Newborn mammals are confronted shortly after birth with the need to locate their mothers nipple for suckling. The neonate rat, although blind and deaf, can crawl under its mother’s body, position itself, choose a free nipple, and suckle by itself. In this precocious adaptation, olfaction plays a major role in the mediation of mother-newborn interactions and early attachment. The existence of a chemical attractant as a pheromone is released by the lactating female rat imbibed in a soiled litter and serves as a powerful attractant to the neonate. The nature and precise source of this putative attractant is as yet unknown. The first step in studying this substance until its final identification, is to isolate it from the substrate nest and elaborate an experiment protocol to evaluate its activity. With bioassay and seven different solvents at variable polarity we showed that chloroform, pentane, methylene chloride, ethyl acetate and acetone are effective in extracting the active maternal attractant odour from nests of lactating mother rats. Extracts from nipples surrounded with skin and the cheeks of lactating and non lactating females indicate that nipples and their surroundings from lactating females seem to be the source of maternal attractant odour. Preliminary experiments showed that nest extract of one female containing amniotic fluid and blood taken during the birth period was less active than extracts taken from the nests of the same female before (gravid stage) and after the birth period. By using a gas chromatography (GC) trapping technique, the maternal attractant odour is thermostable at about 300°C which is a useful indication for its chemical identification by the GC-MS technique.