Ratty update

I always try to raise the perfect blacks. Its difficult and I drive myself crazy every year! My first litter ever was an Essex with a possum faced cross. Very facy little lightning bolts and some with entire white faces. I'll have to look for pictures but I remember I have some adut shots of the kits.

Cute lil one! I too prefer possum faced over lighting. Something about it seems messy to me. I'm easily impressesd by proper type rats. Heh.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bokuza

I always try to raise the perfect blacks. Its difficult and I drive myself crazy every year!

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Like these? :D
http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/a...lfRexSmall.jpg
http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/a...fRex1Small.jpg
http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/a...14159Small.jpg

You want a "self" on one side of the breeding to make a perfectly solid black rat.
I like to make groups that the male is a Blue Self Or Himilayan Self etc. and breed him to blazes and Berkshires etc.
That way you make both solid colored rats and hooded or berks or whatever, you get a nice mixture of coat types that way.

YEEESSS~! Like those haha! I love selfs! I started with terrible stock last year and it took the whole year to pull put a decent self agouti. What a pain that was. My dream ratty is still a rex coat dumbo self Siamese buck. Seriously that rat would never be in a cage and I would bug him constantly.

Speaking of Siamese! This is the only photo I have of one of my funky litters...
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/3870/img4000h.jpg

From the Essex to Possum faced offspring
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/8131/img3576o.jpg

And then her offspring
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/984/img3632v.jpg

Surprisingly enough after breeding almost all white rats on these lines I never ran into mega-colon. I did run into it on the first mating of a self to a possum faced pink eye dilute, four of the babies eaten and the rest had Mega-colon.

I love that last rattie, Extreme possum face broken stripe hooded, really nice :)

Siamese is pretty similar to Himalayan, one of my favorite colors after Blue

Quote:

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Originally Posted by snakesRkewl

I love that last rattie, Extreme possum face broken stripe hooded, really nice :)

Siamese is pretty similar to Himalayan, one of my favorite colors after Blue

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Yeah he was pretty cute.

Really? I don't think so at all. I guess it's just my opinion. Blues are nice if you get them clean. have you ever seen a blue merle? I'm fond of the deep browns like chocolates or minks. I think it's becuase the house I was raised in as themed brown for 8 years.

I haven't seen a Blue Merle, but I have made mink before, and they are awesome!

I lost her to breeding, she had a breech birth :(
The little one with her is my adult dwarf male, he's a character.
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/s...0641Medium.jpg
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/s...0656Medium.jpg
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/s...0658Medium.jpg

My first litter of Himilayans came from a blue male to a blue female breeding that I thought was going to be all blue babies, as would be normal.
There was 6 Himilayans and 4 Blues, lol.
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/s...s/PICT1276.jpg

I found some pics of true hairless I had, sadly they came to me with tumors like crazy and didn't last long.
http://i569.photobucket.com/albums/s...0801Medium.jpg

Merles are a sight. They change every shed too. Like a mystery game.

I'm sorry to hear you lost such a pretty Mink. :C One of the reasons I stopped breeding last year was becuase I lost two females in a very strange way. One began to bleed in the second week of pregnancy and then gave birth two weeks later of dead rotting pups. The smell was terrible and she became emaciated. The second rat bled three weeks after her litter was born and began to loose weight. I put an end to both rats before it became worse. To this day I have no idea what had happened. The litters were sired from the same father but he also father about 17 healthy ones before this.

I hear dwarfs are a handful to take care of becuase of their hyperactivity? I wouldn't mind dabbling in dwarfs though!

Very nice blues and Himi. It's funny how these genes just show up whenever they feel like it. I try to know my lines well but I love to have those mystery rats too. It makes everything a little bit more fun.

After throwing multiple litters I now know what mine can throw, I wish I had more mystery litters, I enjoy those a lot!
My last mystery litter was throwing the Himilayans from Blue rats, that was crazy to me.

Mink is something I'm looking to do again, as is chocolates, I just don't have the genetics right now to make them unfortunately.

My worst couple days breeding was losing two sister Himilayan girls 2 days apart.
They both died during delivery, one delivered 4 babies and the other died delivering the first baby, I was so bummed to lose them.
I did save two of the girls from the 4 babies that lived and raised them up and they've become moms themselves recently, so I do have that to smile about.
They are spitting images of the momma Himi.