Are these what I think they are?

[Adam Chandler]

A little backround:
I have two main rat breeding projects.
-Top eared (TE) high white Russain Blues
-Dumbo BEW's.

My goal is to produce Dumbo high white Russian Blues so I bred a Dumbo BEW to a TE Russian Blue and produced TE BEW's double het for Blue and Dumbo and then bred the double het's together and just got my first litter from the pairing.

This is what crawled out:




3 of these peculiar little buggers with wavy fur and curly whiskers are in the litter. Are these BEW Rexes?
If so, how? I thought Rex was a co-dom gene and neither of the parents or grand parents are Rex. How did this pop up out of no where?

[Wapadi]

I am not a huge rat gene follower but I have curly haired ones pop up all the time. I like the fuzzy ones better!!! None of my rats are being line bred either....

[LotusCorvus]

Looks like a rex to me, but its a bit early to be certain yet. Once they hit their first main shed/molt, you should know. I thought rex was a recessive, not a co-dom? Which might help explain it popping up seemingly out of nowhere. Congrats either way, it's definitely a cutie, and worth dinking around with later on.

[snakesRkewl]

According to AFRMA Rex is a Dominate trait in rats although it act's like an incomplete dominate trait from my experience.
You have to have a rex to make a rex, if none of your adults are rex then you've got recessive trait hairless rats.

Is this what you're trying to make...Blue masked dumbo...Although this is a powder blue, it's basically the same thing

[Adam Chandler]

According to AFRMA Rex is a Dominate trait in rats although it act's like an incomplete dominate trait from my experience.
You have to have a rex to make a rex, if none of your adults are rex then you've got recessive trait hairless rats.

Yes, I'm 100% sure that neither of the parents (or any of the grand-rats) are Rex. I was not aware of a recessive hairless variety, only the incomplete dominate Rex, which is why I was so confused. Makes sense now. With all the recessives floating around in feeder rats I guess you never really know what may pop out!

Are there any known health issues with the recessive hairless gene?

Is this what you're trying to make...Blue masked dumbo...Although this is a powder blue, it's basically the same thing

Yes! that is exactly what I'm trying to produce. So far it doesn't look like I got one in this first litter. All of the Dumbos are BEW and all the of blues are top eared

[Rhasputin]

Looks like a hairless to me.

[Michelle.C]

Looks like a hairless to me too!

I have a Russian Blue Black Eyed White line too! It throws some of the prettiest babies and it's recessive too.

[bad-one]

From what I've read recessive hairless females tend to make poor mothers and have problems lactating. I used to breed recessive hairless rats when I produced my own feeders, never noticed any extra health problems however I fed them off young for the most part except for my holdback males.

I never kept back hairless girls or bred them and as far as I know that is the main issue. I do know that because hairless are indeed hairless they are more prone to skin problems like urine burns (plus they get scratched up easily). Just keep em clean and warm and you should be fine.

[snakesRkewl]

Yeah recessive trait hairless moms struggle to produce enough milk to feed the kits, some can, most can't.

All of the Dumbos are BEW and all the of blues are top eared

Keep trying, those BEW's will carry blue, so breeding them together should/could produce blue masked kits, good luck!

[Adam Chandler]

Yeah recessive trait hairless moms struggle to produce enough milk to feed the kits, some can, most can't.

Keep trying, those BEW's will carry blue, so breeding them together should/could produce blue masked kits, good luck!

Thanks, I'll keep them paired up and try again. The nice thing about breeding rats is that it's a pretty short wait between litters