Keeping back breeder stock.. what's do you do?

[Sevo]

OK I am now to the point that I can start to cull some breeding stock of my rats for the futur and to expand it some more. I am having a hard timne deciding waht ones to keep. They are all very healthy.. all of them run and play and are all relativley the same size..

SO my question is, How do you decide what ones to keep for your breeding stock? Do you have a color you like best (black over albino or over tan...) what do you look for ( as i mentioned they are all very healthy and look great)

Just looking for ideas of what you all do... damn its hard to decide what ones to keep. I know I will keep more females than males. I have them seperated.. and that is as far as i have gone with it...

thanks
chris

[daniel1983]

When I was breeding mice, I would hold back female babies from my largest litter. I have read a few things that say litter size may be genetic, so it would make sense to hold back babies from females that produce the largest litters. If you have a female that has never produced large numbers of offspring.....cull her and her offspring. If you have a female that always produces large numbers of offspring....cull her but keep her offspring as breeding stock.

[frankykeno]

Just like Daniel described with his mice, that's what I do with my rats. I'm just starting on my next generation of breeders so I'm picking daughters of my best breeders. Also I'm looking at attractive colors or patterns I like (heck why not have cute rats if you have rats right LOL) as well as young females that have good sturdy body structures and decent temperments. My new breeder male is a recent outside purchase as I found an American Blue male plus I wanted some new blood in the colony anyways.

[Ginevive]

I go by size; if I want to add a new female, and I have a litter growing, I just go with my gut and pick the most robust one. I always try handling them and seeing who's the most tolerant of it; I hate having feral breeders!

[frankykeno]

Okay good example here. Alita my Husky female that just produced 18 today. Her breeding history is 12....16...18 and she's an outstanding female who takes very good care of her young (other than the first 12 but that's understandable). So I kept a really gorgeous daughter of hers from that litter of 16, almost jet black...really nice looking shiny black rat...named her Jet...absolutely excellent temperment just like Alita has. Hopefully she'll be like her mother.

You know Gin I think temperment is really quite genetic with rats. I had one breeding female...ack most hyper rat in the world...totally freaked if I even came near her. All of her young from two seperate litters were spazzy...awful to handle...nippy...freaky...skinny feeders too as they wouldn't calm down. We removed that female from the colony as it seemed to pass down to her young.

[Bdadawg]

Ive also found temperament to be genetic ...

Biters produce biters, hoarders produce hoarders, etc.

I have 3 criteria (these go by priority) ... one is larger than litter mates, larger than average litter size, and temperament.

The first animals that I usually cull are undersized/dwarfs and then whites, unless they fall into the first 2 categories, For some reason I just dont like white rats or mice.

Bryan

[Sevo]

Great ideas guys.. thank you for the help

Chris

[smilin-buddha]

I also check litter size. I had a great male rat. Shaka that always produced huge litters no matter what females I put him with. I had unrelated females that produced 16 per litter. All these years later I am still using their kids. And still get big litters.