Rat babies?!?

Question

I am thinking of getting 2 rats (male and female) and I'm just wondering what the average litter size is? Thank you for your time and help! :)

Answer 1

do not breed until you have read up more on rats. alot of the time, when you buy 2 different rats and put them together, they get hostile toward each other. if you buy them as a pair, chances are they are siblings, which also isnt good. if you can find a pair that will accomodate each others presence and they decide to mate, the litter will be 10 or less mice.

Answer 2

six to twelve is not uncommon,remember to segregate the sexes as they will inbreed at an early age....p.s watch the cats

Answer 3

it can have upto 22abies but that doesnt hapen ever oftern.

the average is about 10 -14 ruffley i used to have a rat but it died when it had it babies

good luck

Answer 4

an average litter is around 5-8 there can be more or less, if you get too many you can give it to your local pet shop and they'll either pay you or give you food

Answer 5

I have only had one rat that had a small litter of 9. My other litters totaled 16, 18, and 20. The rat that had the 18 babies, all of them lived and were healthy and happy. And that is when I was feeding rat food to my girls. I went through 20 pounds of rat food every 2 weeks when the babies started getting weaned. Having baby rats can get expensive. I will never ever do it again. To much of a headache. But boy are those babies adorable. You also have to think if your rat has 16 babies what will you do with them. Males can impregnate a female at the the age of 8 weeks old and the female can get pregnant at the age of 6 weeks old. If I were you I would get 2 females or 2 males. Babies are cute but if you keep putting the male and female together she will keep having babies. Rats go into heat every 4 to 6 days. Just think about it before you do it. I have been raising and breeding rats for 6 almost 7 years now. Now all I do is take some out of bad homes and raise them. Having all those babies got very expensive and was a headache at times. And you have to be able to devote alot of time to them when there born to start socializing them so that they are friendly and not mean.

Answer 6

i read somewhere 7-9 but i would expect at most 5

Answer 7

Please, do NOT breed your rats! Especially if you are just "thinking about it." You need to be certain you want to do this, and research! It takes several years to be a good breeder, and you need a mentor who can help and teach you. Rats from petstore are generally not too healthy, and breeding them will just create more unhealthy rats, and add the already surplus in the rat population. There are many homeless rats, and we don't need to add to this.

But to answer your question, rats can have up to 21 rittens, even though the mother can't feed that many at one time. She will often put them into two piles, and rotate feeding. I'm not sure on the average size. It may depend on age, but I don't know.

Please, just don't breed. I may have seemed rude, but it's only because I want the best for the animals.

Answer 8

i got mice once and they gave birth to 15 babies but i think since rats are larger they should get 7-12 babies

Answer 9

about 6 to 10 but they will have about two litters a week so be carful so in a year you will have 920 babies at most.

Answer 10

I've had several litters of babies, around 9 now. The litter sizes have been 12, 9, 7, and 4 babies. Other rat-keepers in the Fancy have had averages of 14 to 18 babies. The grand-daddy of all litter sizes though has got to be the 22 babies born to a breeder on the West Coast. Sadly not all of them lived.

Does only have 10 nipples so in the large litters mothers have a tendency to put their babies into two separate groups and feed them alternately.

It's a throwback to the wild, the instinct to have so many babies, so often. Rats are prey animals. They are food for so many different animals that with a large litter there is the chance that at least a few babies will survive the onslaught to grow into adulthood and reproduce themselves.

http://spazrats.tripod.com

Answer 11

I wouldn't reccomend this as rats need company of their own kind and it is not fair to leave either rat on their own or to keep back-breeding your female. If you are wanting to breed I would get either 2 males or 2 females for now until you get used to looking after rats before making the choice to breed them. Look up rat breeding in google for some important information before breeding and don't breed before at least 5 months old.

If you are getting your rats from a pet shop make sure to ask the assistant where the rats came from as they could be related if they bought the full litter and seperated them into boys and girls. You dont want to be breeding brother and sister!

I've had 2 rat litters and each had 9 babies a piece.