Probably Stolen rat farming: breeding, feeding and selling meat

How do you start a rat farm?

Choose Rat Wrangler when starting a new game, or buy Ranching from Joe Wild’s network services in your existing shop. The service has a base cost of 500 credits, gives a starter kit immediately and introduces a Rat Rancher who visits weekly.

Start with a cage, breeding stock and food

Check that you have a healthy male and female. Put them and their food in the same cage, leave room for offspring, and keep a blade for butchering surplus animals.

Start with one small colony. Keep a breeding pair, raise their pups and butcher the surplus for sale. The money-making guide compares this routine with water trading and wine.

Mouse Trap and Processed Cheese: find more breeding stock

Put Processed Cheese in a Mouse Trap to catch more rats. Move each catch into a cage and check its sex until you have a male and female.

Why aren’t the rats eating?

Put food in the same cage as the rats. At the daily settlement, hunger decreases. Rats look for food when the remaining value falls below 375 out of 500.

Livestock Feed Dispenser: process the food first

Add food, process it into stored feed, then put the dispenser in the cage. It holds up to 10,000 kcal. With enough feed, it raises each rat’s hunger value to 425.

For loose food, use non-canned items that contain calories. Rats skip cans and consume the whole food item they choose, which can waste part of a large meal.

Prepare food before a litter arrives. Newborns start at 125 out of 500 hunger and need feeding. On the panel, a higher current hunger value means a better-fed rat. A lower Hunger Rate means it consumes less each day.

When can rats breed, and how long is pregnancy?

Put a male and female of the same species, both at least 3 days old, in the same cage. Choose fed, unneutered rats, with a female that is not already pregnant. Their current fertility determines the chance of mating.

After successful mating, the base pregnancy lasts 3 game days, with a base litter of 2–4 pups. Follow the pregnancy indicator and make room before birth. Inherited traits can change litter size.

If breeding is slow, check food, space and cleanliness first. Keep the pair fed and their cage clean, with room for pups.

If the rats become overcrowded, move some into another cage or expand with Metal Ingot. Crowding lowers fertility and wears the cage out faster.

Which rats should you keep for breeding?

Compare Growth Rate, Immunity, Hunger Rate, Litter Size and Longevity. Fast growth helps meat production, immunity helps keep the colony healthy, and a low Hunger Rate reduces feed consumption. Keep a healthy pair before trying to improve every trait.

Gene Scanner: compare inherited traits

Switch the scanner on to see both inherited values for each trait. A pup inherits one of these from each parent. Compare both values and favour parents with two good values.

Set aside the healthy male and female you want to keep before butchering the surplus.

How do you butcher rats and sell the meat?

Kitchen Knife or Box Cutter: kill, then butcher

The pictured Kitchen Knife works, as does a Box Cutter. Use it once on a live rat to kill it, then again on the corpse to butcher it. Move the products into your sales stock to sell them.

Weight used in the butchering calculation	Product	Base value
400g portion	Raw Meat (Standard)	120
200g portion	Raw Meat (Small)	60
100g portion	Animal Fat	40
50g portion, or the final smaller remainder	Offal	12

The game splits the weight into these portions in order. A healthy 400g rat gives one standard meat; 401g adds a portion of offal. Diseased rats count for 75% of their weight when butchered. Find other products in the item and base-price reference.

Check weight each day to plan when to butcher. Base growth slows from day 5, and rats start losing weight in the late age stage from day 11.

Calculate earnings from your sale price minus feed and equipment costs. The table gives base values, and 400g produces one standard meat. To choose when to butcher, compare the extra meat from another day’s growth with the food that day will cost.

What should you check before ending the day?

Scrap Metal repairs; Metal Ingot expands

Use Scrap Metal on a cage to restore 50% of its maximum durability. Each Metal Ingot adds one row of space. Rats can escape when durability falls below 20, so repair worn cages before closing.

Cleaner Robot: put it inside the cage

Power the robot and place it in the cage you want cleaned. It collects droppings at night. Collection stops when its storage fills, so empty it regularly.

1. Refill each occupied cage with processed feed or loose food, especially before birth.
2. Clear droppings and corpses. Move surplus animals to make room for pups.
3. Check cage durability and repair worn cages.
4. Check the Cleaner Robot’s power and storage space.

Sell rat meat and feed the colony other food. Eating their own species can cause prion disease, which harms growth, immunity and longevity. Processing rat meat into feed keeps this risk.

For a first shop, keep the daily trading and rent routine going while the pups grow. Expand after one small colony is fed, clean and producing saleable stock.

How does the Rat Wrangler start connect to ranching later?

Rat Wrangler starts with cages, rats and food. An existing shop can use Joe Wild’s Ranching referral for starter equipment and later supply. Both use this guide’s care, breeding and meat-sale routine. The career Wiki connects equipment and entrances for other businesses.

See Rat Wrangler for the career’s starting resources and related contacts.