What age does a male rat have to be before he can get a female rat pregnant?

Question

I have 2 female rats, aged 6 months.

Answer 1

i seperate mine at 4 weeks as it CAN happen from as young as this.

Answer 2

I am not going to answer that so just dont breed them

Answer 3

Rats should never be bred before the age of five months as this will be too phsically demanding on them.

Answer 4

Rats reach sexual maturity as early as five weeks of age. This does not mean they should be bred at that point. It sounds like you don't know nearly enough to be breeding, please don't backyard breed:

http://www.petinfopackets.com/aboutbreed...

Answer 5

Well i've heard that for mice its only 6 weeks, so probably around there for rats too.

Answer 6

I would really not recommend breeding your rats unless you know what you're doing.  Rats can produce a ton of babies and unless you know of homes they're all going to go to, it's irresponsible to breed them.

That being said, if you had an incident regarding having your females near males.

"Rats can get pregnant when they are only five weeks old. Gestation is about 24 days. Rats can give birth to between 6 and 18 babies in one litter, and can get pregnant within a few hours of giving birth. A rat can have a dozen babies . Rats generally should be left alone to deliver and clean their rats, but you should call a vet if she is in labor for more than two hours. If any babies are delivered dead it is normal for the mother to eat it. If she does not, you should remove the stillborn when she begins nursing the rest of the litter." http://www.giveusahome.co.uk/database/ra...

Hope that helps!

Answer 7

Ok, I have a little story. I once had some friends who tried to breed their rats for fun!  Surprise! As soon as the male and female got together  they got 2 litters right on top on each other. These guys do not breed like cats and dogs. No matter how much you try to monitor and control them they are going to breed as much and as fast as possible. Before they could blink that had about 40 baby rats and their hands that they didn't know what to do with them. You didn't specifical say you are planning on this and at this time you said you only have 2 females.

However I will say  that I really advise not going down that path because:

1.) there are already enough rats in the world and plenty of domestic ones that need homes

2.) however fun or interesting you are thinking breeding rats might be....believe me, it isn't.

However if you are maybe planning on doing this for scientific purposes (e.g I did have a friend once who bred mice for a science project, she didn't really enjoy it either)  just be really really careful......its a situation that can turn into an utter disaster. Unless you have a friend with a VERY hungry snake :-(

Answer 8

somewere around 6 weeks.