Domestic rat pregnant by wild rat

Question
One of our female rats had escaped from her cage and was on the run for a short time. We do have a wild rat that we see from time to time. Now that we have our girl back she is looking pregnant. If she does have a litter of domestic/wild babies what should we do? We are just looking for advice. We are all for keeping them and raising them like our other domestic rats, but are unsure if they would need any special care etc. We also have a 7 year old son who handles all of our pet rats, and are unsure of his exposure to disease. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

Answer

Fudgey's wild babies!
Hi Sarah

Your story is pretty close to a story that I have that occured last year. A lady that own a Cafe wrote me and told me that the pet store next to her had closed up and moved away, but left one little escaped rat behind. The rat set up house between the walls and lived there for months. The woman left food out for her and the rat would sneak out when the Cafe shut down and would eat the food and drink from the bowl. The rat was spotted several times (making the employees scream of course! LOL) She was a little white rat that they named Fudgey because she would get into the fudge at night.  Finally they were able to trap her after many months of living in the wall. By now, this rat was basically feral, terrified of humans. It was safe to say she was like a wild rat. The owner knew nothing about rats and wrote me asking for help and advice and also told me she was certain there was a wild male that used to hang around the cafe too.  Well of course, about 2 weeks later, Fudgey gave birth to a litter of half wild pups. They all looked like the father, not one of them being white like their mom.  Turned out the owner was severely allergic to the rats and could not keep any of them so I helped her find a way to find homes for everyone, including Fudgey. It all had a happy ending and Fudgey was even slowly but surely learning to trust humans.  With half wild hybrid pups, you dont have to do anything different except of course be sure you socialize the babies from day one and always handle them etc....  so they are used to humans and trust you etc...
I raised wild rat, Holly, from the age of 11 weeks till she passed away at close to 4 years old. She did not get along with my domestics and lived alone but that was by her choice and she was happy and healthy and was the best pet rat I have ever had!! The odd thing about it is that usually domestic and wild rats do NOT mate and I recall reassuring the Cafe owner that Fudgey was probably NOT pregnant. Boy did I screw up when Fudgey popped out the babies!!  LOL

As for disease, dont worry about anything. People worry about rabies and rats and rats are NOT natural carriers of rabies and in fact there has never been a documented case of rabies being transmitted from rat to human, ever!! That is mainly due to the fact if a rat is attacked by a wild rabid animal it would never live through the attack to be able to incubate and pass on the rabies virus to another victim.

The wild rat was no doubt a field rat rather than some big old rat that lived among waste and famine in a third world country or in areas where disease is high and people are very poor living in huts and have no running water etc...in other words, these are the the rats and other animals that carry disease because they get it from humans in teh first place. I am going to assume that your living in modern times esp since you have access to a computer. Not sure if that makes sense but what I am saying is that the rats and other rodents that are subject to carrying dangerous disease are those that live among very filhy conditions.

The only thing rats can give us and we can give rats is ringworm!!

Here is a photo of Fudgeys half wild babies when they were a few weeks old. You can see in their little faces they have wild rat in them. They look like my wild girl, Holly !!  Arent they adorable?
If you are sure mom is pregnant, increase her iron a bit such as feeding her a bit of scrambled egg. You can also feed her some infant soy formula given twice daily as well.


hope this helps!