Around 10:30pm when my weighing alarm went off, Del looked like she was in the first stages of going into heat. She was jumpier than usual, her vaginal opening looked a bit more open and swollen than usual, and her nipples were very pink. I took her daily weight and put her back in her cage.

By 11pm she was in full blown heat.

You can see how much more open her vaginal opening is now than it was this afternoon.  She was also hopping forward when her rump was tickled, and then vibrating her ears when she landed. I noted next to her date for the day in my notebook that she was in heat, and paired. It was time to put these crazy kids together in the honeymoon suite!

"Come here often?"

There was a lot of exploring the tub on Puck’s part, some shoving of bedding, getting a drink, and a little checking out of the new lady friend. He wasn’t nearly as interested as I’d hoped, but Del was only just starting her heat, so it was possible that she just wasn’t that interesting yet. I generally wait around until I can observe a mating, but after a half an hour, I got bored and went downstairs to let them “cook” a little.

At about 11:45 I went back upstairs and observed a quick mating. There’s a reason that Puck’s breeders refer to this act as “the bangs” – it is over and done in a HURRY. (Side note: if you think you can let your boy and girl rats play together and get between them quick enough, you are wrong!) Usually you just hear a thumping, and then see the boy on his haunches cleaning himself off.

Picking up Del to check her out, I observed the elusive vaginal plug. In my experience, it usually takes more time to form a plug, so I guess Puck was VERY busy when I went downstairs! A plug is formed from hardened waxy secretions from a male’s secondary sex glands, and makes sure the little swimmers stay where they need to stay! In my experience, visualization of the plug always indicates a successful mating, so I’m hopeful we’ll be seeing babies in 21-23 days!

Now I turn off the lights and leave them together for the night. Next to today’s date and weight, I note “in heat, paired, obs. breeding, plug” in my notebook.

Then I go downstairs to my copy of Breeder’s Assistant and add the two of them in the Mating section, noting the time of the observed mating and the initial breeding weight in the “notes” section to help me keep track of things. According to Breeder’s Assistant, Del should be due on July 6 – though considering the lateness of the breeding, July 7 would be an equally valid due date.

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!

I started breeding rats in 1994. In that time, lots and lots has changed about the rat-fancy and the world. We know a lot more now than we did then! The internet is actually open and accessible and full of information now, instead of being enclaved and restricted to majordomo lists and BBS message boards. New medical and nutritional information is available. There’s actually pedigreed rats widely available now. More and more ratteries are keeping open health information on their websites and updating NARR.

That means that as those times were changing, I did a lot of things I wouldn’t do now. I’m not ashamed of them. Some of them were just the way we did things back then. Some of them, I didn’t have the information to know better. Some of them illustrated to me why I never want to do it again. That’s what all those years of experience mean.

When I recovered my rattery after my divorce and re-started it with quality pedigreed rats, the fact that I, for many years, bred with petstore rats was never a secret. It’s not a secret now. Look to any rattery that started in 2000 or earlier, and you will find that 99% of them did. Does that mean it’s still okay to do? I don’t support the practice, no. Just because we used to keep slaves and prevent women from voting and rub cocaine on baby’s gums to soothe their teething pains doesn’t mean we should do that now, either.

The information is on my page if you want to look at it. You can see my past litters. You can see my Bridge pages.  You can go back in this blog! You can see the mistakes I’ve made and the places I’ve pushed through and the places I’ve given up. They’re not secrets either.

I’ve mentored TWO ratteries. The FarStar Rattery and So Licky Rattery. Anyone else who says I’m mentoring them isn’t telling the truth. I’ve been more than happy to act as a sounding board for my other breeder friends when they’re contemplating this or that – as they have acted to me – but as for actual mentoring, so far it is just FarStar and So Licky. No one else.

I’ve never culled, I’ve never bred feeders, and I’ve never re-homed retired breeders. I don’t euthanize healthy “hayburners” I’ve decided not to use in my breeding program. I don’t keep my rats outdoors. My rattery isn’t a secret, and my rats are happy and healthy – ask my vet! Her contact information is available on my site!

Do you have a question? Feel free to ask! I’ll be more than glad to answer!

Of course, that sounds easy, and if you look at my recent blog history, you can see several detours and sidesteps I’ve had to make in my recent breeding plans. You might say, well, I’m clearly not sticking to MY plans! But the plans should always have room to maneuver for reasons of health, temperament, or the like. But the plans themselves should stay as close to your original as possible.

Why bother to have plans, you might ask? Because plans are the easiest – maybe the only – way to make sure you’re not overbreeding.

There was a period in my breeding program where I had no plan. When I had healthy females that I thought were high quality and who might produce what I wanted, if I noticed they were in heat and I had space for the litter, they got bred. I don’t even know if it was a “breeding program,” at that point, so much as just producing rats. They were good rats, all of them were fine pets and enriched the lives of their adopters, but they didn’t really move my goals forward very much compared to how many of them I was producing.

You should always have a goal in mind as you breed – and since health and temperament are a given, not goals – those will tend to be in color, conformation, and longevity. Sit down with your breeding population and ask yourself who the real stars are. Figure out who they need to be bred to in order to actually move your plans forward. Don’t do breedings because you just feel like you need more baby rats, do them for very specific reasons and with very specific goals in mind.

For every breeding you do that doesn’t move your goals forward, re-evaluate. Figure out what you can do in order to salvage it. Stay as close to your original plans as you can, but don’t be afraid to detour a bit – as long as you know where the detour is going and how to get back to the main road again. And any time you see a breeding in your plans that is “just because” and you can’t really think of a specific reason you want those babies, you just do… reevaluate. Do you really need that breeding?

Luckily for me, I have an awesome husband who’ve very invested in my rats, who I can always count on to help. But not everyone has that. I hear from a lot of rat fanciers about how their husband or parents hate, or barely tolerate, their pets. And I also know that a lot of fanciers are disabled, since these little creatures are great pets for someone who just can’t have a large pet who needs letting out or who might knock things off shelves.

So what happens to your rats if you are too sick to clean their cages, or even feed and water them for a couple of days? What if you go to the hospital and have to be away from home for a period of time? Have you made arrangements for someone to care for your pets in an emergency? Do you have a friend or family member who is willing and able to come and take over your pets’ care for an extended period of time?

I’ve heard about fanciers who’ve gotten into accidents or suffered a sudden illness whose family has summarily rid them of their pets – and not always in the best ways. Do you have a rescue specifically lined up so that your family members know that if they MUST get rid of your pets, they go somewhere safe?

What about rats you’ve gotten from breeders? All ethical breeders have clauses in their contracts stating they want to get their rats back if the owner can no longer care for them. Do you have paperwork clearly identifying which of your rats are from breeders and the contact information?

I’ve heard about a fancier with quite a few rats who died a few years back, and her rats all ended up in rescue – a rescue that refused to allow the breeders who had adopted to this fancier to reclaim their rats.  That’s an unfair reward for the breeder who trusted them with their rats.

Keep in mind that you cannot prepare for everything. There’s no telling when you might suddenly get very sick or get into an accident and be no longer able to care for your rats.

The best thing to do is to make a folder that includes pictures and identification of each of your rats. Vet records should be included, and any contracts connected to that rat from the breeder or rescue you may have gotten them from. Include the name and contact information for the friend or rescue you’d like your rats to go to if you can no longer care from them, and what you’d like done with their supplies.

It’s not a nice thought, but if the time comes when your own medical care no longer enables you to care for your rats, make sure they aren’t left out in the cold!

Because I try not to breed more litters than are necessary and due to the age of my upcoming breed-stock girls, I will not have babies available to adopt until this fall.

Because the Burmese litter I’ll be doing right after the NIRO spring show is a co-breed, and because it is the start of a whole new bloodline here, there will be no available babies in that litter. TMCC and BVR will be splitting the litter evenly, and I’ll be keeping all of mine to carefully watch and select in order to found the new line. Because there’s very limited health information available about TMCC Demetrius’ pedigree, I wouldn’t feel comfortable selecting from only 2-3 rats.

I won’t feel comfortable breeding Sparks and Spike any earlier than 8 months, which means I’ll start trying to catch them in heat in August. Even if I catch them on the first go, their babies won’t be ready to go until September at the earliest, and possibly October, just before we shut down breeding for the RFL show Pre-Show Isolation. The good news is that both of those litters should have plenty of babies available to pet adopters, if they happen!

My post-RFL litters will have one available to pet adopters (FSTR Arrakis’ litter) and one that most likely will not (BVR Jolt’s litter) because again, that litter is a line-builder and I need to have adequate selection from in the future.

Bottom line is, if you’re interested in a BVR rat, there will be very limited adoption opportunities this year, so if you’re on my waiting list, there will indeed be a wait. This allows me to build better bloodlines to work from, and not to add more than necessary to the pet overpopulation issues by breeding “extra” litters.

Hatter never had a ton of interest even when he was younger, and his fertility was in doubt when repeated breedings to ODD Mountain Chickadee went without pregnancy. She finally did get pregnant, after many observed couplings, so clearly there were at least some good bullets in his gun then.

Now, trying to pair him with Sobe when she was obviously in heat and interested was just sad. He had no interest whatsoever. He sniffed her and followed her a bit, but never even attempted to breed. He groomed her head a little and then went to sleep. Repeated attempts pretty much resulted in the same thing, so I’ve decided to end the attempt. There’s no point in getting Sobe all het up and hormonal with an old male who isn’t the slightest bit interested and won’t even try.

So Hatter and Sobe are both going to a well-earned retirement status, and I’m stepping back a few to another branch of the family. Sobe and Pippin are both descended from side-bloodlines of the Black Satin line through BVR-FSTR Mimsey, through FSTR Bread Crusts and FSTR Popsicle Sticks. Because of that, I’m going to be using their Agouti son, BVR Jolt, to re-jump the line.

The problem is that, aside from Pippin and Jolt, I have no other un-colored (Black or Agouti) rats to breed from out of that line. Pippin will likely not be successfully able to breed by the time any of the does I have now available are old enough to breed, and that leaves the bulk of expectations on Jolt.  The best doe that I have available to breed to him is going to be BVR Black-Eyed Susan, simply because she’s a very nice, very dark self Russian Blue girl, whose father is BVR Jazz Chicken (Sobe’s brother) and so she is also descended from that same line. I wish I had a Black or Agouti girl to use with Jolt, but lacking that, Susan is a really nice-looking girl who I hope improves as she ages.

I’ll have to spend a lot of time cleaning out the recessives in this line before it can really be “Black Satin” again. My goal is to have at least 2 generations of all-Black litters before I can consider the line “working” again, and available to be used as an outcross by others. And of course, never neglecting the health, temperament and conformation that’s always been a highlight of the Black Satin line.

The internet used to buzz about how female rats would suffer from “pelvic fusion” around 1 year of age, making it impossible or very dangerous to bear young at that point, due to the fact their pelvic bones would not flex during labor. We now know this is a bit of wild misinformation based on guinea pigs, who not only suffer pelvic fusion if not bred, but whose young are born fully haired and with very large heads, making any labor somewhat hazardous. Rat pinkies on the other hand, are very small and are usually birthed without any sort of complication. Complications do happen in rat labors, but they are the exception, not the rule. In most cases, they’re a freak occurrence, usually stemming from an infection in the uterus that the breeder had no way of detecting or treating until it was too late. In some cases, labor difficulties can run in bloodlines, and it is very unwise to re-breed a doe who’s had birthing difficulties, or to breed any of her daughters. Of course, the older a doe is, the higher her risk of complication, simply because older rats tend to be less robust and more prone to things like infections and tumors over time.

The drawbacks of using males late in life tends to be in decreased fertility, and sometimes decreased interest. After a lifetime of not breeding and the sedentary lifestyle afforded most pet rats, a male rat may not have any interest in a doe, and if he has the interest, he still may not have as much ability as we’d like. Still, using a male well into his lifespan and certainly well past the “hormone hump” that turns some male rats into bullies is well worth the time. Selection for temperament does wonders to eliminate this danger – none of my rats have had any issues with introductions for years, even when being introduced to males from strange bloodlines – but its always better to be safe than sorry.

The other drawback of late breeding is one that’s particularly heart-breaking. When you wait until your rats are halfway or most of the way through their lifespan to breed them, if can be impossible to breed them again. Most of the time, I’m a fan of breeding a rat only a single time, but sometimes you have to “backtrack” a line because either the pedigree or the rat itself on the first breeding “fell through” and isn’t usable anymore. In these cases, you often want to use the other rat in the discarded breeding, because when you bred them, they were the best example for that bloodline to use. If your best buck is suddenly unusable, you’d want to put you best doe with the second-best buck, and none of her first litter would be useable because of whatever knocked the father out of the line.

Sometimes, it’s simply not possible to use a doe or buck a second time when you leave their breeding so late. In those circumstances, you often have to scramble for relatives, looking for rats who are as close to the one you can’t use without being contaminated as you can. In those cases, you sometimes have to lose a generation or two of breeding in an effort to find a “clean” line you can use, and then you may need to clean out recessives that you weren’t planning on using.

I still believe that waiting until 8-10 months on a doe is best, and 12-15 months on a buck, is best. It gives you the broadest sense of their health and temperament and adult coat without going too far into the realm of health risks. But sometimes it can be so difficult!

I used to separate the baby cages at 5 weeks into a girl’s cage and a boy’s cage, moving mom with the girls and putting dad in with the boys for a little extra grownup socializing. But recently I’ve seen some very good results with moving the babies into an established gender-only cage full of related adults who are not necessarily their parents. Poor mom gets a break from the constant leeches who still want to hang off her, and the babies get a lot more socialization than they otherwise would.

I feel it’s important to give babies some socialization with other adult rats, because they need to learn how rats interact with each other. A rescuer from the House Rabbit Society was helping me out when I wanted to adopt a buddy for my pet-store bought boy, pointing out how very difficult it can be to introduce adult rabbits who have lived alone for their whole lives. Essentially, by being separated from their mothers at such a young age and then sold off individually, many rabbits never learn to “speak rabbit” and have trouble learning to communicate with other rabbits in a reasonable manner. That made a lot of sense to me (and my next rabbits will be littermates!) and I see some of the same thing with rats.A lot of rats bought as singletons, or even sometimes as pairs when both are babies, have trouble with social interaction with other rats. They’re not necessarily aggressive, they’re just sort of socially retarded. They may really annoy other rats by behaving inappropriately and over-excitedly when introduced to new cagemates. Some may be aggressive, or fearful. Most can certainly learn to behave appropriately if introduced to a nicely socialized and mellow new cagemate, but if the new cagemate is also socially retarded, aggressive or fearful, it can be a real recipe for disaster.

Of course, there’s absolutely no way to guarantee the baby you produce or buy will get along with everyone. Some rats are just jerks, or are mentally ill, or just don’t like other rats. But I feel like it’s helpful to maximize a young rat’s social horizons before they go to a new home by moving them in with an established cage of adults. They get to actually see a social heirarchy in action, are forced to learn the “rules” for sharing food, water and hammock space, see and participate in social grooming with adults who are not their mothers – all of this at a time when they are too young for the established cage to really consider them a threat for territory or mates, due to their smallness and sexual immaturity.

I think this has benefits both for rats who are going to move into established cages in other households, as well as those who are going off to live as a pair and may need to accommodate a new cagemate some months down the line.  One tries never to neglect properly socializing a litter of babies to like people, but it’s important not to neglect socializing them to other rats as well!

It’s also important to note that all my rats are related genetically and all have been bred to have very rat-friendly temperaments. Additionally, the baby introductions happen in neutral territory and then they move into a freshly washed and disinfected cage that no one feels territorial about.  If you have ANY doubts about the temperaments of the adults in the cage, I wouldn’t recommend this!

May I say… bull.

I’m gonna preface this blog by saying that I think there are too many people in the world right now who are breeding rats and calling themselves a rattery, but not making any effort to actually do it well. These people are not putting forth the effort to obtain pedigreed, healthy breeding stock; to create and update a good, legible website; to keep open health records and obtain quality veterinary care and information; and who produce way too many low quality litters in substandard conditions. I will continue to do everything in my power to discourage THOSE people. They are not who I am talking about.

I do believe that there is a large contingent of breeders out there who want to do better. They want to start right, and if they’ve made a mistake and started wrong, they want to correct and get a fresh start. I don’t think anyone really starts out thinking they want to produce mill-level animals, let them get sick, not keep them clean, not care for them properly, and eventually burn out – or worse, continue producing with their eyes and ears closed against the truth. No one starts out with a dream of being sub-standard.

I think a lot of new breeders are met by a wall of silence from established breeders, and get discouraged about the possibility of anything better. Or they fall in with the kind of breeders who have no standards, who teach them that it’s fine to breed from unpedigreed rats because “we all start there,” that health information isn’t important, that you can breed 3-5 litters a month just fine, etc. Gradually, they lose sight of the bigger, better picture. They don’t produce rats for any reason aside from producing more mediocre rats.

But new breeders are an absolute boon to the fancy. When I first decided to join a community of rat breeders, there were about 11 of us in the initial formation. Of those 11 breeders, only 3 of those are still breeding. Without an infusion of “fresh blood” in the fancy, clubs and communities will atrophy and gradually die, or shrink into total isolation.

New breeders also bring in new energy and new ideas. When you’ve done the same thing the same way for years and years, it’s easy to fall into a rut. Someone with fresher eyes asking “why do we do it this way?” or even “Would it be better if we did X instead?” can really be like shining a light onto a problem you might not even know was there.  Things can get streamlined, ways of saying or doing things can move from standard to extraordinary, and sometimes you look hard at the way you’ve been doing things and realizing it’s really not the best way.

Personally, as a breeder, I am constantly learning. There have been several specific things that Tiffany Robbins from So Licky Rattery, who I’m very proud to have helped mentor, has pointed out to me that were such great ideas that I had to “steal” them from her! Things I might never have thought of on my own, because it was already “good enough” – but Tiffany made it exceptional!

I’ve heard new breeders saying that it’s impossible to do things “right” from the beginning. After all, very few of us actually started out correctly, with properly pedigreed rats from the get-go, open health information and a well-made website. That the rest of us got to start out “easy” and then improve as we were able to. To those people, I would like to point out someone I admire greatly, Beth from Moonlit Waters Rattery.

Check out that website – clean, legible, and not full of crazy clipart. She’s got every one of her resident rats listed, even the ones who are pet-registered, with pictures and pedigrees. The pedigrees contain health and longevity information. She’s got copious health and temperament notes on each individual page. She’s got an up-to-date Rainbow Bridge page. She’s got links to breeders she feels are reputable and that she wants to work with. She’s got clearly defined breeding goals that are limited and workable in scope. She’s a member of a club, an active part of online rat communities, and has been showing her rats since 2008.

And the best part? She hasn’t bred a single litter. That’s right, this is all PREPARATION. She’s lived out the life spans of several rats from breeders, noting health challenges and working through them with veterinary care. She’s made contacts with a lot of breeders she may want to get breeding stock from, and proved herself trustworthy, responsible, and not about to vanish when things get tough. She’s been watching and clerking shows for a few years and knows what to look for in good breeding stock, she’s seen a lot of local stock up close, and she’s got notes on what bloodlines she wants to get rats from.

Anyone can do what Beth is doing! It’s challenging, but not impossible! I would have no hesitation whatsoever in providing Beth with breeding stock to start her lines, and I’m pretty sure none of the other URSA breeders would hesitate. It is very possible to be a new breeder and still be a strong, contributing member of a community and rise to the challenge of breeding good lines, tracking health, good husbandry, and becoming a valued veteran breeder who can take their own turn helping others.

I encourage new breeders to follow Beth’s example. Start a dialogue! Challenge yourself! Raise the bar! You’ll find the results very rewarding!