Handbreeding, and my Burmese Bloodline Beginning!

June 14, 2011 Handbreeding, and my Burmese Bloodline Beginning!

This is going to be a dual-purpose blog series. First off, I’m going to explain, in stupidly exhaustive detail, what “hand breeding” means, because I’ve seen several people who just don’t understand the method. Secondly, I’m going to walk through the very beginning of a new bloodline.

It IS a lot more time consuming to hand breed than just throwing your rats in a tub together and leaving them there until you’re sure the female’s pregnant, but I’m a firm believer that the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience. The convenience of tub-breeding or “housing,” is that you don’t really have to monitor it. You can assume that, eventually, the female will go into heat, the male will breed her, and eventually there will be babies.

However, with hand-breeding:

1. You know the exact date of conception, which means you can predict the due date within a day or two. The benefits to this should be obvious. Knowing your doe is due “around X date” or “after X date” can make planning and staggering your litters a pain in the butt, and doesn’t look very professional. Secondly, there are serious medical drawbacks to not knowing your doe’s due date. Is she spotting a week early? That’s a very bad sign. Is she spotting the day she’s due? That’s ok. Is she a day overdue? That’s okay. Is she three days overdue? That’s not okay. You need to know when you should worry and get a vet’s involvement.

2. Your doe and buck are much more likely to be productive. House a buck with a doe, and personality conflicts can arise. Two rats who’ve spent a week fighting aren’t necessarily going to want to “do the bangs,” when she’s in heat (and yes, a female can and will refuse to breed a buck she dislikes, I’ve seen it several times.) They may injure each other, depending on how much they don’t like each other. And bucks, especially older bucks, can get bored with a female they’re familiar with. House them with a fresh new girl in heat, in a clean tub without distractions, and he’ll get to work. House him long-term with a doe in a cage sized for multiple rats to live long-term, with available food, hammocks and toys, and he may well just ignore her when she comes a-knockin.

3. When you’re handling both parents every day, and weighing the mother daily, you’re much more alert to changes in her condition. A sudden weight dump usually means she’s lost the litter. If she goes into heat, you know she didn’t “take.” You lose that hands-on immediacy when you just toss 2 rats in a cage together.

4. If you’re not monitoring closely enough, or the female is one of those who doesn’t show a pregnancy because she’s already fat, or only carrying a few babies – you could end up double-breeding her if you leave the male in too long. Female rats go into estrus directly after delivery, and can be re-bred immediately. That means you could have a girl nursing one litter (and nursing females cannot be e-spayed, because it disrupts their hormones and cuts through mammary tissue) while pregnant with another that will be born when the first litter is only 3 weeks old!

So, I’m starting my new Burmese line, and of course, I’m planning to hand-breed.

Here’s the lovely TMCC Puck, a Standard (Seal) Burmese Dumbo Buck.

Nice profile!

Heck, here’s another one, because he’s just so darn cute!

Awww!

TMCC were kind enough to loan him to me to start my line (since he’s an adult, part of their breeding program, and clearly a well-loved pet, of course they did NOT want to just give him to me to keep!) and to provide them with an outcross. We’ll be splitting the litter between the two ratteries.

So, every day, I have to check BVR Delphinus (known hereafter as Del!) several times a day to see if she’s in heat. Most does will go into heat around or after sunset, but because I’m home, I check her during the day as well. Checking for heat involves knowing the signs of a girl in heat. Those include:

1. Jumpiness. Sometimes when you touch a girl’s rump she’ll hop forward, or become very jittery.

2. Ear-fluttering. Especially if you grasp her around the middle/rump.

3. Back-arching or lodorsis. Again, especially if you’re grasping her around the middle/rump, or stroking her spine.

4. Vaginal gaping, wetness, and color change. Normally, a female rat’s vaginal opening is the same color as the rest of her skin and mostly closed. When in heat, often the vagina will gape wide open, may secret wetness, and may flush a bright pink/purple.

So, I pick up Del (hi Del!) who is one of the sweetest, calmest and most dangly girls in my rattery.

Del Dangling

And I check her to see if she’s in heat.

Nope.

You can see Del’s had a previous litter by the prominence of her nipples. You can also see that her vaginal area is closed and pale. No heat today! Rats tend to have a 4-5 day heat cycle though, so you should be able to catch your girl in heat if you check them every day.

I have an alarm that goes off at 10:30pm every night, to remind me to weigh my girl. Weighing at the same time every night will give much more consistent results, since rats, like people, are creatures of habit who tend to eat, drink, sleep, etc at the same times every day unless some outside force changes their routine. Weighing before the girl goes into heat and breeds gives you a nice baseline. If you know how much she’s supposed to weigh, then when she begins to gain weight after breeding, you’ll know exactly how much is pregnancy weight and how much is normal daily fluctuation.

Yum, rice krispies!

So Del goes onto the scale (along with a few rice krispies to keep her still!)

"What're you doing out there?"

And the weight gets recorded in my handy little notebook. All weights at the end of the pregnancy are transferred to a spreadsheet in my computer, as I continue to accrue information to help me predict normal weight gains.

We’ll check back in with Del later tonight to see if she’s in heat yet!

Tags: handbreeding, rats: breeding

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