They were born last night around midnight... They're ugly lil bastards... They look like little larvae with legs. There looks to be about 10-12, but it's hard to get an accurate count, cause the mom (Jude) is constantly overtop of them keeping them warm and letting them nurse. I'll have andrea take some pictures and put them up.

Anyway, we're happy.

[UPDATED: PICS BELOW!]

You should post a video or at least some photos.

He posted photos in a previous thread

I wanna see the rat babies!

They look like they would be good deep fried.

That's really neat. I had gerbils (my mother wouldn't have tolerated mice or rats) when I was a kid but they ate each other. Whose the baby father?

Sarn.

the father is Little Jon, a white furred, red eyed, creeper of a rat.

he's named after me.

I call him Lil' J.

So what do you call your penis?

Willy.

sure are ugly creatures

i think they look like little baby piglets

As opposed to Adult Piglets?

SHUT YOUR FACE

looks like something I dropped in the toilet this one time

Looks like BBQ Pork from seedy Chinese food joints

Lmao. This man speaks the truth.

Congratulations!

A few tips, just in case, if I may...

1. Dad must be separated from mom & the nest right away, or there's a chance he'll knock her up again, becoming pregnant again can become fatal for mom so soon after giving birth.

2. DON'T!!!! touch/pick up the babies, in fact, leave them alone as much as you can. So, no more pictures. No leaning over the cage and peeking in, only very silently when they're sleeping. If you have a separate room where they can be without being disturbed, place them there. A disturbed mother (especially a first time mother) might stress out by the slightest thing and will neglect to take care of her babies, so they will die. If you handle them, she could even end up eating them. Don't clean the living space for a while, this will definitely cause too much stress.

3. Separate the girls and the boys in a few weeks (when they're old enough to tell the sexes). This you can do by picking them up by the tail and look at their rear ends. Just find a good picture on the internet which tells you how you can see the difference. If you don't you'll soon have a hundred unhealthy inbreds.

4. Please read up on taking care of a nest if you don't have any experience with it. It seems simple, but it could go wrong easily.

Best of luck!

This myth needs to die. Mother animals do not abandon or kill their children just because some big mean human touched them!

Better than everything ORJ_JoS said :

Kill them with fire. The world does not need more rats.

I've had pet rats and mice for years (still have mice), I know many professional breeders of rats and mice and I frequent a breeders forum on a daily basis. Trust me. I've seen this go wrong sooooo many times.

It's not that she will kill them because they 'smell of human', but she will get stressed out, which may result in killing/eating them.

Sometimes a mother eats her babies for no apparent reason at all.

What I was trying to say is, nothing causes more stress to a mother than handling her newborns.

I -know- what I'm talking about.

I read it as "BAT RABIES"

They are so cuuuute!!!

This makes an awesome mental image. Thank you for that

it just reminded me of The Office

Agreed. I have two cages and we separated them a couple days after it was apparent she was pregnant (which was only about a day or two before she gave birth. They'll remain separated until the babies are old enough to be on their own (about 3 weeks). We were concerned about her missing out on the social aspect, so we took her out periodically to keep her happy and whatnot.

I'm going to partially agree and partially disagree here. Granted this is my first time breeding, but all the research I've done and my gut instinct tells me not to be too distant. It's my belief that she needs to have a break from the babies every so often (and this belief is supported by the research I've done). So we're pulling her out of the cage for 15 to 20 minutes 2 or 3 times a day. During those times, we're checking on the babies which includes moving them around just a bit to make sure we can see the milk line on each of them and make sure they're all still alive and breathing. That said, we are being careful to give Jude time alone with them and not be overly bothersome.

Yep, I'm with you here. Not only do I not want inbreeds, but I've also read that they will get pregnant at that young age and that can cause complications because they're so small. We'll be separating the sexes as soon as I can differentiate them.[/quote]

I hope you can see from my responses to your suggestions, that I'm coming into this well researched and well prepared. I think everything will be fine. Thanks for the advice anyway, though, and if you have any other suggestions or want to provide alternate viewpoints on the touching/not touching babies, feel free. I'm always open to suggestions.

Ah, good. Looks like you'll be fine then. And yes, it's okay to handle the mother just as long as you take care not to disturb the nest when she's around.

Don't get me wrong you know, not trying to be a wiseguy here, it's just that I really love rats and mice and I'm really involved with them. So when I see someone has a nest, I automatically rush in with these things.

Because on the other forum I mentioned, so often we get new members posting 'HELP MY MOUSE IS EATING HER BABIES!!11'... often the nest just 'happens' to people who just bought their pets and they have no clue what to do.

Another good tip is to make sure the mother gets enough proteins, this helps producing the milk for her babies. So you can give her a little bit of kitten milk or dry cat food that contains meat or fish.

Thanks for the tip.

And yeah the breeding was a conscious decision. We were only getting females up to this point to avoid breeding.. Then we decided to give it a shot for the experience. Sadly, most of the babies are going to end up being sold to a friend of mine who has snakes as feeders. Kinda sad, but I guess it's just the circle of life.

Awesome.

The babies are starting to squirm around quite a bit.. We should start seeing fur growing in the next day or so. We'll get more pictures up once they start to change noticeably.

can't wait ^_^
I love rats

poplars

Why would you buy BBQ pork from seedy chinese food joints?

disgusting

My cats would love this excellent entree!

I don't gotta buy it to know what it looks like :downs:

Good point.

And is there even such thing as a non seedy Chinese food place?

Chinese food rocks though.