Sexing Your New Pet Rat
When you purchase a new rat, regardless e of where you buy the new pet rat (from a pet store or an experienced rat breeder), it is the duty of whoever you got your new rat from to tell you the sex of your rat.
Discovering The Sex of Your Rat
Getting to discover the sex of your rat is not so tedious. It is something that you can achieve by looking briefly. Notwithstanding, a lot of times, pet store workers end up giving you the wrong details. This, therefore, makes it vital you know how to detect the sex of your rat.
Why is it Important to Know Your Rat’s Sex?
The traits and needs of male rats are different from those of female rats. This makes it vital to carry out your research to discover what rat gender you want.
Although carrying out the right amount of research which will help you discover the rat gender you are most comfortable with, your research might be useless if you do not know how to tell the difference between male rats and female rats. This is simply so because you can’t trust whoever will sell the rat to you to give you the right sex.
Also, if you intend buying a couple of rats, you need to understand that they are sociable creatures. It is therefore great to have at least two rats in a rat cage. On the other hand, if you are trying to increase the number of rats you presently have, it is best they are of different sexes as this will help you prevent pregnancies.
If you are also looking to breed rats, you have to know their sexes early to ensure that rats that siblings do not mate and baby rats do not mate with their mother.
Now, how can you physically differentiate a male rat from a female?
When you are purchasing a fat, the difference in physical features should be noticed easily. Baby rats should be separated from their mother by about five weeks, and at this point, there should be no challenge in identifying their sex.
Although it is easier to tell the sex of a rat when it is about five weeks old, you do not have to wait this long before you can tell the sex of a rat. It is possible to know the sex of your rats when they are just as young as one week old.
One major and easily noticed difference between female and male rats in the presence of the testicles
The testicles in male rats are large and occupy a position just under their tail. The females on the other hand lack testicles. Also, male rats have a tendency of being bigger than the females. This, however, can only be noticed when they start developing.
The furs of female rats are not as coarse as those of males. They are also different around the genitals.
