Did a little experiment of my own...take the results with a grain of salt....

They sound adorable! I looked up dumbo rats and they are soooo cute.

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Originally Posted by Kitty0911

No, I didn't change the males' diets at all.

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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. ;-)

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Originally Posted by Kitty0911

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:

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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.

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Originally Posted by Erin514

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.

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:agree: great point, Erin!

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Originally Posted by Erin514

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. ;-)

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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!

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!!!