Eva's Old Pet Natal Rat Page

Denna sida på svenska. On the 3rd of April 2002 I bought my first pair of natal rats. They were hard to find, I only found one pet shop who had some, and they had only four individuals! I bought a male and a female in different colours (Cinnamon Pied male & Champagne Argente Pied female) and put them in a big cage. I was told they were both 8 weeks old when I bought them so I guess they were siblings. I guess they must have been born around the 6th of February 2002. The age is probably right, seeing how much they both grew just after I bought them! I named them Bina & Bonzo.

On the 26th of April they had a litter of about 10 babies. I soon realized there were babies of both the same colour as the mother (Champagne Argente Pied) and the same colour as the father (Cinnamon Pied). All babies had the same kind of extensive white markings on the head and rump as the parents, it is this marking I call Pied. One good thing is that the pattern of white markings vary a bit on every baby so it was easy to see which baby was which!

I noted that the parents did not build any kind of nest for their babies. This might be because the female was so young, or do they build nests in the wild? I think they ought to, since the babies are so immature when born, just like ordinary rats and mice. I helped by making a nest for the babies myself... I counted the babies and found that there were 11 little ones. Here is a photo of the babies on the 8th of May... My first litter of Natal Rat babies!

On the 10th of May 2002 Bina, the mama natal rat, died, and I had to start feeding 11 little 14 days old natal rat babies myself... I have no idea what she died of. The babies are eating and growing fine... Bonzo was rather tame at this point, I had no problems fetching little natal rat babies that were hiding under him at feeding time. Bina had shown no signs whatsoever of any health problems (or bad temperament) in the short time I had her.

It took me a while to name all the babies. But I named the only Cinnamon Pied male "Billy", and him I have sold. I named the Champagne Argente Pied male with the most amount of white colour on his rump "Bonanza". Bonanza was the most tame of all my Natal Rats so far, he is my pet! Many people did contact me, wanting to buy babies, since they were hand fed and should be extra tame. But the truth is I only hand fed them for 2 weeks and they were not that tame...

The female that was most tame as a baby, Biza, turned out to have not such a good temperament as a grown up. She actually attacked and bit one of her sisters several times when they were adults. All the rest of this litter had very good temperament.

On the 10th of June I bought another pair of natal rats, that are dark wild coloured, Agouti. I call them Donny & Dora. These I bought privately from a family that has snakes and bred natal rats as snake food. Actually I think maybe the natal rats are more popular as snake food than as pets so far, because they don't smell a tenth of what rats and mice do... But this will change I hope and natal rats will be as common as pets as other small pets.

One thing that I realized then was that these had the same amount of "tameness" when I bought them. They let me pet them in the cage without running away from my hand, they just became a bit tense in the body. Precisely as Bonzo & Bina did at the beginning. I have never seen any tendencies to biting when I try to handle them, but if I lift any one up out of the cage they will jump away, except Bonzo and all the his babies from my first litter. (The babies that I hand fed...)

When I had bought Donny & Dora I tried to put the new male, Donny, into the male cage with Bonzo and his sons, and the new female, Dora, with the girls. But Donny bit Billy in the ear and Dora bit one of the baby girls (Biza) in the tail... So I had to house the new ones by themselves... I thought this was an effect of the fact that both new natal rats were housed very very crowded before I bought them, but now I'm not so sure. Later Donny would not accept to be introduced to his own sons when they were less than 2 months, he actually bit one of then! So I had to house them with Bonzo and his Pied sons instead.

I know now that these wildcoloured natal rats did not have the temperament I needed, in order to breed pets, they were too prone to attack eachother.

I had a litter of 13 little all wildcoloured natal rats. My second litter of natal rats ever! I was really excited. These were born on the 28th of June 2002, so Donny couldn't be the father, instead Dora must have been pregnant with her father when I bought her... I let Donny remain with Dora, helping out with the babies. I did not dare to remove him, since Bina (my first female) died so unexpectedly when her babies were small.

It later showed that I had not had to do this, all females that died when they had babies were descendants of Bina & Bonzo. All my females that did not not have Bina or Bonzo in their pedigree did not have this problem.

On the 20th of July 2002 Dora had her second litter, this time with Donny, so I separated them a few days after. I realized that in Dora's second litter there were some babies that were much lighter in colouration than the rest, they looked like they were chocolate coloured, but there wss no non-agouti gene so they must been cinnamon coloured... In this photo there is a Cinnamon colored natal rat baby from this litter. At this time I did not realize that Bonzo was Cinnamon coloured too. I have learned since then that Cinnamon have been the overwhelmingly most common colour of natal rats in Sweden for many years.

During the fall of 2002 I mated Donny with 3 females, Aristoteles Burrina, Aristoteles Biza & Aristoteles Bianca, from my first litter of Pied natal rats, and all and every baby were Spot! So now I had lots of Agouti Spot and Cinnamon Spot for sale...! This photo shows Biza's litter, 2 days old (natal rat babies get fur much earlier than ordinary rats and mice).

These babies are Agouti & Cinnamon with a white spot on the forehead and a white spot on each cheek. Some animals can actually have four spots, since the spot on the forehead can divide into two and produce one spot on the forehead and one in the neck (I have had a baby looking like that!). The babies in the photo is just 2 days old .

In the spring of 2003 I had so much health problems with my natal rats I had to stop breeding. What happened was that the natal mums tended to die when her litter was under 2 weeks of age... So I hand fed several litters of natal rats! This was something that came with the white-patterned line (from Bina & Bonzo), since none of the wild coloured natal rats (from Donny & Dora) had this problem. Also all crosses between these lines had the same problem.
Also the wild coloured natal rats (from Donny & Dora) was really healthy but did not have the nice temperament of the white-patterned ones, though, so I decided to stop breeding from these animals altogether.

In the summer of 2003 I had only 2 of my old males left, from my first litter, Aristoteles Bonanza & Aristoteles Barallo. Bonanza weighed 120 grams, and he was a bit fat, but rather tame and happy. But he got sick in the end of the summer and I had to put him to sleep when he was really sick. I had to put Barallo to sleep at the same time, even though he was not really sick, since I had learned before that these natal rats just hate living alone.

Just a few weeks before I lost Bonanza & Barallo I bought 2 new female natal rats, Aya, argente spot born in the beginning of June 2003 (I think) and Edda, argente pied, born probably in April 2003. This time I did not buy any males, so I don't plan on breeding at the moment. I want to tame and study these 2 females for a while first. So far I have noticed that Aya is the shy one and Edda is the lively one.

I also soon made another interesting observation: Aya & Edda, who are Argentes, had as babies more or less the same colour as Bonanza & Barallo, that were Champagne Argente, had at the age of 1 year. These colours reddens with age, and at the age of 5 to 7 months old Aya & Edda is a lot more red in colour than the boys ever was. When Bonanza & Barallo were young babies they looked more like Champagne in colour. These colours work the same in mice and rats too.

Both Edda & Aya are not with us anymore.

Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 9th of December 2007.