Baby Rodents

So, here's the thing. I've always known I wanted to own a snake. Since I already have rodents, I figured, why not breed my own food? I adopted two male rats from a coworker, and one of my girls (Cayla, my black) is nice and healthy. Unfortunately, when such a decision is made without proper planning, it will sometimes not go as planned.

Out of the three girl rats I have of breeding age (Mona is too old), only the one I wanted to breed did not get pregnant. My two hairless rats did instead! I was worried about Briea, she's my albino and small for her age, but not only did she deliver all by herself with no complications, she's now the proud mommy of twelve pinky rats! She started delivering on Monday right before I left for work. Baby started delivering last night when I got home from work, and she ended up with four. Small litter for rats, but she's doing fine. I'm going to let them keep these babies to raise, and once they're weaned I'll keep a male and two or three femailes to start a breeding colony. The others will go to work as feeders, and I will get credit towards more food (with six rats and two mice, they eat a lot). My pair of mice had a litter a few days ago, ten pinkies. I took one into work yesterday to see if my corn snake would eat it, but he's still too small for even pinky mice. We fed it to a tank full of cichlids instead. It wasn't pretty. I'm going to let them keep those ten, and after they are grown I'll start collecting pinkies to freeze and store. I'll have to see if I can get a good picture of the corn snake I'm watching at work. I can't bring him home until he starts eating on his own, which means no one else can have him either, and I've pretty much established preference on him. I hope.

I watched Briea give birth to one of her babies before I went to work yesterday. It's funny, I can view them with complete detatchment as a food source (I'm a reptile person at heart), but it's still awe-inspiring to witness a birth.