Showing off my Siamese rats!

[LotusCorvus]

Male is in the center, female is in the back right.

I’d bought a siamese female and her sister over a year ago, the siamese had too many health problems and never produced a viable litter, but her sister - who also had some cool broken/asymmetrical pattern genes - ended up being a very good breeder, so I ended up with a pair of siamese in one litter a couple generations down. I’m hoping the father is my siamese male, but one of the two odd-eyes I was holding back also turned out to be a male (this was a grow-out tub, so I hadn’t really bothered to sex everybody. I froze off most of the males, but I wasn’t about to feed off an odd-eye when I’ve only produced 2). Even if none of the litter end up being siamese they’ll all be carriers I can breed back to the parents.

You can see my female odd-eye's butt in the back left. She has a blaze on her face that warps to one side so it goes over one eye - that eye is red, while her other eye is ruby. She's a great warm silver color, I have no clue what the proper name for it is. I've been producing a really neat range of greys/blues/silvers but its frustrating me that I can't figure out the "official" names for them, haha.

[DooLittle]

Are the siamese rare? I have one (I believe she is anyhow, she looks like all the ones people call siamese) and she's is a nasty little thing. I'm thinking she might just wind up dinner as soon as I grow up a replacement.

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[LotusCorvus]

Are the siamese rare? I have one (I believe she is anyhow, she looks like all the ones people call siamese) and she's is a nasty little thing. I'm thinking she might just wind up dinner as soon as I grow up a replacement.

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Depends on the area, mostly. I've never seen one in a pet store, I bought the original siamese girl and her sister from a friend that also breeds rats. That was at the Scott Smith expo in Wheaton, IL, and I'm sure I could have found at least one other rat breeder there who had some. They're a recessive trait though, so they tend to get drowned out in large breeding operations. I'd say they're about as rare as hairless - not difficult to find if you're specifically looking for them, but you're unlikely to see them in regular shops.

If yours is nasty then by all means feed her off if thats what you want. No use holding something back to breed if its got a bad temperament. Mine are a bit skittish due to a lack of handling but I haven't been bit by any rat I've bred (excluding one crotchety old man rat, but he was over 2 years old and I'd been handling him longer than he liked, lol, so that was my fault)

[snakesRkewl]

I've been producing a really neat range of greys/blues/silvers but its frustrating me that I can't figure out the "official" names for them, haha

Throw up some pics and I or some other rat people would be happy to try to determine what colors they are

[LotusCorvus]

Throw up some pics and I or some other rat people would be happy to try to determine what colors they are

Once I find my camera's cord so I can charge it I will XD I'm also going to be redecorating the gecko cage today so I really have to find that darn thing.

[LotusCorvus]

Found the charge cord, yay! My little point-and-shoot camera wasn't cooperating very well, and neither were the rats, so these are a bit blurry, but I at least managed some clear fur and eye color shots.

I was a little mistaken - my female odd-eye has a nearly perfect blaze, its the male with the odd blaze.
Female:

The pic doesn't do her color much justice, the first image is closer to her actual fur color, its very warm for something in the grey range on a rat.
Male:

A nice male I held back, he's got a great sort of steel-grey thing going on, and I swear his eyes are black:

One of my favorite males, Bandit. I've been calling him a silver:

Some of Bandit's babies, got a good range of grey shades in them:

And a close-up of the split-color baby. Bandit had similar color differences as a baby, but he mostly outgrew them (his head still seems a bit lighter than his body, but that could just be age at this point, boy has to be getting near to 2):

[wolfy-hound]

Very neat. I finally got self blacks to be able to breed into my few remaining siamese to try to darken them. They started out pretty decent but have faded out now so they don't look all that good. Time to breed the best to some black.

Like the blaze faces. Be interesting to see if she throws high whites. I have a few black/blaze face and they tend to throw a few white whites each litter.

[LotusCorvus]

Oooh, I don't think I would have even thought to bring dark selfs into the mix to improve the siamese's color, that's a great idea! The patterns seem to like to obliterate any chance I get of producing selfs, but I haven't been breeding for pattern at all so I'll have to see what I can do about that~

[snakesRkewl]

Odd eye is the high white gene expressing itself as is the possum face blazes
They will throw more blazes and odd eyes if they are paired with another high white.

Self is also recessive trait, Siamese rats do not express it very well.

Your "silver" rats are blues although I can't really tell if they are Russian or American blue.
The lighter colored blue one with odd eyes is the eye color diluting the blue to a lighter shade of blue.
The creamy colored rats look like Beige which is a black rat diluted by the red eye gene,
If the eye color is pink they are champagnes.
4th pic down looks like it could be a blue agouti mix?

I bred my Siamese into black rats and it definitely improves the points on the offspring

[LotusCorvus]

Thanks for all the info! All my blues originally came out of a black and beige pairing, so I'm used to getting beiges although I've been breeding for the blues lately since I like their coloring so much. I've never had an agouti baby out of my litters though, which is sort of unusual (its such a common gene, I'm not sure how I've managed to accidentally avoid it in my group lol). Bandit's an odd boy, I have his younger sister (same parents, different litter) in his breeding group - I think thats where most of those multi-color babies are from, since thats just what he looked like as a baby. If only they kept those different shades as adults~