Pregnant Rats

[Elaken]

This is just kinda of to lament.  I was catching up on the topics, and I read about someone who had their baby end up pregnant.  I would like to get rats from Breeders, but so far Arizona does not seem to have too many.  So I have always gotten mine from pet stores, and luckily they have all been healthy and relatively easy to socialize.  But a couple years back I got two females from a pet store and they both ended up pregnant.  It was the most horrifying and wonderful experience.  My first rat, Beezlebub had nine babies, and then Livingstone shortly later had 12.  They were so bad at being mothers, I assume because they were young.  Livingstone would not feed her children after the first day, so it was now up to Beelzebub to take care of them all, and she herself ignored the children mostly.  When she didnt' want them to feed anymore she would just walk away and have them drop off, they fed by us putting them near her.  We tried to help augment the feeding, but unfortunately we did not have that time commitment nor enough knowledge.  So everyday or so I would have another baby to bury, we ended up losing fifteen of them.  That was the most traumatic time of my life.  But oh my gosh!!  To watch those remaining six grow up!  To know them since they were a baby, it is incredible.  But I just wanted to share, since I figured only you guys could understand having to bury 15 precious babies in a few week time span.