Surprise: Baby Rats!?

Question

I thought that I had gotten my rats from a responsible pet store. When I went in, they were separated into males and females, and I bought two young female rats. One of them just had babies, and I need some advice!

I NEVER wanted to breed rats, so I don't know much about it. The mother has her babies in my top hammock of my Tower cage (four levels), and all three of my other rats are in there. Should I try to move the mother and babies? Does the mom need anything other than Subees' Rat Diet? I have lot of soy nuts in there for protein!\

Thanks!

Answer 1

call the pet store and tell them what happened, and did you make sure the cage you got your rats out of wasn't a breeding cage? you need to separate the male and female babies so that, when they mature in a few weeks, they won't make even more babies......call a vet and ask for advice, and if you can't get big enough cages, or can't take care of them in any way, try to find good homes for them, but also try not to sell them to pet stores. you may get a good price, but pet stores don't always treat the rats good.

Answer 2

Same thing happened to us last week ... we had a "surprise" litter of baby rats!

I asked a question about it here on Y!A and got lots of great responses.  Here's a link to my resolved question:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Hopefully some of the answers I got will help you, too!

Answer 3

There was a lot of helpful information on that last post, but there is one thing I see that every one seems to say "don't touch the babies"

I have been breeding rats on and off for almost 10 years, I have always handled the pups from day one. Handling them early in life lets them know your smell, and gets them ready to be happy pet rats.