I have a baby rat... need help?

Question

i have 3 female rats as pets all thanks to my snakes being picky about their food. lol... now i have aquired yet another due to the pickiness of our 2 month old red tail boa... but this one is much younger than the other ones were. she is a pinkie. she is very active and vocal. I am keeping her warm in an empty tank with carefresh bedding and an extra heating lamp... she is doing fairly well. any tips on caring for these tiny babies? she is a fighter and we dont want to loose her.

Answer 1

Is she a pinkie pinkie? Or a fuzzy?

You can feed her kitten formula, warmed up, every 2 hours and keep her warm, watch for a small white line called the milk band across her tummy.

this may help:

Q: My rat won’t nurse even though I’ve left them with her overnight. What do I do?

A: If your mum won’t nurse, you have two options: the first is to find another nursing doe in your area to foster them and the second is to try hand raising them. I strongly advise trying the first option if at all possible as hand rearing newborn rats is extremely difficult at best. The old adage says that fortune favors the prepared mind, so it’s not a bad idea to contact breeders in your area if at all possible before your doe delivers so you can set up a potential surrogate mother to nurse your litter if something goes wrong. I find that if you have a back up plan in place, you rarely need it. It’s when you don’t that things go haywire. If you do find that you have to hand raise the babies, you will need to lay in a supply of kitten milk replacer (KMR and Esbilac are good brands) and a small syringe with a pipette tip for the top. You will also want a heating pad and a towel for swaddling. The babies can be nursed by gently inserting the piptette tip into their mouths and allowing the formula to slowly dribble into them. They may choke and bubble milk from their noses and the process is a very messy one, so take it slowly! Hopefully you will see a creamy milk band begin to stretch across their bellies. You will also need to help the babies express their bowels and bladders. Moisten a cotton ball with warm, not hot, water and gently swab the r****m and genitals until urine or f***s is expressed. Clean the entire baby off with a new warm, damp cotton ball and place back under light towelling. You will want to be sure the heating pad is kept no higher than medium as the babies cannot get off the pad if it is too warm. For safety, keep the babies on a folded towel placed on the pad rather than directly on it. You will need to feed the newborns every couple of hours for the first week, so prepare for sleep deprivation as you would with a newborn human.

Answer 2

I hope your NOT planning to feed that baby rat to the snakes!  

Answer 3

Check out my site and see if that helps

http://sites.google.com/site/guineapigsf...