Thread 5037180

I am trying to breed a male and female rat, and the male is just very submissive. I want him to breed to pass on his gentle and affectionate temperament. Like, he would play with me the first day I got him, and would let him over his belly and tickle him. It was very unusual for me to see a rat so immediately easy to handle and so gentle.

So, I introduced a female to him yesterday. She should go into estrus tomorrow, or it may be delayed to the next day. And well. I don't even know if he'll even be capable of breeding her. She has totally established dominance over him, and frequently pins him down and grooms him. He may be too much of a push over to even breed.

She is a robust female, but I am choosing in her thinking of the health of my girls, and she is my rat with the second best temperament. I don't want to risk the life of one of my little girls to be too frail to handle pregnancy and birth especially my best behaved girl she is a dwarf rat. Not a dwarf rat ins breed, but a dwarf rat as in a total runt. She has a sister that is quite robust.

Does anyone have experience with males being too submissive to breed a female?

Also, his temperament is confident despite being submissive. He doesn't show signs of fear often even when somewhere unfamiliar to him, or being handled by me for the first time. So his traits are: gentle, like he would feed without trying to bite or snatch, and he is gentle when licking food off my fingers and many other little ways like that. He is affectionate, like licking and gently holding onto my fingers. Playful not every rat is willing to play with humans even completely tame rats. He immediately acted like a rat that had spent a bunch a months with me despite not even knowing me.

Confidence, fear, and gentleness can be genetic in rats. So I want to pass on his great temperament.

>>5037180 (OP)
>She has totally established dominance over him, and frequently pins him down and grooms him.
He just has good taste.

>>5037180 (OP)
sounds like she is gonna breed him instead. Based, honestly.

Jesus Christ

She is in full blown heat now and won't let him mount her. But if I go and rub her back she'll go crazy arching her back sticking up her hind quarter, and wiggling.

I finally got them to mate by ruffling her and getting her to hop around and ruffling him and then he started jumping on her.

They went at it all not and now they're tired. You can't really see in the photo but the white one has a light caramel hood though albino with red eyes. You can't see the white sides and underbelly on the black one and all the white hairs on the back mixed in with the black hairs. The white actually reaches high on the sides.

>>5037843
I don't think you understand. I wasn't holding them during this. I petted their backs for 30 seconds then left them completely alone rather than distracting them with my presence. That was the only time I touched them in the last 24 hours.