while, which for a while we chalked up to her having such a bad experience.  After a few more days we realized she was pregnant and, sure enough, about 9 days after we took her in she had a whopping 16-baby litter, all of which survived.  I think we were very fortunate that Mina turned out to be such a great mother, as she couldn't have been more than 3 months old when she had the litter and all of the babies survived (12 boys and 4 girls).  We were able to find homes for 9 of the boys, but ended up keeping 3 boys and all the baby girls.  The babies are about 4 months old now and so far, so good, but we're all expecting there to be some sort of health problems, as the prankster who bought the rat didn't think about the long-term for the rat and probably just got a cheap feeder.  

I'd never planned on breeding rats anyway, and having these experiences really reinforced that view.  I think breeding is something best left to the experts, to people who specialize with rats, unlike a lot of pet stores who don't have the knowledge and/or experience to deal with breeding rats properly.  We're being ultra-ultra-careful with our boys and girls so we don't have any more unexpected litters...we love our ratties, but I know how hard it would be to deal with more litters.  :(  We've been pretty lucky so far with the way our accidental litters have turned out, but we're definitely not planning on having more. ;)

Geez what a depressing topic, but glad its all out in the open.

I found a male rat. That's LuLu who is now elderly and ill at the moment (That's what got me on line with you rattie peoples). I felt real bad about him being alone and adopted a wonder friend (Clark) from someone who really knows rats and had babies. Clark has always been the smart one and has a wonderful generous personality.

Well, Lu didn't take to Clark right away, so Lu ended up by himself and I needed another friend for Clark, cause he had never been alone. My breeder friend suggested that I might do a good deed by going to the reptile store and getting one of their babies as a rescue. Did that, told it was a boy. That's Curly.

Long story, shorter, Clark had an amusing, and perverted fixation on his new "boy" friend, until I caught them doing the nasty for real! Too late.

Curly had 8 beautiful babies  which she systematially abandoned all over  the cage. Cold little dead babies. We got her to save 4 out of the bunch. She was a good enough mom and became a sweetheart of a rat when she finally got over the abuse of being raised in a bucket as snake food.

Clark rose to the occasion and took all the rittens that survived home with him at the first opportunity (which came when everybody was neutered). He was a WONDERFUL mom, cuddling and cleaning his babies like he knew they were his.

The vet gave me a great bargain on neutering everybody in one swoop. The reason being that so much disease (like cancer) turns up in the reproductive organs. All 7 live together happily without any hormonal whacki-do (the vet touted that as an advantage also). I think this was a great thing and will always appreciate it.

Turns out all the rats from the reptile store were somewhat unhealthy. Curly had the sneezes, which she  got past with better nutrition, but that can ultimately fe an unsolvable contagious problem, might just be what's wrong with the big Lu. Do some reading about lung disease in rats and you'll be really heartsick about assuming your rat  might be ok for breeding even though you don't know where he came from.

The bottom line is that pet rats are way too inbred as it is. No breeding is the kindest thing to do.

HI there..

I run Little Villains Rattery, and am now planning my SECOND (only my second) litter...

I know how hard it can be to find homes for everyone.

My first litter was from Cruella, a beautiful, healthy Black Berkshire Dumbo Rex, and Sauron, a wonderful black mismarked capped dumbo with a headspot with and ENORMOUS pedigree...

SHe had 12 beautiful babies, and was an EXCEPTIONAL mother.

I handled the wee little ones several times a day, and cruella was so good with them that i could actually hand them back to her, and she'd carefully place them back in the nest :)

My only bad experience was with my planned keeper from the litter.... i placed him into the cage with my oldest male and his cagemate, and watched them for an hour before going out to dinner.... they seemed to be getting along ok.

I came home to find my people loving, darling of a older boy eating my darling split cap boy :(

THAT would have to be one of the worst experiences of my LIFE.

I figured out later that the boy was probably too young, but i WATCHED them, and didn't expect such a drastic response....

I ended up keeping another male from the litter, a beautiful dumbo standard boy, mismarked collared, and a real sweetie.

Oddly enough, he lives with the older male, and they get along swimmingly.

my website is http://ibelinna.tripod.com

I'm STILL greatfull that i did a LOT of research prior to breeding, and that i am waiting to evaluate interest BEFORE i place my next two together.

I wish everyone could have as good an experience with their litters as i did, but i know this isn't always the case, and that factors into all of my future breeding plans.

Darcy

 :shocked2:

Here's my story. I adopted several pregnant mothers and babies from a petstore that was going out of business because the owner and I couldn't stand the thought of all of them going for snakefood. I ended up with quite a few babies but found homes for many of them and was happy to take care of those I couldn't find homes for. Some of the people who adopted them later had to bring them back but I took them back, no problem. I was really proud of family and myself, taking care of 28 adult rats, keeping their cages clean, feeding them, spending individual time with them (well, there is hardly a time when at least one member of my family doesn't have two or three riding on their shoulders), keeping the genders separated. Yes, I was a good rat owner.

Le sigh....Our rat Romeo escaped and visited one of the girl's cages when we were unaware and apparently impregnated one of the females through the cage bar. Yesterday, she presented us with 14 surprise pinkies. The mother, Panda as well as the father are not the rats I would have picked as parents, but they are not related as far as I know. I must assume that we are probably going to have to keep all of these unless I miraculously find someone to adopt several. A so-called friend told me take all my rats and dump them in the woods but I would never do that. She is ragging on me as usual because I am a vegetarian and an animal lover.

In my naive days (several months ago) when i thought all petsores were created equal and had their animals best interest at heart, i bought 3 rats from PetCo all in the "female cage" and ended up with 2 prego females and a male.  Within two weeks one had a presumed inner ear infection with a cocked head and the others were sniffling..

Well B.R. had 6 beautiful babies and S.C. had 8 despite our ignorance.  1 Litter is 7 weeks old the other 5.  They are successfully weaned and separated and all are healthy and happy..well this thread breaks my heart. Im sure my "Ratty Pile" has horrible genetics given their origin and there is an already established myco presence given the whole "Pile" sniffles..i shudder to read others experience and think mine might begin to suffer soon

I wouldnt breed my rats, i would just rescue one or two...

Firstly, I want to thank all of you for posting your stories up here.  While sad and sometimes horrible, they are educational and hopefully will do some good for others to hear.

I really hope this doesn't qualify as off-topic, since it isn't technically a story in which I breed a litter, but here goes anyways.

I have 2 female rats, Bean and Gus, both from a local petstore.  Gus is outwardly, very healthy; never a sneeze, extremely laid back and cuddly, eats well, etc.  Bean has and always will be a runt.  She's about half the size of gus and her body would barely stretch from the palm of your hand to the tips of your fingers.  I would have loved to breed my rats, but after much deliberation I decided not to.  One obvious reason was that I had no idea of Gus' background, and I would feel so badly if the litter had serious health problems.  Also, I didn't know the proposed father of the litter as well as I would have liked.  Right there it sounded like something out of the "Do You Really Want To Breed?" pamphlet I'd read earlier.   I had solid homes for at least 14 little rats, and sometimes told myself "well, I know about the hidden dangers, tumors, myco that can show up in petstore rats, but Gus is fine, and I know the people who own her brother and he's just fine too."  But logic won out and I simply couldn't take the risk.  

I still would really like to breed rats when I get older, out-of-school-with-a-steady-job older.  But right now, I think I'm just too inexperienced.  And what's more, the world doesn't really need 8-14 more rats (especially/mainly ones with questionable backgrounds) when there are already ones out there without homes.  So in the meantime I will continue to read as much as I can about rats, especially their genetic traits.  I may plan, or speculate, hope or wish, but for the time being I will not be breeding any rats.  

Now here is where this post may be a little off-topic.  It seems to me that this post is mainly just what you shouldn't do, and I don't always feel it completely helpful when only the negative side of an arguement is presented (ie "don't do this" but never saying what to do instead?  if that makes any sense).  I also think there would be benefits to saying what one would have to do to become a successful, ethical rat breeder.  I imagine there would be many requirements that most people would not be able to fill.  And, on the other hand, this might help me with knowing what exactly I might be getting myself into 10 years down the road  ;)

Thank you all for reading, and the best of luck.

I bought a fawn hooded rat two years ago. I had always wanted a fawn hooded rat, so I overlooked the fact that she was older than my last female rat purchase. We didn't figure out that she was pregnant until she built the nest that night --- there were no signs at all. The next morning there were 6 kittens. We were able to keep 4 and 2 were given to a local pet store on the condition that they be sold as pets and as a pair (the pet store had helped locals find homes for rodents in the past). I have no idea who they went home with, but both were beautiful and seem to have found an owner quickly.

The babies have been tame and sweet. Of the four that we kept, 3 made it to their second birthday, and two are still with us. However, both of the females have developed tumors. Joanna, who is still with us as well, obviously had her growth stunted by having a litter too young... she is much smaller than her grown children and requires nutritional supplements.

We neutered the two males so that we could keep all of the rats together without any more litters. I do not plan to breed rats intentionally any time soon... right now there are eight rats at our local humane society, and a bunch of them are siblings that someone dumped there, probably from a poorly planned litter.  :(

However, if ten years from now I am still living in the Southeast, I would like to try starting a rattery of my own with rats from other parts of the country, where the rat fancy is more established. I want to breed for health and longevity, and plan matings that will improve the local rat population. Feeder tank rats were the only kind available in my area when I started looking, and it has been rare for one of my pets to live more than 2 years. Two rats that I bought even died of a genetic heart defect when they were only a month old --- the pet store that was breeding them obviously didn't care about the health of the rats it was selling. (That pet store, by the way, is now under new management - and now it features pet rats from a responsible local breeder of dumbos!  :) )

Responsible breeders don't place rats via petstores... most likely they are being supplied by a breeder who either bred without thinking if there would be enough interest in their rats and feels their is little other choice (in which case they shouldn't be breeding in the first place), or they just see the dollar signs coming in from the store and don't care... and again, they probably shouldn't be breeding if that is their motivation.

"Responsible" breeders provide a forever home for every rat they breed which they are unable to place in a good home.  This means both keeping extra rats from litters AND taking back rats from those who can no longer care for them.

I know this is a thread about rat breeding stories, but I have a hamster breeding story I hope might be of some benefit.  Some friends of ours had 2 hamsters, a male and a female.  I'm not sure if they knew at the time the gender difference, but they kept them together.  Of course, if anyone here is familiar with hamsters, Syrian hamsters are solitary, so it's pure luck these guys didn't kill each other.  Anyway, litter number one came and was immediately cannibalized by the male.  The owners decided that they really didn't want 2 cages to clean, so they had contemplated taking the female back to the petstore.  I knew that she had probably been impregnated again, so I offered to take her as I didn't think it was fair to have to give birth in a petstore.  So finally she gave birth to what I believe were 10 pups.  At first, she appeared to be a good mom.  But then, one by one, she proceded to eat her litter.  At 11 days of age and 3 pups left, I became very fearful for there welfare, and I looked up all info I could on handraising hamster pups.  Although all 3 got dehydrated quickly, with my vigilant care, 2 of them bounced back and were soon off my worry list.  The runt, however, didn't fair so well.  She was very weak and eventually passed away 2 days after seperation from their mom in my hand while I was trying to feed her.  The other 2 pups did very well for the next 2 days.  Then I woke up to find one of them had passed away since the last feeding.  And then hours later, the other one was also dead.  I don't know if they would have survived if left with their mom, or if they too, would have been eaten, but I do know that any notion of wanting to breed out of an impulsive desire to see cute little babies left me quite quickly.  Now that I have ventured somewhat out of the hamster world and into the rat world, I know that I will not breed rats, at least without doing A LOT of research.  I don't know if I will breed rats, but at this point after what I went through with the hamster family I have absolutely NO plans to put any rat (or myself, again) through the trauma.

I have never bred rats befor, considering I have only had 2 in my life lol. and they are brothers with big testicals so I know they are not females.  :shocked2:.. I would never breed my rat boys because I wouldent want their unknown genetics to get passes on no matter how friendly and well tempered they are. My boys were taken away from their mother MUCH to early at 4 weeks old and they were housed with there sisters and other brother in PINE bedding and fed hamster mix food in a pet store where they were surrendered. I am super glad I saved my boys from that hell hole. I feel so sorry for the two baby ratties that are still there. at least they have each other. I hate the pet stores here. ughh  >:(

I do not have any stories because I have never, and WILL never breed.  Ever.  I have never had any 'accidental' litters, because my cages are secure and I am responsible enough to make SURE they are secure.  I have never taken in a pregnant female, because I do not have the money, time, or conscience to be able to deal with such a task.  

The bottom line is, there are too many rats in the world.  Too many without homes, too many without the love and care they need to survive.  There is no reason to breed, AT ALL, unless you know what you are doing, have mentored with a long-time, RESPONSIBLE breeder, have the funds to spend if your females need emergency vet care, have rats with pedigrees, AT LEAST four generations back, and have the space and time to devote to EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE of the babies in case you cannot find homes for them.

And if you cannot find homes for them?  DO NOT BREED AGAIN.  

*Climbs down off soapbox.*

That is my opinion.  

Hello all. I don't have any breeding stories, but I've read all the stories posted here about breeding and I don't think I will EVER be breeding any of my rats. I do have a suggestion for anyone who wants the same experience of having baby rats and doesn't want to actually breed their rats. I suggest you either start a rescue or foster some rats. If you have the time and money. This would be a much safer alternative. That's all.

Alison

I never intended on breeding my rats, but accidents apparently happen when you trust your rats care to others while you're on vacation.

Two years ago one of my female rats had suprised me with two little babies. As far as I had known, she'd had no contact with my male rats, and two was a bit of an odd number I thought. Turns out while I was on a trip to see my boyfriend, my father had left both cage doors open and found the females sleeping with the males, but he didn't tell me until later. In short, two was indeed an odd number, as she still had some babies left inside and a c-section was required to remove them. Still, only the original two survived, and I kept them.

Now, due to old age or illness, I only had those two babies left (both males.) They were supposed to be my last rats as well until I'm out on my own. However, a female rat literally crawled into our lives. We found a fancy rat living on our balcony. She had been coming inside to steal our dog's food though and ripped up our newspapers for bedding. She was terrified of us at first but has become a very sweet and friendly rat. But again..I'm starting to think someone let the males a bit too close to the female. Even though they're in seperate rooms, I'm not always home and who knows what my parents or brothers let them do when I'm gone. I noticed she's starting to look like she's swallowed a tennis ball. Her belly is huge! If she is pregnant instead of some other problem, I'm not sure I'm able to handle this.  I don't know how old she is, the males have had problems with myco before, and I may not have enough funds in the bank to pay for any emergency vet visit should something go wrong during birth. It's rather frustrating.

Not about rats, but close enough.

I once brought home an extremely pregnant mouse.  I know it's wrong to buy from pet stores like those - after that time, I've never gone in there again.  I'm way too soft-hearted, and she seemed to be begging me to take her home.  Besides her giant stomach, she was painfully thin.  She ended up with 11 babies, all of which I intended to keep from the beginning.

Something was wrong with one of the girls from the day she was born - the vet couldn't diagnose it but I believe now it was encepholaphy (sp?).  Charlotte had almost no coordination, and as soon as the other babies started crawling around she was completely unable to nurse from her mom.  I started feeding her myself.  Eventually, Charlotte became anxious and upset when I had to put her back in with her mom and siblings.  She never thrived like her siblings.  One day she died.

I was devastated.  She'd practically been my own child.  The other babies from the litter are wonderful, but nothing could ever make up for Charlotte.

Well I bought my hairless rat, Zoopa, from a craptastic pet store thinking I was saving her. Little did I know she had spent some "quality time" with one of the males there, most likely her brother.
After picking up another female to give them both a friend I let them play.
Less than a month later Zoopa was getting awfully chubby and nipped at me once. She didn't seem to be getting the kinda big mentioned by other people when a rat was pregos so I didn't think anything of it.
When I came home yesterday from a Thanksgiving dinner I had a surprise. A litter of five pups squeeking away in this huge nest Zoopa built during the day.
I'll let you know how this turns out. I'm off to the store to buy things to make more and bigger cages.

Well Zoopa had 5 babies. All seemed to be doing well the first few days but on the third day one looked a little less cared for. Later in the day it seemed to be doing better though it still seemed smaller than the others.
Today I found its remains. The other four pups, two males and two females, are doing well so far but they are still very young.

Today another pup was missing. I can only assume it was eaten as I found nothing of it. One of the babies had been moves aside but I thought Zoopa was rearranging the little ones as she moved them to another nest and cage to be with her sisters again. I now have three babies left, one male and two females. Sadly this is the number and sexes I had planned to keep. I hope nothing further happens to the babies as this is really beginning to break my heart.

I had been seriously considering breeding rats for quite some time when a friend who worked a petstore directed me to one of her former breeders who was getting out of the business. I met him and he literally just handed me 25 rats and his 16-cage breeder system set up. I thought, how hard could it be?! I had had rats growing up as a kid and it had been no problem. I thought it strange when the man never called me back or returned my calls to pick up his payment. Wow 25 rats for free! Great huh? 2 days later, one of the rats died. I was upset but figured it was old. And then another died. And another. Ok lots of old rats? And then babies started to die. I didn't take long to put things together. All the rats looked the same. All the rats WERE the same. They were HORRIBLY inbred. Thin hair, stillborns, parasites, deformities. Half of them ended up dying within the first month. The other half cost me so much money trying to keep alive. In the beginning I didn't understand how the breeder systems were used. I still have a few of the original 25 left. They are very sweet but they can never breed again. They are healthy but their babies don't live past the 2 month mark. Not a one. I have a lot of rats now, about 60 or so, and I love all of them very dearly. Each one is close to me. I still breed but I make sure I have an extra 5 cages available when I do. I make sure they will have toys and food and a good life or I can find homes for them that will provide these things for them. In the beginning I didn't know what I was doing which is partly my fault but it makes me so angry of what people do to rats. They think of them as things, and pay no attention to the rats' pain or well-being. Some of those rats I really got close to. Pepper and Tina were my favorites. Tina died while being in labor for most of the day. I didn't make it to the vet in time. All her babies died too. Pepper was malnourished, mite infested, dehydrated, everything. I spent every single day for 3 months trying to nurse her and checking on her and hand feeding her and bathing her  and giving her antibiotics and trying to keep the mites off of her for just 1 minute so she could be relax. She held on though for so long. She'd barely move at all, like it hurt too much. I'd put her in my hand and she would just look at you, so sad and so tired. One morning I looked in on her and she had been alseep. She opened her eyes half way and looked at me. I stroked her frail little body. The fur mites had come back again and I tried to brush them off of her. She closed her eyes again and died. If that man who had sold me the rats wouldv'e been there I would have smacked him.

I love rats  :heart: not the money they make.

You know, I have to state my two cents here, because I understand the logic that breeding should be left to professional breeders to insure healthy rats, etc., but I have to add that I'll bet a large percentage of rat lovers first met rats in a pet store.  If I hadn't let my son buy his first pet store rat 15 years ago, I would still think they are disgusting creatures.  However, even though it only lived two years,  I learned what wonderful pets they are.  Three pet store rats later, he found the RFC and became aware that there are rat breeders.  We got our first "pedigree" rats just last year and we actually had two litters of babies.  We were thrilled to experience the pregnancies, births, and development of 25 wonderful ratties.  We found good homes for all through hard work.  We did have great cost because we changed litter daily, bought new cages to house males/females, gave bags of food to each new owner (along with our recipes), a cage to a new rat lover, etc.  Will our babies be healthy and viable?  Only time will tell (although I will assert that the same is true for the rats that have been produced by "reputable breeders."  
I do agree that we should all strive to do what's best for rats, but who are we to judge whether someone else was right or wrong in their decision to have a litter?  You can't just give a generic "no" to everyone, otherwise it sounds like an exclusive "club" to me, and I'm not one for those.  Perhaps I took $$ away from breeders in the area by having my 2 litters, but I introduced hundreds of local children to rats,  recruited many new rat lovers, and I think that's a good thing.  So, my personal story is a positive one.  If you are willing to research, spend lots of TIME and MONEY to find appropriate homes, you can have a positive experience and perhaps even promote rats ine the whole process.  
That's what I think Rats Rule should be about!
Kathy  (Ray's mom)

I don't think anyone should breed an animal unless they have a full genetic background of that animal available. I've got a story that can illustrate the tragedy that can come out of breedings with no genetic history, though it involves mice rather than rats.

A friend brought me a mouse that she had "rescued" from a feeder tank at PetCo. Said mouse turned out to be pregnant. She produced 12 beautiful babies. She was a wonderful mama, and all of the babies thrived and lived into adulthood. I found homes for some, kept some, and thought that all was well.

Fast forward a month or so.

One night, a friend who had adopted two of the little boy mice called me in tears because one of them had suddenly died without any signs of ill health.  A week later, her other mouse died while running on its wheel. It was alive one second, dead the next. A few days later, one of the mice that I had kept from the litter also died without any sign of illness. The baby mice kept dying. The mother mouse died at age 8 months.

It has been slightly more than one year since the litter was born. Of the original 12 babies and their mother, all but five died before reaching a year of age-- well below the expected lifespan of a pet mouse. One of the remaining babies has a tumor and will probably not be with us much longer. There is something terribly wrong with their genes-- something that we could not tell by looking at them, and did not become evident until the long chain of deaths began. Anyone who breeds a litter of animals without knowing their genetic history runs the risk of something like this happening.

I didn't even breed the mouse, but I still feel horrible every time that somebody calls to tell me that one of my babies has died and I hear the sorrow in their voice when they say things like, "I thought they lived one and a half or two years. I wasn't ready for this yet..." I feel bad for having talked these wonderful people into adopting animals only to have their lives be so much shorter than what they bargained for.

Thank you to everyone who posted here!  I believe this post was started to speak directly to me!  :-*

I have 3 rats that I just love and I was talking with the kids and they asked if Baby could have babies of her own because she is soooo beautiful.  I told them I would think about it and do some research on the subject.

I don't know what I was thinking!?!  It would be fun?  It would be a good experience for the kids?  The babies would be cute?

I will leave breeding up to the professionals!

Thank you for setting me straight!

I agree and disagree with this last paragraph.  This thread was not intended to prevent everybody on the planet from breeding.  It WAS intended to give people information about RESPONSIBLE breeding, and the reality of what breeding is and the consequences of breeding.  I hold firm to my stance that it is never a good idea to breed two petstore animals of unknown backgrounds and "hope for the best."  Whether it be dogs, cats, gerbils, rats or birds.  

Accidents happen.  Inexperienced small animal owners sometimes get sold two "females" who turn out to be male and female.  People do the best they can in the situations they find themselves in.  If you want your child to experience the "miracle of life", find a litter of animals to foster, or work with a breeder to further the fancy, rather than adding more "might be great pets".  

Not to depress folks, but even well documented lines can have "glitches" from time to time and produce hitherto unknown genetic problems.  I've seen it happen twice - once with a line not bred by me that suddenly out of the blue ended up producing a litter that all had serious heart problems.  I had adopted from this line, with high hopes, but my Rigel developed serious heart issues shortly after coming home.  We did our best to manage his condition but had to put him down just a few weeks after his first birthday.  He was, luckily, never bred.  The other bad juju litter, sadly, happened here.  I had two brothers from extremely well tracked, carefully bred lines end up with bladder cancer at a little over 1.5 years of age.  One of the reasons this particular line has been so popular is for its overall good health, famously great temperment and general lack of tumors and other congenital issues.  Half-siblings and close cousins to this litter have had no history of problems - it seems like there was just a fluke and poor Vicar and Zeek ended up getting an unpredictably bad toss of the genetic dice.  It truly broke my heart - The Vicar was Keoki's heir and succsessor.  As much as it pains me not to have any "grandkids" from the Vicar or Zeek, I am altogether glad they were not bred because it would be worse to have passed the cancer prone genetics on to a new generation.  That is one reason I personally tend to breed my males and females later in their fertile months - gives me more time to track health and personality.  A rat generally is not going to display serious health or behavioral issues when it's 4 months of age, but once they get closer to a year, things can begin popping up, like mammary tumors, weak lungs, cancer, etc.  

And why, oh why, does it seem that planned, carefully thought out breedings can take such work to actually pull off when every sad inbred tumor ridden feeder bin female of breeding age seems to get pregnant at the mere sight of a male (usually a relative.)  What a cruel joke of nature.  I'm having trouble getting my pedigreed girls pregnant of late (yes, I did ELISA test and no, nothing funky.)  Yet I took a poor sad girl with a big ol' mammary tumor in to my quarantine space who had a litter of 7 three days after tumor surgery, while still caring for another 4 week old.  There were more in the 4 week old's litter, but apparently the mother could get out of her cage at her former home and when the people gathered her up to drop off at the charity office, this was the only one they could find.  Shudder!  Apparently, this last (and it WILL be the last ever) litter makes FIVE @#$%& litters for poor one-year old mama.  Some people need to be whacked with the smart stick.  Female + Male + living together at all times + no neutering = a crapload of babies!  I shudder to think what happened to the first 3 litters.  As my mother would say, some people's kids.  If you want to see more about my little rescue mama, you can visit her at www.worldofrats.com/ROUSMissJane.html  Her offspring will be needing homes in the next month or so.  She was ELISA tested and we are now waiting for interpretation of the results.  She did come through surgery nicely, and both her older and younger kids look good, thank goodness.

Lynn and the Ruckus of Rats
www.worldofrats.com/ROUSIndex.html

Yes so why isn't this a sticky topic any more?

I have never considered breeding rats (and probably never will). I have 3 rats (all bought from pet stores) 2 of them were bought from Petsmart and another from a local pet shop. I have to say, I will never buy from pet stores again. The 2 from Petsmart have myco and the one from the local pet shop is smaller than he should be. I urge people NOT to buy from pet shops. Since then, I have been to several rats shows wich the SRC run and have names of breeders - from now on I will only adopt from breeders. :heart:

Because we don't want the whole first page to be sticky topics.  Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.  

You know, you all have done a great job here, I am in tears and have changed my mind.  I have been wanting to breed for months now.  I know I would be a great breeder.  But I have decided to run a rescue instead.  I am going to take in and try to rehome unexpected litters and unwanted ratties.  I have plenty of time for them, I have great vets in my area and will soon have more room for them.  The feeling I got from saving Fred Wilma and the babies she was carrying at the time I bought her has brought me joy every time I get a kiss and cuddle from Fred and play and kiss those babies, everytime I look at those adorable faces, every day I get closer to Wilma trusting me, I know that bringing them home with me from that horrible place was the right thing to do.  So thank you for these stories.  I personally have chosen to save the ratties that are already out there and not breed...even excellent quality ratties.  Thank you so much.

Goober was a nice, friendly, goofy-as-heck little PEW from a feeder rat's litter at Petco. I adopted (not bought) her when she was 5 weeks old, after having handled her since pinkyhood... she was one of the ones that got pregnant when Moody escaped and went over to the females' cage. Now, she's a very disagreeable rat who looks stressed out all the time and likes to bite everything and everyone. As soon as she had babies, she started biting, and hasn't ever stopped...

I feel so bad for her. I can tell she wants to be held and cuddled like she used to be, but she apparently is still guarding her babies, even though they were weaned months ago, and have all gone to new homes. :(

She's not sick, just permanently "on guard" to defend her babies.. never mind that they're not around.  :'(

fascinating...
well, i have no interest in breeding rats... maybe chickens one day...  :D
in addition to everything that i have read here and all over the 'net about good rat breeding, just visiting my breeder's house and seeing all the work and care and time that goes into producing her rats would be enough to convince anyone how hard it is to do it right.    
i leave all to her and people like her.
thanks

I take in any unwanted rat, even if it is from a petstore.   Pet store rats deserve homes as much as breeder rats.  I don't agree with people breeding their rats so they can have more rats...there are plenty of rats out there, go get them don't add to the problem.  There are so many "accidental" litters out there and it has to stop.  My babies are 3 weeks old and it is very obvious which ones are boys.  Now I don't know if that will change but from what I have seen there is no way to NOT know the difference.  It breaks my heart to see how many accidents there are....60 rats?  How can you possibly give 60 rats the love they need? :'(

http://www.freewebs.com/perfect_pets_rat_rescue/

Okay. How about moving it to Rat Tails? Or, better yet, the Reference Desk?

It may actually be more suited to Rat Tails, since it's a thread of stories, not care info per se. I wouldn't put it in the Ref section though; a lot of people never even go there - you can tell by the questions they ask.   ::)

I'm going to re-sticky it here for now... since it's related to breeding, and is meant to discourage backyard and careless breeding, I think it would still be better suited here than in Rat Tails.

I'm trying to keep the number of stickied threads down... I DO have this thread linked in the "Start Here" thread, which was my solution when I unstickied this, but I guess that didn't do as much good as I had hoped.

/me wonders how many newbies ACTUALLY start with Start Here... *sigh*

 sorry.  I didn't start with the "start here". :-[

I don't breed them,I had a great experience with Ivory having babies. When i got Ebony and Ivory the petstore girl said they were both girls (and i thought so too, Apparently Ebony sucked them totally in). When we got home and the rats relaxed, it became obvious Ebony was a boy, but I decided to leave them together because I wanted rat babies. So Ivory got pregnant, and I moved her to a seperate cage after she really show, and got another rat to keep Ebony company. Ivory gave birth to 11 babies, and they all survived. I kept them all and they're all healthy and happy.

I realize now soooo much could have gone wrong, because I knew nothing about Ivory or Ebony, their health, or history. I'm grateful that everything turned out ok, but the babies are extrememly skittish and hate being handled.

Well my rattie family started out as four, 2 boys and 2 girls... One of my boyfriends friends decided it would be funny to let them "play" together, UI know I shouldn't have even let somebody like that touch my rats but i didn't know how he was at the time. That's how we ended up with 13 more ratties. I love all of them dearly. I adopted one out, thanks to this board and 2 more went to a friend. So we ended up keeping 10 of the babies, they are all so precious and have such wonderful personalities, but if I could stop somebody from breeding just for pleasure then I would having this many ratties is so very tough! Lot's of cleaning, and we spend lots of money on food. Spending time with them isn't a problem since, I stay at home and my boyfriend works from home. anyway just wanted to tell my story... :rattysmiley:

I am very new to this website, although I have been a rat fan for years.  I adopted a male rat who I named Elwyn, and his sister Anna(who is pregnant with his kiddos, she came to the shelter that way).  I am fostering her and the babies until they are old enough to go back to Kim at the ARL in Westbrook, ME.  I am hoping to give them a good and happy start in life.  If anyone has any suggestions or anything, do let me know!  llnirish@yahoo.com  I am hoping to have some happy stories to share when the babies are born!! :BlueDumboSmile:

p.s.... Elwyn is going to the vet tomorrow, this will be his LAST litter of babies!!   :shocked2:

Two things to say, first of all I agree with what someone said earlier, how on earth can you properly give 60 rats the love they need?

Well I actually wrote the second thing, and realized it has almost nothing to do with breeding so I felt it doesn't belong.  But as for my two accidental litters that I had to deal with (this was when I was young and my first pet store rats so didn't know what to look for).  Most of the rats died because the mothers were too young and inexperienced.  It was one of the worst periods in my life, having to bury so many babies.  I sincerly believe if a person truly cares about rats that they won't breed without putting an amazing amount of time into considering it and making it their passion in life.  To improve the health and tempermant of rats out ther eis one of the only valid reasons to breed.  

I didn't breed these rats, they were part of a rescue and they show how genetic flaws can be passed on.

  Two years ago, I was told about Emily and her 3 small children.  She had been brought back to a petstore when her owners decided she smelled.  She had been kept with a male even after the babies were born, which meant she was already pregnant again.  Between the 2 litters, she had a total of 12 beautiful and sweet children

I kept Emily and 6 of her children (3 boys and 3 girls).  I also have contact with some of the people who adopted her other children.

Emily was euthanized along with one of her daughters last week because of multiple tumors.  Each had at least one tumor which involved the neck area.  They would have been very difficult to remove.  Anna had a total of 5 tumors.  Emily had 3.  Every daughter she produced (except 1) has developed multiple tumors.  Several have had the tumors develop around the neck too.  The males seem to be wonderfully healthy and tumor free.  A rat who produces this many children with this problem probably has a genetic disposition toward tumors and should never be bred.  Thank goodness none of her children were ever used for breeding.

Emily and her children have been well loved, but should have lived longer.

Yep, I wanted to expand on this a little.. a lot of good breeders have already posted on this thread, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone understand that these things happen to *everyone*.  No matter how much planning, how much research, and how much heart goes into a breeding, nothing is ever certain.  ALL breeders will inevitably have to deal with the heartache of litters that just don't work out as planned, or brought together recessives that were unknown from either line.

I've had it happen myself.. I got two babies with hydrocephalus out of two completely unrelated rats, and I was devastated.  That was and has been one of the worse experiences of my life.. I felt like I had failed those rats.. rats that barely had a chance in this world, rats that *I* was responsible for creating.  However, no amount of researching prior to breeding that litter would have shown me any reason not to do it.. the information I found out after the litter, was only found out because I was asking about a fairly specific and not very common condition... the connections never would have been made if I didn't know what to look for.

Sometimes rats in lines without any known birthing issues will suddenly have some serious problems.  I had that happen with two girls of mine (sisters), they each lost more than 2/3 of their litters due to what I beleive was placental abruptions.  The