Post by harrisi on Jan 30, 2009 16:45:27 GMT -5
Practically the same as mice :
Choosing your mice:
It is best to go to a breeder to get your rats as you will almost never be able to tell any genetics of pet shop mice meaning you could be line breeding or producing mice with Genetic health problems. In an ideal rat you want a short (but pointy) face, bright eyes, a thick tail and ears/eyes/nose to be clear of discharge. Also try to go for bigger strains of rats and those that have a back ground of large litters.
Housing:
This is usually a matter of opinion! Some say rats should have wire cages, some say tanks, some say tubs. If your main aim is to keep your rats happy, content and fit then wire cages are advised however do not use a cage for breeding mice if the bar spacing is bigger then 1/4"x1/4" as babies will be able to squeeze out of anything smaller. The use of cages means you can add plenty of toys, ladders and hammocks to keep the rats happy and they can also climb the bars. If your main aim is too keep it cheap, simple and easy to clean then it is a good idea to go with the a bookcase or mouse rack system. These two are very similar but generally a mouse rack is made with concrete mixing tubs or storage tubs and a bookcase system is made with glass tanks. There is pro's and con's to both, a glass tank is chew proof but heavy to carry about to clean (especially when there is soiled bedding in it) and more expensive aswell as the fact they dont come in a very wide range of sizes . Plastic tubs are light to carry about, come in a wide range of sizes and are cheap but they are also not very chew proof. The book case system is basically a book case/ shelf cabinet with tanks (with mesh tops) on the shelves. This is very simple but not very cheap if you have to buy everything brand new. For directions on making a rat rack look here: www.arbreptiles.com/cages/rat_rack/ratrack.shtml. . It is your choice on wich you choose and what is suited to your circumstances. If you are going to be keeping more then 5 male rats it is advised to put them in a room that is used for animals only or in a shed/out building. Buck rats stink. There is no way around it. You can keep as many females as you like in a room and have very little smell, add a few bucks and you will soon start to smell them! Some people keep a trio or pair of bucks in a tank in an outbuilding and keep females and babies inside and just bring in the male to mate with the females for the day before clean out day, this can work well. Housing should be cleaned as needed, there is no set date as it all depends on how many mice are kept in how much space, but you should have AT LEAST enough space to lay down flat without having to lay over another mouse.
Bedding:
There is tons of beddings to choose from, some better then others and alot of them toxic. What bedding you use coud be great for you, but rubbish "for the next person". Some of the toxic beddings out there are Cedar and non kiln-dried pine. A favourite due to its availability, odourless quality and price is kiln-dried pine bedding. The down side is that kiln-dried or not it has the potential to give RI's and is often dusty as well as stinks when soiled badly. Preffered is wood pellet's sold as cat litter as this is easy to scoop out soiled bedding every few days, holds in odour, its cheap, safe and widely available. But also beddings such as carefresh, yesterdays news, shredded newspaper and hay/straw are popular.
Feeding:
The main reason people breed rats for themselves is to save money, but whatever you feed it has still got to be a complete, nutritious diet. Remember, the nutrition you put into the rats is the nutrition you put into your animals. There is a huge range of foods rats will eat and thrive on and there really isnt a "best" food, but there is preferred food - especially by the rats! Ideally the food should be as little processed as possible, that is pure natural foods. Rats are great animals to get rid of food scraps! Generally, if its ok for humans its ok for rats however there is exceptions to this. But fresh vegetable scraps such as carrot, lettuce, brocolli, cucumber, cabbage, peas, cooked potatoe, cooked meat (with bones), salad etc are great for rats. Other things like 16% protein 6% fat dog food, lab blocks, sow (breeding/weaning pig) rolls, rabbit/guinea pig/rat/mouse muesli and chick crumb along with the occasional slice of dried brown bread are good. Also buying bagged salads that have been reduced in price will be a good meal for rats as long as it dosent contain anything harmful such as iceberg lettuce. Also things like cooking oats (NOT the instant kind), flaked maize and flaked peas are enjoyed and can be free fed but is NOT to be used exclusively. Fresh water can be given in a water bottle, auto-watering system or bowl, Bottles and auto-watering systems stay much cleaner then bowls as bedding etc cant get into the water, unlike bowls. On a small scale breeding bottles would work out best but on a larger scale (over 15 tubs/cages/tanks of colonys) it is definitely easier to use an auto-watering system as it just means all you need to fill is the main watering bucket as opposed to 15+ bottles every day. Fresh, cool water should be availabe at all times.
Handling:
Unless the rats will be pets as well as feeders (wich isnt adivsed) handling isnt important, however it is good to get the rats used to you handling them and reaching into the tub/tank/cage daily and picking out a few rats and making sure there is nothing abnormal about them and there is no discharge around the face area will help you in handling and wont stress them out as much as well as it could stop the spread of ilness around the whole colony of rats and it stops you having to pick up rats by the tails wich could easily injure them.
Breeding:
In one way rat breeding is relatively easy, in another way its not. However after you've setup it is pretty easy. There is a few ways different people do things, so firstly I will talk about the way labs/mill breeders do it. The aim at a mill breeder/lab is to have as many litters out of a doe as possible before she dies or goes infertile, so males will be left with females all the time. This means that immature babies (3 weeks) will be taken away from the mother mouse so she can give birth to another litter. Whilst some have great sucess with this I do not agree that this is a good system. For one the mother gets no rest and therefore can easily be worn down and be forced not to care for young and also 3 weeks is only just enough to be fully out of the nest and getting the taste for dry foods, let alone living away from "home" and having to eat dry food. For these reasons it is best to leave the male with the females until they are heavily pregnant, then take the young out at 4 weeks old and allow the female 5-7 days of rest and allow her to "restore" then put her back with the male and repeat. This gives her a nice rest in between litters and allows pups to mature properly before being taken away from the mother, studys suggest that the reason alot of people find they have abnormally small mice is because they are not allowed to mature before being taken from the mother and not growing properly. Obviously if you are breeding for pinkies or fuzzys this is irrelevant as you can take out the rats when they are at the right stage (pinkies 1-7 days old, fuzzies 7-10 days old) and leave the male with the female as she will have a good rest between litters. But as for the actual mating its all up to the rats and there is nothing you can do! You may find rats that just wont mate, are infertile or who will kill and eat they're partners however they arn't all common occurences. Rats after 1 year of age are often infertile and are fed off as feeders. Rats after 5 week old can impregnate and get pregnant. Rats will mate with family members so you should seperate mother and babies at a maximum of 5 weeks.
Care of the young:
This is easy...if your rats are used to being handled. Despite popular belief rats young CAN be handled from day one if the parents are used to you and this helps towards handling when the young are older. Try to base the breeding to have the mother give birth a fed days before cleaning day, this dosent really matter but allows mum to settle with her young before she is interrupted by cleaning. I must stress you absolutely DO NOT need to leave cleaning until the young are old enough to be taken from the mother, if she is used to you handling her simply pick the young up and put them in with mother whilst you clean the cage then put them back before the mother. If they are not used to being handled then take a scoop or cup and scoop the young into it along with a small amount of the bedding and put them aside somewhere safe, when the tank/tub/cage is cleaned put them back with the small amoutn of bedding.
Culling of the rats:
There are two main and ways to kill the rats; CO2 and severing of the spinal cord. In pinkies and fuzzies it is best to use the latter as they have an 'anti-smother' mechagnism to stop them suffocating if the mother lays down on them for feeding, therefore it takes a long painful time for them to die with CO2 however mature rats do best with C02. Pinkies and fuzzies should have they're spinal cord severed, this can be done with pinkies and fuzzies by taking a blunted kitchen knife and hitting the spine just above the hips and weaners can be killed by taking a pencil or screw driver, putting it over the back of the neck, pushing down with that whilst pulling from the base of the tail upward away from the table, this should kill the mouse instantly. With CO2 it is cheapest to make the chamber yourself.
ETA!:
How to maintain quality and health in the rats
There is a few simple things alot of people miss out with rat colonys and that is keep quality and health. In turn these same people will find a downfall in the animals and will wonder what they did wrong because *so and so* said *such and such*. Anyway...It is easy to keep up quality and health in your animals. Such as choosing rats with lines who are not prone to tumours, as rats as a whole are prone to tumours you just have to try and choose the best breeding animals you can find, this means going over 10-15 generations of the rats lines and finding out the health records of these, most rat breeders will have these to show to you but if not try get records of litters. Then there is the bacteria and mould that is likely to grow with rats - This is easily solved with a total monthly clean - this means taking out the tubs, hoseing them off, leaving them to soak with disinfectant (PET SAFE! F10 is good for this) for an hour or so and cleaning all toys, bowls, hoppers, sterilizing bottles etc. all can be done with F10 wich, IMO, is by far the best and a really cheap option. Then there is RI's (Respiratory Infections), these are not so easily avoidable. You can have the perfect set up with perfectly healthy rats then have them get an RI. There is 3 things to remember when dealing with rats - No fresh-pine or cedar, dust extracted bedding and plenty of air circulation. Pine contains "sap" wich contains phenols that is likely to give your mice Upper Respiratory Infections however when the pine is kiln dried the phenols/sap is "de-activated" if you like, however once it gets urinated on the kiln-drying process is in effect slighty reversed and the phenols are once again hydrated and activated. Cedar is a different story as it contains oil as opposed to sap and it is the oil that is carried throughout the wood and contains phenols and kiln drying will do nothing for this, so cedar should be avoided at all costs (quite literally !)! Then there is the air flow - alot of people make the mistake of having too little air circulation in tubs (it is V/ unlikely you will have this problem with cages) wich is usually having too deep of tubs. If you are going to be using tanks or tubs at all then you need to make sure they are no more then 1foot deep with a full mesh lid, preferably you should have just enough room for an adult rat to stand up in the tub until it reaches the mesh top, then they should be kept somewhere well circulated, so a room or shed without windows is not preferable to keep the rats cages in. Overall just regular checks of the rats (making sure they have no discharge around the nose/eyes/mouth and feeling for tumours) and keeping them in a good envoirment should keep them healthy.
ETA(A):
Enrichment:
Rats whether pets or feeders should be given some form of enrichment. The best, and most common, enrichment is a running wheel - these should be solid and not the ones with mesh or bars for the running surface. It is also best to have a solid back with it connected to the cage or have the stand connected there as opposed to there being bars each side of the wheel that connect up to the stand. There is also chew toys (these are almost essential and will help stop rats chewing tubs), the insides of toilet rolls and dog bones.
Hope this is of use to some people!
Choosing your mice:
It is best to go to a breeder to get your rats as you will almost never be able to tell any genetics of pet shop mice meaning you could be line breeding or producing mice with Genetic health problems. In an ideal rat you want a short (but pointy) face, bright eyes, a thick tail and ears/eyes/nose to be clear of discharge. Also try to go for bigger strains of rats and those that have a back ground of large litters.
Housing:
This is usually a matter of opinion! Some say rats should have wire cages, some say tanks, some say tubs. If your main aim is to keep your rats happy, content and fit then wire cages are advised however do not use a cage for breeding mice if the bar spacing is bigger then 1/4"x1/4" as babies will be able to squeeze out of anything smaller. The use of cages means you can add plenty of toys, ladders and hammocks to keep the rats happy and they can also climb the bars. If your main aim is too keep it cheap, simple and easy to clean then it is a good idea to go with the a bookcase or mouse rack system. These two are very similar but generally a mouse rack is made with concrete mixing tubs or storage tubs and a bookcase system is made with glass tanks. There is pro's and con's to both, a glass tank is chew proof but heavy to carry about to clean (especially when there is soiled bedding in it) and more expensive aswell as the fact they dont come in a very wide range of sizes . Plastic tubs are light to carry about, come in a wide range of sizes and are cheap but they are also not very chew proof. The book case system is basically a book case/ shelf cabinet with tanks (with mesh tops) on the shelves. This is very simple but not very cheap if you have to buy everything brand new. For directions on making a rat rack look here: www.arbreptiles.com/cages/rat_rack/ratrack.shtml. . It is your choice on wich you choose and what is suited to your circumstances. If you are going to be keeping more then 5 male rats it is advised to put them in a room that is used for animals only or in a shed/out building. Buck rats stink. There is no way around it. You can keep as many females as you like in a room and have very little smell, add a few bucks and you will soon start to smell them! Some people keep a trio or pair of bucks in a tank in an outbuilding and keep females and babies inside and just bring in the male to mate with the females for the day before clean out day, this can work well. Housing should be cleaned as needed, there is no set date as it all depends on how many mice are kept in how much space, but you should have AT LEAST enough space to lay down flat without having to lay over another mouse.
Bedding:
There is tons of beddings to choose from, some better then others and alot of them toxic. What bedding you use coud be great for you, but rubbish "for the next person". Some of the toxic beddings out there are Cedar and non kiln-dried pine. A favourite due to its availability, odourless quality and price is kiln-dried pine bedding. The down side is that kiln-dried or not it has the potential to give RI's and is often dusty as well as stinks when soiled badly. Preffered is wood pellet's sold as cat litter as this is easy to scoop out soiled bedding every few days, holds in odour, its cheap, safe and widely available. But also beddings such as carefresh, yesterdays news, shredded newspaper and hay/straw are popular.
Feeding:
The main reason people breed rats for themselves is to save money, but whatever you feed it has still got to be a complete, nutritious diet. Remember, the nutrition you put into the rats is the nutrition you put into your animals. There is a huge range of foods rats will eat and thrive on and there really isnt a "best" food, but there is preferred food - especially by the rats! Ideally the food should be as little processed as possible, that is pure natural foods. Rats are great animals to get rid of food scraps! Generally, if its ok for humans its ok for rats however there is exceptions to this. But fresh vegetable scraps such as carrot, lettuce, brocolli, cucumber, cabbage, peas, cooked potatoe, cooked meat (with bones), salad etc are great for rats. Other things like 16% protein 6% fat dog food, lab blocks, sow (breeding/weaning pig) rolls, rabbit/guinea pig/rat/mouse muesli and chick crumb along with the occasional slice of dried brown bread are good. Also buying bagged salads that have been reduced in price will be a good meal for rats as long as it dosent contain anything harmful such as iceberg lettuce. Also things like cooking oats (NOT the instant kind), flaked maize and flaked peas are enjoyed and can be free fed but is NOT to be used exclusively. Fresh water can be given in a water bottle, auto-watering system or bowl, Bottles and auto-watering systems stay much cleaner then bowls as bedding etc cant get into the water, unlike bowls. On a small scale breeding bottles would work out best but on a larger scale (over 15 tubs/cages/tanks of colonys) it is definitely easier to use an auto-watering system as it just means all you need to fill is the main watering bucket as opposed to 15+ bottles every day. Fresh, cool water should be availabe at all times.
Handling:
Unless the rats will be pets as well as feeders (wich isnt adivsed) handling isnt important, however it is good to get the rats used to you handling them and reaching into the tub/tank/cage daily and picking out a few rats and making sure there is nothing abnormal about them and there is no discharge around the face area will help you in handling and wont stress them out as much as well as it could stop the spread of ilness around the whole colony of rats and it stops you having to pick up rats by the tails wich could easily injure them.
Breeding:
In one way rat breeding is relatively easy, in another way its not. However after you've setup it is pretty easy. There is a few ways different people do things, so firstly I will talk about the way labs/mill breeders do it. The aim at a mill breeder/lab is to have as many litters out of a doe as possible before she dies or goes infertile, so males will be left with females all the time. This means that immature babies (3 weeks) will be taken away from the mother mouse so she can give birth to another litter. Whilst some have great sucess with this I do not agree that this is a good system. For one the mother gets no rest and therefore can easily be worn down and be forced not to care for young and also 3 weeks is only just enough to be fully out of the nest and getting the taste for dry foods, let alone living away from "home" and having to eat dry food. For these reasons it is best to leave the male with the females until they are heavily pregnant, then take the young out at 4 weeks old and allow the female 5-7 days of rest and allow her to "restore" then put her back with the male and repeat. This gives her a nice rest in between litters and allows pups to mature properly before being taken away from the mother, studys suggest that the reason alot of people find they have abnormally small mice is because they are not allowed to mature before being taken from the mother and not growing properly. Obviously if you are breeding for pinkies or fuzzys this is irrelevant as you can take out the rats when they are at the right stage (pinkies 1-7 days old, fuzzies 7-10 days old) and leave the male with the female as she will have a good rest between litters. But as for the actual mating its all up to the rats and there is nothing you can do! You may find rats that just wont mate, are infertile or who will kill and eat they're partners however they arn't all common occurences. Rats after 1 year of age are often infertile and are fed off as feeders. Rats after 5 week old can impregnate and get pregnant. Rats will mate with family members so you should seperate mother and babies at a maximum of 5 weeks.
Care of the young:
This is easy...if your rats are used to being handled. Despite popular belief rats young CAN be handled from day one if the parents are used to you and this helps towards handling when the young are older. Try to base the breeding to have the mother give birth a fed days before cleaning day, this dosent really matter but allows mum to settle with her young before she is interrupted by cleaning. I must stress you absolutely DO NOT need to leave cleaning until the young are old enough to be taken from the mother, if she is used to you handling her simply pick the young up and put them in with mother whilst you clean the cage then put them back before the mother. If they are not used to being handled then take a scoop or cup and scoop the young into it along with a small amount of the bedding and put them aside somewhere safe, when the tank/tub/cage is cleaned put them back with the small amoutn of bedding.
Culling of the rats:
There are two main and ways to kill the rats; CO2 and severing of the spinal cord. In pinkies and fuzzies it is best to use the latter as they have an 'anti-smother' mechagnism to stop them suffocating if the mother lays down on them for feeding, therefore it takes a long painful time for them to die with CO2 however mature rats do best with C02. Pinkies and fuzzies should have they're spinal cord severed, this can be done with pinkies and fuzzies by taking a blunted kitchen knife and hitting the spine just above the hips and weaners can be killed by taking a pencil or screw driver, putting it over the back of the neck, pushing down with that whilst pulling from the base of the tail upward away from the table, this should kill the mouse instantly. With CO2 it is cheapest to make the chamber yourself.
ETA!:
How to maintain quality and health in the rats
There is a few simple things alot of people miss out with rat colonys and that is keep quality and health. In turn these same people will find a downfall in the animals and will wonder what they did wrong because *so and so* said *such and such*. Anyway...It is easy to keep up quality and health in your animals. Such as choosing rats with lines who are not prone to tumours, as rats as a whole are prone to tumours you just have to try and choose the best breeding animals you can find, this means going over 10-15 generations of the rats lines and finding out the health records of these, most rat breeders will have these to show to you but if not try get records of litters. Then there is the bacteria and mould that is likely to grow with rats - This is easily solved with a total monthly clean - this means taking out the tubs, hoseing them off, leaving them to soak with disinfectant (PET SAFE! F10 is good for this) for an hour or so and cleaning all toys, bowls, hoppers, sterilizing bottles etc. all can be done with F10 wich, IMO, is by far the best and a really cheap option. Then there is RI's (Respiratory Infections), these are not so easily avoidable. You can have the perfect set up with perfectly healthy rats then have them get an RI. There is 3 things to remember when dealing with rats - No fresh-pine or cedar, dust extracted bedding and plenty of air circulation. Pine contains "sap" wich contains phenols that is likely to give your mice Upper Respiratory Infections however when the pine is kiln dried the phenols/sap is "de-activated" if you like, however once it gets urinated on the kiln-drying process is in effect slighty reversed and the phenols are once again hydrated and activated. Cedar is a different story as it contains oil as opposed to sap and it is the oil that is carried throughout the wood and contains phenols and kiln drying will do nothing for this, so cedar should be avoided at all costs (quite literally !)! Then there is the air flow - alot of people make the mistake of having too little air circulation in tubs (it is V/ unlikely you will have this problem with cages) wich is usually having too deep of tubs. If you are going to be using tanks or tubs at all then you need to make sure they are no more then 1foot deep with a full mesh lid, preferably you should have just enough room for an adult rat to stand up in the tub until it reaches the mesh top, then they should be kept somewhere well circulated, so a room or shed without windows is not preferable to keep the rats cages in. Overall just regular checks of the rats (making sure they have no discharge around the nose/eyes/mouth and feeling for tumours) and keeping them in a good envoirment should keep them healthy.
ETA(A):
Enrichment:
Rats whether pets or feeders should be given some form of enrichment. The best, and most common, enrichment is a running wheel - these should be solid and not the ones with mesh or bars for the running surface. It is also best to have a solid back with it connected to the cage or have the stand connected there as opposed to there being bars each side of the wheel that connect up to the stand. There is also chew toys (these are almost essential and will help stop rats chewing tubs), the insides of toilet rolls and dog bones.
Hope this is of use to some people!