Great suggestions! I'm pretty new to this, too, and agree with all you said. I used the help function to start my game and it encouraged me to chose a woman to breed. Turned out she was my only skilled builder and was out of commission for two years!

Another thing I learned is to make sure you have a male trained as a healer since if your female healer is nursing she cannot heal anyone. I try to train two healers, but even that is no match if the rats attack!

--C