Thanks atomic. Not going too strict just less snacking (im a shift worker) and abit more walking etc. With 4 boys i find it hard to fit everything in 😂
Mum to 4 Boys awaiting her Princess
Thanks atomic. Not going too strict just less snacking (im a shift worker) and abit more walking etc. With 4 boys i find it hard to fit everything in 😂
Mum to 4 Boys awaiting her Princess
Wow how interesting and exciting!
I have only just discovered this thread!! Your research is so cool & exciting!!! :bowdown:
I cant wait for the next instalment! ;)
FAB!! xxx
Sorry this is a little late! I had HORRIBLE morning sickness and put off doing this round of LE/HE dieters by a few weeks. Babies were born a couple weeks ago and I have genders ready to add to my little stats :)
This time I did both an HE and an LE female. Focus was on the same thing- diet.
HE female: 8 pups- 6 male and 2 female
LE female: 8 pups- 3 male and 5 female
I'm a tiny bit disappointed with the results this time. They had the same number of babies vs. the HE were having more and LE were having less. They both had the average number of babies that my rats have with no diet change. BUT there still was a difference in gender ratio from the norm, so the diet is obviously doing something. I'm wondering if maybe since there were two females gestating at the same time that somehow that affected their number of offspring more? They were caged together after the "attempts" and I wonder if that might have had an effect on how many babies they had. Or I'm thinking too much into it and it was just a fluke. :shrug:
So I believe, if I am doing my math right, that the LE success rate for rats is 76%-77% and HE success rate for rats is 81%.
the thing to remember (and everyone should keep this in mind with studies too because a lot of studies are just published after ONE test run - usually the one that verifies the researcher's supposition o.O) is that there's always going to be variation in the results. That's ok. We want to see overall the results and over time the trend will become obvious. :)
I actually do think 2 gestating together could affect the results somewhat - if a mother thought she and her offspring had genetic competition she might be more motivated to have more babies even if it took a toll on her in the long term, than a mother without genetic competition, if that makes sense. Of course these things happen totally unconsiously thru biological mechanisms we have no clue about, but still the end result is that organisms do whatever it takes to give their genes the best chances of being handed down to future generations.
Thank you again so much for this!
This is so awesome!!!! This is why I'm sticking to LE diet for 12 weeks or more it is simply amazing.
Also hope your baby #4 is a girl
I'll be trying in March. Best of luck to you
I seriously enjoyed reading your little experience and I am confident enough to say it has influence. I don't do any researches like this, however, I keep a note of people who got or are pregnant of boys and girls. I note what kind of diet they did (in my mind lol) and what their lifestyle was or is like. I noticed that for some age+diet had more influence and for the other workout+diet and lifestyle. In general, the ones with boys had food that was more 'rich' compared to the women with girls.
I would love to do a research on human beings lol.
This is so cool! Can't believe I missed this early 2015...I mean, I was here on the site months before so I must have just been spacey! [emoji12]
I love the results! Obviously rats and humans are different, but, there is a lot of research I've read in counseling/therapy/psychological disorders on rats and their responses to stimuli and environments and their brain/body response is the same as human responses. A lot of them are psychological and stress related studies, but rats and humans do in fact have some things in common that make correlating results pretty accurate. So this is so, so neat to me!
Also, I love rats. They're so smart and neat creatures! I'd love to have one if I didn't have a dachshund!
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Rats do have a lot in commmon with humans in terms of brain formation, metabolism, and immune system. They are also omnivores, which may make some difference too. So many of the diet studies are done in herbivores and I just think there is no comparison.
Overall though (and I think this thread is awesome don't get me wrong) I would love to see more tests done in primates and sheep, oddly enough sheep are a pretty good analogue for humans in terms of fertility - unfortunately they still have the herbivore issue and are "harems" and all of that but they have 1-3 babies like humans do. The thing with rats that complicates it is that they have litters so they can "afford" to pop out some boys and girls and gamble that they will survive. I wish badgers made for good testing animals because they are like humans in a lot of ways too (omnivores and don't have litters in addition to a couple other similarities) There are also a lot of birds that also have a lot in common with humans, weirdly enough - 1-2 babies at a time, dads are involved with the raising the kids and the competition for mates functions very similarly to humans, where the females are often choosing the males instead of males fighting each other for dominance.
I have reason to believe that humans are the single most likely to be affected by Trivers-Willard, so if we see results in animals, lots of animals, it may very well be that not only does this correlate to humanity, but it's even stronger a connection. We have the fewest offspring over our lives that take the longest to raise to adulthood meaning there's a lot to be gained by having the offspring that has the best shot of survival to pass down genes.
Do you know what you are having yet?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty0911
Little one would not cooperate at my ultrasound. I have my 20 week one in a month so hopefully I'll find out then :)
AAA really Kitty!! :nails:
Wow! Thanks for sharing this! I can't wait to hear the stats for the next batch
Awesome! Could you share exactly what the LE and HE diets are made up of and their macronutrient breakdown?
One interesting point is that even when effectively FORCED to do the LE 'properly', there are still some opposites. That should help reassure some 'failed' pink swayers that they did all they could.
At some point you might want to consider breeding the same females repeatedly but alternate HE/LE (with a break on a normal diet in between), up to 6 litters.
The HE dieters get their usual pellets but I put in a ton of sunflower and safflower seeds for fat and I added in a high protein dog food as well. The LE dieters I gave them their usual pellets as well but I add in a ton of puffed rice and wheat (full of carbs but no fortified nutrients). What I did notice was the HE dieters would pig out on the seeds and dog food and leave quite a few pellets, and the LE dieters would eat mostly the puffed grains and eat very little of their pellets as well. So it really does depend on how much each rat ate of what they were given. I didn't really look at how much fat, carbs, protein they were given since I didn't really think it would work anyway (when I first started out). I just made sure the HE diets were fattier and more protein rich and that the LE diets were less nutritious and no added fats or proteins.
Thanks! I bet you would see an increase in the HE success if you used different fats, more blue friendly ones (safflower & sunflower are pretty pink). Can you give the butter, high fat cheese, and fatty red meat? Maybe coconut too? Though that makes for a more expensive experiment...I would also consider supplemental vitD for the HE females.
Still super interesting that even on neutral fats at best, you get a high rate of success. The LE diet, just adding puffed grains, seems great!
One more thought, you might at some point try having females eat the exact same diet, maybe just pellets, but do 2x a day limited vs all the time feeding. That would separate out the low cal vs actual diet aspect of swaying.
I just wanted to come on here and apologize for how long it has been since I did another update. I have not done any breeding for awhile since I was on bedrest for the end of my pregnancy and then was in and out of the hospital when my little one was in the NICU. I'm starting another rat on the LE diet for the next few weeks and will update again when she has her babies and I can tell their gender. Once the LE mom has her babies I'll start the HE mom on her diet and update you guys on how that plays out as well. I will also try to give the HE mom more "boy friendly" fats like cheeses and other animal fats. Maybe that will help get the HE moms to produce more boys.
Lucky HE rat!
I hope your daughter is doing well.
Mte -- I think one of the best protocols that could be done here is to alternate the diets of female rats who had already bred when following the opposite diets!Quote:
Originally Posted by maidentomother
Thank you so much for this thread Kitty, and congrats on your little one!
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I love this thread!! I am a NICU nurse, sorry your little one had to spend time there! So tough on the family! Hope she is doing better now!!
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How is baby doing Kitty???
yes how is baby?. great thread BTW.xxxx
Your little girl is so beautiful Atomic, such an innocent little face :)
Thank you!!
Brontė is doing well. She was in the NICU for only 17 days, then she was sent home on caffeine and a monitor. She is 5 weeks old and 5lbs 8oz now. She's quite slow at gaining weight so she is getting one bottle of high calorie formula a day (I've been trying to make sure she gets more hindmilk from me at each feeding too). She is only gaining 3 ounces a week so hopefully adding in some higher calorie milk will get her up to 4-5 ounces of weekly weight gain. :) Other than that she is doing marvelous. Her brothers absolutely love her! I don't think she has been put down once since she's been home- her brothers are always holding her. :)
I"m so glad she's doing ok!! Grow little girl grow!!
So glad to hear Kitty! I still can't get over her name *_*
Growth and love to your new daughter! Love the name. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Throwaway_panther
I may consider doing this, but I don't solely breed them for "scientific" purposes. Their health and the pups health are extremely important to me and the people who purchase them. Breeding a rat more than once can cause some health issues in the babies. I may consider breeding each rat twice (once on LE and once on HE diet) but I really can't do it more than that without risking the pups health. When I started breeding years ago I noticed pups born to mothers who had previously gestated had a very high risk of dying in the first weeks of life. Mothers would have the usual 8 or so pups, but I'd lose half the litter by the time the pups reached 2 weeks of age. The mothers also seem to have a harder time birthing babies when they are bred multiple times. I've had a mother die during a birth after her third breeding. Since switching to breeding only once I have not lost a mother during birth since. The babies' and mothers' health is why I made sure the rats still got their usual pellets during the weeks before mating. I wanted to make sure they were still given access to the proper vitamins and minerals to establish a healthy pregnancy and produce healthy offspring. I'm sure standard rats would do fine with being breed multiple times, but my dumbo rats don't do too well with it. :shrug:
I didn't realize! Obviously their health is the most important thing!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty0911
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They sound adorable! I looked up dumbo rats and they are soooo cute.
Hey, would you consider doing a test down the road where the females are treated the same and only the males are put on HE or LE? We always hear that what the men do is less important, I would be really curious to see if there's any impact and if so how strong an influence male-only diet has compared to the lady rats. ;-)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty0911
Oh wow, it's a good thing you are a conscientious breeder, then. If being primi- vs multi-parous has that much of an impact on the health of the offspring you are probably better not to use the same mice again on alternate diet. It would just be another variable, and the poor health of the mothers might sabotage blue stats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty0911
:agree: great point, Erin!Quote:
Originally Posted by Erin514
I've been wanting to do this and have it in my journal to do in the near future. I've been curious about this too!Quote:
Originally Posted by Erin514
Great experiment love this thread! I second would love to see the next one where the males diets have been altered and not the females.
Quick update: LE mommy had 6 pups, 4 female and 2 male. I'm doing one more female HE dieter and then I'm going to change it up and see if males only doing the diet effects results.
Wow this is amazing and very encouraging for women starting the diet. Thank You for taking the time to experiment and post.
I just saw this thread for the first time and, wow! This is impressive- thank you so much for conducting this informal experiment and sharing results with us. It is amazing to see the diets working, and since the rats have larger litters than humans and more frequently, we can get results quickly and see at it truly does work. Makes me feel that much more confident!
Thank you so very much Kitty!!! Really so very much appreciated!!!