Eva's Rat FAQ

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Obtaining and caring for Rats

QUESTION: What is the perfect breeding rat female like?

ANSWER: The best female to breed from is over 4 months old, healthy and has a low position in the order of dominance among the females in the cage.

There is three important issues to consider when choosing a female for breeding porposes:

Temperament! A female that does not live together with other females without any signs of fights or squabbles is just not suitable (you don't want the babies to bite do you?). Also never breed from the top rat (she will be too bossy and is more prone to produce biters).
Age! A female should be at least 4 months old when first mated to have a chance to finnish growing herself before having babies of her own. If she has never had babies before she should not be over a year when she gives birth to the babies.
Health! Don't breed from sick rats. Actually you'd better not even breed from a female that has been sick either...

Here in Sweden we have seen many rats becoming biters - biting humans (including children) and killing cagemates. And it is a fact that this is a genetic problem. This is not a problem just with Swedish rats, we see the same problems with rats imported from England, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, USA and so on. It is generally the males that bites (if they have a bad temperament) but signs to watch out for in females to avoid having prospective biters among the babies is: fighting, bossing around other rats, protecting food, bad temperament in any way, attacking strange females and so on.

Never breed a rat with a bad temperament - it seems that bad temperament is highly dominant over good temperament when it comes to breeding!