Baby rats dissapearing??

Question

my mother rat gave birth to 10 babies.... she must have offed 5 because they went missing about when they were 1 week old.... now the other 5 have reached well 4 did the other she brought out of her house and layed it on the ground dead......... so i took the now 3 week old kids and there mother out of the cage so i can clean it and then i put them back in.... i woke up this morning and 2 were missing and blood was all over her fresh bedding..... i was pretty upset by this when i woke up and called them out and only seen 2 and the mom so i was in disbelief and searched her entire nest only to find the other 2 not there..... i was just wondering why she keeps doing this... i just dont understand... so now i check in on her and her babies almost every minute because i really wanna see these 2 lil rascals get bigger and more playful seeing as how right now there only about 2 inches long and really tiny

Answer 1

Hard to say. Rats will often do this because they feel stressed, threatened, or the babies are ill.

Is she kept in a quiet room?

This is why I do not breed (well, one of the many). It would be too heartbreaking to have the little ones 'disappear'.  

Answer 2

i heard that with a rodents first litter they normally eat them i don't know why but if you are really worried about them disappearing i suppose you could separate them from their mother and you play the mother role and feed them yourself. but i would ask a vet or the pet store or something about what can be done you might not be able to do anything to stop it but its worth a try i suppose

Answer 3

not sure why she would do this unless they were sick or something.  my rat just had 11 babies they will be 15 days old tomorrow.  she is a first time mother and i was worried about the same thing but she did great and i have 11 healthy babies.  i hate that your mother rat did that and i hope the other two babies grow up strong and healthy..check out my videos of my babies on youtube.   my s/n is nucleartrout and my video is titled   rat babies...day 10

Answer 4

rats only kill/eat their young when there is something either seriously wrong with them or they cant produce enough food

Answer 5

Many times mothers will eat babies if they die naturally. Rarely they will kill and eat their offspring as well. I'd guess at least the week old babies died naturally and were eaten. It's impossible to know about the other two.

At three weeks you can safely remove the babies to their own cage. Soak some lab block in soy based baby formula for another two weeks or so until they're fully weaned.

If the babies are different sexes make sure they are separated by four and a half weeks or you'll end up with more and more and more.

Answer 6

Mother rats are really great mothers MOST of the time.  There are instances where they are not good mothers, but often cannibalism isn't seen in rats the way it is in hamsters.  The babies that were aten could have been sick, or could have died and then she 'cleaned up'.  It's possible that many had birth defects that you can't tell are there, but that she can.

Of course, in really young, or stressed mothers, you may see mothers who will harm their babies, but this usually happens within the first 48 hours after birth.  If she's been nursing them/caring for them, I'd think about something else before I'd think she was doing it.  (a dead body will still leak blood, after all...)

Either way, there's unfortunately not much you can do.  Obviously you should make sure she's never bred again in the future, as if it is a birth defect it's genetic, and if it is behavioural it's obviously not something worth risking happening again.