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Starting a rat colony in the winter

C

chris morrison

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I have been working on breeding rats for the past two months now and am still trying to figure everything out. I have two females that have each had litters that are now 5+ weeks old and I have a third female that has a litter that is 2+ weeks old (the babies just opened their eyes yesterday). I live in Missouri and our weather just turned very cold. I live in an apartment and my rats are currently in cages near a window in a rather open space, so even with the heater on I'm afraid they might get cold at night. I had a single mouse my hatching ball python wouldn't eat, so I put it in a critter cage next to my rats with some aspen bedding in it, but the next morning it was dead from what I'm assuming was freezing to death. Will my rats be okay in a tank with Cel-absorb in it only? I have about 8 females in one tank, 8 males in another tank, and the mother that is nursing in a tank of her own. Will they get too cold at night like the mouse and get sick? They all sleep piled up on top of one another. I'm guessing this is to stay warm or maybe that's just the way rats live together. Any other pointers about breeding rats? I currently have 10 ball pythons ranging from 6 months old to 2 years old. I will be adding to my ball python collection after income tax time. Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for any help and advice.
 
We raise rats for our Ball Pythons. We use a rack system but have used tanks in the past. We had our best luck with a 40 gallon breeder tank. We had 8 females and 2 males in it and cleaned it once a week or more if the smell got too bad. Even now we keep them in the furnace room and the temp is around 60 degrees and they breed just fine. There is no reason to separate the nursing mothers once the colony is established. Just keep them well fed and watered.
 
I ran 1.8 in 3x2 mortar tubs but it was very crowded. Breeding style depends on if you want production or you want high survival rates and babies that grow super fast.
 
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