Oh rats

He's a black variegated.

And be careful with that Kaytee diet.. It can have ethoxyquin as a preservative, which is known to cause cancer. Not something I want to be feeding my rats or my snakes. Kaytee diets are very poor quality in general, so it would be best to find a feed store in your area that stocks Purina products and get a 50lb bag of Mazuri Rodent blocks(6F or 9F). Much higher quality ingredients and your rats will appreciate it.

Just did some quick searching on that:

http://www.rmca.org/Articles/ethoxyquin.htm


Ethoxyquin is currently being investigated for its cancer fighting properties. In particular, ethoxyquin in the rat diet has been found to prevent liver cancer caused by aflatoxin. Aflatoxin is a common, naturally occurring carcinogen found in foods, most notably in corn, but also in many other grains, nuts, and seeds. Rats are the species most vulnerable to the cancer causing effects of aflatoxin. Ethoxyquin in the rat diet also prevents chemically initiated mammary tumors.

At FDA-allowable levels of 150ppm, ethoxyquin in the rat diet does not cause disease, cancers, or tumors. These results, originally published in a study done in 1955, have been repeatedly verified in many subsequent studies. Ethoxyquin at FDA-allowable levels of 150ppm does not cause disease, cancers or tumors in rats.

Ya know, as soon as you read one thing, they go and change it to something else... They need to make up their danged minds!

I've always read, everywhere, that is caused cancer... Now it has cancer-fighting properties??! Lord...

I've got the ingredients list off a brand new bag of Mazuri 6F...

number 5 on the list, "animal fat preserved with ethoxyquin".

Only adult males get the 6F as it has lower protein than my normal Harlan 2018. My blue males seem to have a skin irritation problem with they get too much protein.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Hope somebody does chime in with a coat pattern ID on your male rat. I have a couple of females that look exactly like him and have never quite known what to call them LOL.

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I have a male just like that too. My cutest one is an all peach colored boy with black eyes, he is also the nicest one. I will be posting pictures as soon as i can figure out how to make the pictures smaller.(hint hint) help

*waves hand* I can help with the picture thingy! (one of the few technical things I can do LOL)

Go download Faststone Image Viewer 3.2 from this link (it's a free download). Super easy to use, you can crop and resize photo's in seconds without changing your original if you don't want to. If I can use it...anyone can! (wonder if Faststone wants that as a tag line LOL)

http://www.faststone.org/

This might help with the ID of the rat http://www.afrma.org/fancyrm.htm and this will help you with some rat basics http://ratguide.com/breeding/basics/statistics.php