# Keeping multiple mothers/litters together?



## 0rganized--Chaos (8 mo ago)

My family and I adopted four female rats from our local shelter on May 01. They had been kept with males in the shelter (this shelter has had repeated issues with sexing and separating small animals), so we knew there was a high risk of pregnancy.

I should probably disclose that, while I have a few years of experience with rats, I have no experience with newborns/litters.

Three of the rats have given birth; a litter of 11 (originally 12, but one passed due to unknown causes a few hours after birth) on May 08; a litter of 9 on May 12; and a litter of 5 on May 20 (should I be concerned about the size of that litter?). The fourth rat has shown no signs of being pregnant.

We never separated the original four females; they were strongly bonded, and became very stressed/anxious when they were away from their cage mates for more than a few minutes.

All four females and all three litters are in one cage.

The oldest litter have all opened their eyes, and are exploring their environment. Unfortunately, this exploration takes them into the nests of the other mothers/litters. None of the original four rats have shown any kind of aggression towards any of the pups, and all three of the nursing mothers have displayed a willingness to nurse pups from any litter. In fact, the mothers of the two older litters seem to switch pups and even nests with no issue; the newest mother has not swapped nests, but allows the oldest pups to visit her nest, and nurses them when they do.

Is this communal nursing harmful in any way? Should I be concerned about the size differences between the litters? Will having multiple nursing mothers available delay or prolong the weaning process in any way?

Should we separate the mothers/litters, or should we leave things as is?


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## ratbusters (Aug 28, 2020)

Hi and welcome to the forum.
Gosh thats a tough one. Some sources say that having mums in together can cause some issues with aggression or the mum wanting to be left alone; others say the aunties can help the mum with the babies so I think it depends on the rats.
Obviously yours are not showing any signs of aggression so far so that's good.
*Tinytoes* might have some good advice about whether to keep the mothers together or not. 

One thing I would recommend is doing a bit of forward planning with cages though. Even though they are happy all in together for now, they will soon be bigger and more active and with 25 babies and 4 adults they will probably soon be needing some more room.
Also, there are differing opinions out there about when to separate males and females (so they don't cause more pregnancies), but the best advice I have found is to separate them at 4 weeks and 5 days. Apparently this gives the babies maximum time with their mother, before the onset of sexual maturity/possible pregnancy.
All the best; keep asking any questions. There is usually someone who can help you.


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## Tinytoes (Dec 23, 2020)

Hi and welcome to the forum! Congratulations and my condolences on your many babies 🤗. Sounds like you have a lovely nursery going! All your mommas are doing a great job. I wouldn't worry at all.

Now is the time to sex your babies. It's really easy when they are 2-3 weeks old. The nipple spots are very visible. You can at least get an idea of how many of each sex, and if they are different colors, you can make a chart with their color patterns and sexes. Separating the babies at 5 weeks is perfect, I wouldn't wait a day longer. 

Good luck and as @ratbusters said, keep asking questions. This forum is very helpful! I got 80% of my education here


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## 0rganized--Chaos (8 mo ago)

Thank you both for responding so quickly!

We have cages available; two separate two-level critter nations.

We're in a two story house; the females are upstairs, and the males are/will be downstairs. We absolutely do NOT want any further litters out of this.

Concerning sexing, I've done some preliminary examinations. I _believe_ that the first litter is 9 males and 2 females, while the second litter looks like 4 males and 5 females. I'm definitely going to be rechecking as they get a bit bigger.

Thankfully, most of the pups have distinct patterns/markings. There are two sets of near-identical pups in the older litter, but we lucked out a bit; their mother is a rex, and each set has one rex and one standard.

Did either of you have any advice on rehoming? We'd like to keep at least a few of the pups, but there's no way we can keep them all. The shelter asked us to bring any pups to them for rehoming, but we would prefer to avoid that (given the timeline of events, all the females got pregnant while in their custody; this could have easily been avoided).


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## Tinytoes (Dec 23, 2020)

Start with a search for small animal rescues in your area, they are a good place to start. I belong to a rescue in the MD/DC/VA area. Where are you located?


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## ratbusters (Aug 28, 2020)

Some ideas are Rat Rescue organisations (as Tinytoes mentioned) and ASPCA.
If you choose to advertise them for example on a facebook page, you can ask potential owners for some information before agreeing to sell them. For example, you can ask for photos of the cage they will be living in, what sort of diet they are planning on feeding them, whether they already have other rats, if they have had any experience before, etc. 
Just because some of these things aren't quite right doesn't necessarily mean they can't be rat owners, but it might be an opportunity for you to educate them before agreeing to sell them your rats.
If you sense they are not really committed though, you can always decline.


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## 0rganized--Chaos (8 mo ago)

I'm on the west coast of the USA; I live in a relatively small city, but both Los Angeles (CA) and Phoenix (AZ) are within day-trip distance if need be.

Searches for local rescues bring up a bunch of ratteries and small animal groups/companies that say the do rescue _and _breeding, which is... concerning to say the least (would rather avoid). There are various shelters in my city, but they're mostly generalized, or focus on cats, dogs, and rabbits; they'll _accept_ rats, but I doubt they'd know what to _do_ with them. I've adopted animals from 3 different shelters before (including the one the mothers came from), and only one, the SPCA, seemed to actually know what they were doing when it came to non-rabbit small animals.

The workers at the local SPCA branch were knowledgeable, and they insisted on adopting rats out in groups (the shelter I adopted the mothers from regularly adopts out single small animals, even if it means breaking up a bonded pair/group). However, the SPCA site says they have a $25 fee per surrendered animal, which would get... _pricey_. I don't know if they would consider reducing the fee(s) in light of the situation...


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