Babies soon!

Always an exciting time when babies are expected. Any day now our Meg is likely to pop!

Weighed her today and she has gained 96g! She is huge.

How many babies will there be?? Her mom & sister have started a family tradition with litters of 9. Will she continue it? I am guessing 10, nice even number lol. We will soon see.

My poor girl is not happy at all about being in the maternity cage. She has been pouting :( Time will fly by after the babies are born and they will keep her busy but the waiting is always rough.

Meg preggers

Meg big baby tummy!! <3

Posted by Once Upon a Mischief Rattery on Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Meet the newest addition to the rattery!

On Dec 27 we introduced the newest little girl into our rattery!

Rey (named after the female lead in the new Star Wars)
Born 10/21/15 Female
Dwarf  Dumbo Black Berkshire

She is my first dwarf and so itty bitty tiny. She is 9.5 weeks old and weights 50g. She is so adorably petite. At full grown she is only expected to get about 80-100g. Compare that to a standard female at around 300g give or take. She has an absolutely sweet personality. Very curious and friendly.

I am really so in love!

Because of her size keeping dwarfs with standards can be iffy. It really depends on the personality of your rats but just the size difference alone can spell disaster from little spats.

I will be keeping her with my females. I am lucky that they all have sweet personalities and have all been around babies her size. So I am confident.

Right now I have a female rat, Meg, who is pregnant. My thought at this moment is to add Rey in when Meg's babies are alittle older. Then when I intro the babies to my adult female rats, Rey can just slip in with the babies and all the attention won't be just on her lol. After quarantine I will probably slip Yuna in with her until then. Yuna is my little runt girl who is still fairly small. She is 3 months old currently and bigger then Rey but still fairly small size.

Sleep Well My Sweet Apollo

Tonight I said goodbye to my baby Apollo. It is never easy to say goodbye. Rats have such short lives and you know that but you always hope and it always seems too soon.

He got very sick very fast. One minute he was perfectly fine and the next everything just fell apart. Literally overnight I lost him. The only positive was that I got to hold him and pet him. I rubbed right behind his ear, which is always a favorite scritch spot. I told him that he would not have to suffer anymore and that he would soon be with the Goddess and only know beauty and love.

I got Apollo with his brother Blue, at the beginning of this year (2015). They had been pets to a girl and needed to be rehomed. I had gladly taken them in knowing that they were already older. They were sweet and loving boys -to people...

They were at times quite aggressive with other rats though. I had a badly failed intros with my other boys and then they began fighting with each other! They had to live alone for a while. But with perseverance, I was able to reintro them to one another perfectly. Sadly now Blue is left all alone again :( He is already acting heartbroken. This will not be an easy road ahead.

I loved Apollo so much. He was the sweetest boy. Whenever I would have them out playing, the moment he would see me he would run right to me and want to be picked up. Then he would give me licks. He majorly loved his treats too.

He will be so missed. My heart feels so empty right now. I love you Apollo.

Blue (L) & Apollo (R)

An awesome duo

So I am pretty excited to announce that today begins my pairing of Meg (siamese dumbo female) with Malygos (Russian Blue Hooded male standard ear).

These two rats have the absolute best temperaments out of any rat I've seen. They both are sweet, calm, and all about love and affection.

This is Meg's first litter, she did help with the babies when her sister Charlie had a litter and possessed excellent motherly skills.

This will also be Maly's first babies. He was paired once before with my girl Sansa but it did not work out. He has such a laid back attitude and she was too much for him I think. I decided to remove her from breeding.

As soon as I put them together they both acted perfectly fine with it as if they had always been together! That is a good sign.

But I admit I am slightly worried about Maly's flirting skills. lol Is he going to be able to make it happen? Only time will tell... I am hoping that with Meg's calm attitude she will be a perfect match for him.

*Praying for babies*

Meg begging to be released from the baby making bin cage