OK, I got a third weight this evening, which starts to make a chart worthwhile. She is putting on weight. I think it's real! Wow, Tizzy, what have you done?
You'll hear nothing else but Thisbe and her pregnancy from me for the next few weeks!
Mating date was 24th May, D day should be around 15th June.
Thisbe is a mink mismarked hooded/varigated, depending on how you look at it. Her ancestry is completely unknown.
Possible fathers: Otis, black mismarked 'baldie' with mink, russian blue, black and agouti in his ancestry. Babbage, agouti rex with cinnamon, agouti, mink, cream and ivory in his ancestry.
I'm no expert on genetics, but I know that cinnamon, agouti and mink are related colours. I imagine Tiz should have a little bit of a mixture of colours, which will be useful for telling them apart in the future. I can't see any of them leaving here. I'm getting possessive of them already and they're only twinkles.
I had my first taste of pet judging at a rat show today. It was fun! But so hard. You're supposed to judge on tractability, health, preparation (nails clipped, tail clean) and character. So what do you do if they are all friendly, healthy, clean and lovely? And I have never been so peed on in my entire life! Most of them left a little message, one lad doused my trousers then pooed on me too! I gave him the rosette for being the widdliest rat. He was an enormous lad, too. Over a kilo, I'm sure. Not just squidgy, but long too.
Thisbe's on day 11 of her pregnancy - half way! I'm getting excited now. We'll get the birth cage out towards the end of the week and let them explore it at playtimes, so she can get used to it. I need to go shopping for curly kale - I meant to get some yesterday but didn't get round to going, so Tizzy had some nice young dandelion leaves instead. I'm going by Alison's nutritional advice on Shunamite Rats because she's really good at that sort of stuff.
Tizzy's looking quite thick around the middle - I'll try to get some photos today. Hmm. Did I take some last night? Can't remember - I'll just go and check the camera. Memory of a goldfish! Ah no, I got a photo of Sophie but Tiz wasn't cooperating. Anyway, I didn't expect her to 'show' quite so soon, but it's fun watching her round out.
Right, back again. Tizzy's expanding day by day, and getting more and more grotty with Sophie, so I'm going to move her out of the cage at night but let her still sleep there in the day time.
We've started a tote on the club forum to guess how many babes she's going to have. There's a guess for 8, a guess for 11 and one for 15 atm. Just over a week to go till we find out!
I've been letting them have an open cage most of the day, and that seems to relieve the tension. Thankfully Tiz doesn't seem interested in taking any great leaps to explore the world right now. I got a couple more bump pics - I gave her some shredded paper and she's been building a nest on the top shelf of their cage. She's going to be very miffed when I move her into the little cage later on.
Here's a bumpy pic
here she is making a nice nest.
I've been working out the genetics. I tried to post it here, but it won't let me post tables. Anyway, it's at http://www.rattycorner.com/articles/tiz.shtml#genetics if you fancy a look. The upshot is that we should be able to work out who is the father of each kitten.
Tizzy now weighs 381 grams.
Tizzy's in a tizzy again! I cleaned the girls and Py's cage out this morning, and Tiz went walkabout again. I finally caught her, put her back in the cage and she went manic trying to find a way out. So like an idiot I let her out to film her, and lost her again. I think she's looking for a nice place to set up home to have her babies. She seems to favour the cardboard box full of clean hammocks.
Only four or five days to go!
I hope I've done the right thing. I caught Thisbe pushing Sophie off the top shelf today, presumably because that's where Thisbe has made her nest and she didn't want anyone else in it. It's a good job there was a hammock beneath. So I've moved Tizzy into the birthing cage three days early. She is NOT happy. She went berserk trying to find a way out of the cage, and now she's sitting in the corner sulking with her ears back. I do hope she will settle down. :-..
I'm still not convinced she's going to have these bubs. She's not getting bigger any more. Trust Tizzy to get me all excited about baby ratties and then change her mind. She was very stressed out by the move to the tank. Here she is yesterday (it took YouTube a whole DAY to get the video up!)
I'm almost certain she's reabsorbing her litter. She's losing weight, she doesn't look nearly as big as most full term mums. She hasn't come in season but she's not nesting either. I don't know why it's making me feel so low - we didn't exactly plan to have babies anyway.
It's all a big joke.
I think the rats are laughing at us.
So far I've discovered that pregnant rats can
suspend implantation/pregnancy reabsorb the babies have phantom pregnancies
So how do they expect anyone ever to know if they're pregnant?
How do I know if Tizzy's strange weight chart means she's not pregnant any more?
If she doesn't give birth by day 24, is it safe to put her home in the big cage?
Tizzy's def. getting bigger again. The ratbag! I have no idea now whether she's still preggers. Wait and see, I guess.
Stand down troops. Thisbe is utterly, insanely and most gloriously in season this evening.
She's obviously trying to send me even further along the path to insanity than I had already achieved on my own.
Thisbe has made me think things over. I had been thinking that I would love to start breeding once we had a spare room, ie once the kids have left the nest. Trying to work out what to do with Tizzy's offspring made me rethink the logistics, and I think it may be possible to accommodate breeding sooner than that. I got in touch with the breeder who I feel corresponds most closely on almost all points with my views, and she was heartwarmingly enthusiastic in supporting me. Bowled me over, in fact.
So, I'm going to be looking for some likely bucks over the next few months. Then, a few months down the line, looking for my founding does. My primary aim is to breed for healthy, long-lived rats, as I feel that this is the main problem with rats as pets. It's very important that they come from breeders with detailed records of health and lifespan. Temperament is also very important, because a long lived pet will probably not be a happy pet if it is not handleable and loveable. Type and colour need to be considered, but are not my main focus as I'm not a show oriented person. Type is important to me only because it defines what makes a rat a rat, and poor type often indicates poor breeding and poor health. Colour makes the rats appealing, also part of what makes a pet homeable and showable, but not the primary consideration.
Good grief. Sounding far too earnest and worthy here. What I want is ratty babies that both improve ratdom and give me bubs to play with, because Tiz has made me want bubs.
I've started putting my Ratty Corner stuff on eBay, and have decided to have a big sale at the next show to try to clear my stock. Then hopefully I can clear some space for cages and stuff. It's still all up in the air at the moment, but I will get to the stage of breeding ratties at some point next year.
I'm not doing well at applying for jobs at the moment. I have a horrid lump on my lip and it's making me very self conscious, as well as giving me a bit of a lisp. A mucocele, it seems, about the size of a kidney bean. I'm calling it my pet slug and have named it Oscar. I keep waiting for my referral letter from the hostipal, but nothing's come through yet.
Tesla died last night at eleven months old. He's the second of the six rescue brothers to leave. I'd only just moved them into their own cage so I could keep a better eye on them - maybe it was the stress? Such a shame - they're all such sweet little men. All four of the remaining boys are wheezy, but two of them still look fairly healthy. Maybe with them out of the big cage I can feed them all up and get their meds into them more easily?
The question is, do they just have a weak immune system from poor breeding, or is it the way they were cared for up to six weeks old when they came to me? I can't see it being anything I've done, as there were six unrelated boys in the big cage with them who have remained healthy.
I moved the poorly brothers into their own cage so they could have some peace and quiet, and what do they do? The two least ill are battling it out for alpha, inbetween breaks to sit and get their breath back.
Rats!
Putting the brothers in their own cage, that is. They're getting plenty of soft food to encourage them to eat, and there are no bigger boys to push them out of the way and steal it all. I wish I'd done this sooner. I'm finding it far easier to get their meds into them too.
I'm working on a scheme to empty out the attic at the moment, so we can stick things up there while we redecorate. A lot of the stuff up there is fairly useful, so when I can sell it I'm sticking the money in my account to buy rat supplies. I want to get a couple of fold-flat cages as spares, then build up my vet money a bit.
I almost had the prospect of some lab rats to foster today - pink eyed white Sprague-Dawley rats which were over ordered. But it seems they're not allowed to rehome them and they have to go back to the supplier.
Last modified: Saturday, 10-Nov-2007 23:05:57 GMT
