Rat Babies

Rats are into free love. Remember the shelters don’t need any more orphans, but if you do find yourself with a pregnant ratty here’s some info that may help.

If you keep male and female rats together, you are in for a shock. Rats breed very fast and you will find yourself with lots of little fuzzlets on your hands before you know it.

You may be wondering why I keep Ginger (female) and Mr T (male) together. Good question.I adopted them from the RSPCA and was informed Ginger couldn’t have babies. I was skeptical, but it turns out she can’t and they live together very contented indeed. They are just like an old married couple.

Left to their own devices female rats will give birth to five or six litters a year. Each litter has between five and fifteen rat babies. One rat has been recorded as having 23 babies in one litter!

As you can imagine, it quickly mounts up!

Rats can breed from about two months old. Their gestation period (the time between when they get pregnant and when they have the bubs) is between 16-21 days.

You may find your female rat gets a bit, well, “ratty” when she is pregnant. She may even bite. It’s the hormones. Just like people get grouchy when they’re pregnant. She will return to normal after the birth, so don’t fret.

The young rats are born blind and naked in a comfy nest made of any material mummy rat could find. It may have fabric, hay, grass, and paper. Provide your mummy rat with extra bedding material, during her pregnancy, so she can wile away the hours happily making her snuggly nest.

The babies open their eyes at about two or three weeks old. They live off their mother’s milk until they are about five weeks old and they leave the litter to go into the big, wide world at six weeks old.

It is important to separate the males from the females at this stage. You certainly don’t want any more “accidents”. It is easy to tell apart boys from girls. Click here to find out how to tell the sex of your rats.

If you get your rats from a pet shop, or a rescue centre they should already be separated into groups of male and female and the pet shop worker can tell you whether it is a boy or a girl.

Rats are very good mothers and you shouldn’t need to intervene, apart from to handle the bubs (so they get used to people) and of course to separate the sexes at a later date and start feeding them solids.

If you have more than one female rat you may find that the babies are mothered by all of them, like an extended family. In the wild rats sometimes pool their bubs and then take turns in caring for them.

A male rat has nothing to do with rearing the bubs and it is probably best to separate Dad when they are born, as occasionally he will eat them. Yuck!

When you first give the young rats solid food, don’t be scared to give them hard food. Rats can gnaw from the moment they eat solids, in fact, it’s good for their teeth.

Now, if for some reason Mummy isn’t around to look after her new babies, it is possible to raise them yourself. Take a look at this page on hand raising baby rats for more information.

As your rats get a bit older no doubt they will have unlimited amounts of energy in their “teenage” months. You will have fun watching them wrestle, box and play. These are all ways that they learn about adult life.

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