Raising rats — feeding, breeding & harvesting

Keep one colony healthy before expanding it. Food shortages, overcrowding and illness can erase the return you expected. More rats do not automatically mean a successful business.

1. Prepare your first colony

Start with the Rat Wrangler scenario or purchase the husbandry service. Prepare a container, rats and food; add a feeder and inspection tools when you can afford them. Feeding tonight’s colony comes before buying more animals.

A trap baited with cheese has a nightly chance of catching a wild rat. This can introduce breeding stock, but is not a guaranteed supply. Check newcomers’ health and genes before deciding whether to breed them or raise them for meat.

2. Make sure the food is accessible and affordable

Start with high-calorie, low-cost food. The tutorial distinguishes bagged food, which rats can eat directly, from canned food, which cannot simply be offered unopened in the same way. A can sitting in the container does not prove the rats can feed.

With a feeder, insert food and use its combine action to store calories, then keep it in the same container as the rats. It supplies food as needed and reduces waste from whole portions. Check the reserve before ending each day.

Do not put rat meat in the feeder. In the tutorial, this gives rats a prion disease. Cheap feed that makes the colony sick can create a more expensive problem.

3. Check health, hunger and space every day

• Hunger: reduces growth and breeding performance; severe hunger causes nighttime damage. Refill food before adding breeders.
• Crowding: rats and corpses occupy space. Split the colony or reduce stock when crowding appears instead of waiting for injuries.
• Illness: drains health and affects breeding. The creator also reports less harvestable meat from rats that die while diseased.

Use a simple daily order: refill food, check sick rats and corpses, make room, then decide whether to breed or harvest. Watching weight alone misses these problems.

4. Select breeders instead of keeping every newborn

Use the gene scanner to compare offspring with their parents. The creator prioritizes growth speed, then fertility and litter size, followed by immunity and food consumption. One attractive number is not a reason to retain every newborn.

When affordable, keep good breeding stock in a separate breeding cage. The video demonstrates expanding a cage and increasing its durability limit with metal ingots. Still check food and space before breeding; expansion is not unlimited capacity.

Pairing attempts do not guarantee pregnancies; health, hunger and age also affect outcomes. Do not treat three females as an absolute cap. For inherited traits, backcrossing and cage planning, see animals and breeding.

5. Do not keep meat stock indefinitely

An extra day is worth less once growth slows. In the demonstration, younger rats gain weight faster, adults slow down and elderly rats lose weight. Decide using the animal’s actual age, weight and another night’s food cost, rather than applying one harvest day to every rat.

The creator uses a blade on the rat, then on the corpse to obtain meat. The blade’s identity is not verified in the current official item table. Separate valuable breeders first so they are not confused with meat stock.

The video also uses wire cutters to sterilize rats that are not being kept as breeders. This prevents unwanted litters from consuming more space and feed. Clear harvested meat and corpses promptly.

6. Add support equipment when the basics work

• Immune serum and growth treatments: the creator uses these for breeders or meat stock nearing harvest. Compare the effect and cost rather than treating every rat by default.
• Food-buying sign and dark lights: used in the tutorial to attract additional low-cost food supplies. Event shortages can empty shops, so avoid relying entirely on same-day purchases.
• Vacuum robot: insert a battery in the Vacuum Robot and double-click to activate cleaning, as demonstrated.
• Blue labels: rename animals or containers to distinguish breeders, animals under observation and meat stock.

Before selling, check the next cycle

Keep enough breeding stock and food for another cycle. The creator displays larger meat pieces in the window to attract Upper Level buyers; actual profit still depends on the selling price and the cost of raising the animals.

If the colony keeps growing while your cash shrinks, pause expansion and review feed spending, crowding and harvest timing. Solve those before chasing better genes.

Related: Starting scenarios · Item database

Credits

This walkthrough follows Yijing Jinhua de Baban Suan’s five-minute rat-raising tutorial. Its exact build and patch setup are unconfirmed; use your own item descriptions and results to check the advice.