A few pics for you RAT aficionados

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

I have a female that looks just like hte one in post #6
I like to get the different colors too, lately I've had a BUNCH of plain old brown rats showing up in litters. I don't have any luck with blues for some reason.
Wolfy

---

What do you mean? Do you have any blues in your breeding colony and you want to produce blues? Remember that blue is a recessive gene, so if you want to produce them, you'll have to line breed one generation (a son to it's mother or sister) or keep an offspring of a blue and breed it to another blue or known "het" for blue.

Ed, those pics were great.


Two questions: What are the red hooded called?
Becky, I've never seen a dwarf rat . . . are they genetic?

Thnaks

Alice

Alice, You are asking the wrong guy, these have always been bred for snake food.

Recently I have been setting aside some of the different colors that have been popping out and been having fun breeding those together to see what else comes out?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alice

Ed, those pics were great.


Two questions: What are the red hooded called?
Becky, I've never seen a dwarf rat . . . are they genetic?

Thnaks

Alice

---

My blue rats never seem to survive to adulthood for one reason or another. I'm going to raise the next one by itself I think! Of course, all the blues I've had so far(3) have all come from Petsmart. That could be my first problem. I got two hairless too, but they both died from that belly-swelling-up thing. I got two big hairless males from the feeder bins at the reptile store, and since have had a lot of hairless babies that have been perfectly healthy!
I just like the blues and would like to have some.
Wolfy

Yes, dwarf rats are genetic and can only be obtained from breeders who got their animals from the original breeders(these people got them from the lab that found the gene). They are fairly hard to obtain and can be difficult to breed(litter size is incredibly small as the babies are normal sized pinkies). The biggest litter I have personally seen is 4-5, and that was with a bigger dwarf female.

To get dwarves, both parents either have to carry it or they both have to BE dwarf. If they carry the gene for dwarfism, it's very rare that you get a dwarf in the litter.

Breeders are very strict who they let dwarfs go to, as they really shouldn't be bred by people who don't have experience with them. I have them as pets and have NO plans to breed them. It's just very hard on their bodies and shortens their life spans.

Alice, the "red" head is called a Fawn. You can throw alot of agouti and PEW(pink-eyed white) when breeding fawns.

And Wolfy, the blue gene can also be associated with megacolon, which is probably why you're having problems with the rats. What signs do they show that they're not doing well? I have a good number of blues(all different colors of blue), and they're all healthy. One of my powder blue girls passed away from congestive heart failure, and was only around a year old(she was from a breeder).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ECLARK

Alice, You are asking the wrong guy, these have always been bred for snake food.

Recently I have been setting aside some of the different colors that have been popping out and been having fun breeding those together to see what else comes out?

---

LOL Ed. I'm in the same boat you are. Until recently all I was concerned about was that the babies were growing so I could feed my hungry snakes. Now, after reading this part of the forum, I'm paying more attention to the colors and actually buying or raising up different colors to see what happens. :cool:

Alice

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SatanicIntention

Yes, dwarf rats are genetic and can only be obtained from breeders who got their animals from the original breeders(these people got them from the lab that found the gene). They are fairly hard to obtain and can be difficult to breed(litter size is incredibly small as the babies are normal sized pinkies). The biggest litter I have personally seen is 4-5, and that was with a bigger dwarf female.

To get dwarves, both parents either have to carry it or they both have to BE dwarf. If they carry the gene for dwarfism, it's very rare that you get a dwarf in the litter.

Breeders are very strict who they let dwarfs go to, as they really shouldn't be bred by people who don't have experience with them. I have them as pets and have NO plans to breed them. It's just very hard on their bodies and shortens their life spans.

Alice, the "red" head is called a Fawn. You can throw alot of agouti and PEW(pink-eyed white) when breeding fawns.

And Wolfy, the blue gene can also be associated with megacolon, which is probably why you're having problems with the rats. What signs do they show that they're not doing well? I have a good number of blues(all different colors of blue), and they're all healthy. One of my powder blue girls passed away from congestive heart failure, and was only around a year old(she was from a breeder).

---

Thanks for the explanation Becky. I really like those fawns - I'll be on the lookout for them at the pet store, though I haven't seen any of that color before.

I can understand breeders that have dwarf rats not wanting just anyone to raise them if they have that much trouble birthing. Thanks for the info!

Alice

"A Word Of Warning
Blue rats are beautiful and very popular in the “real world” as well as in the fancy. Pet shops have discovered that people will pay large (sometimes ridiculous) sums of money for Blue rats. Unfortunately, this has led to cases where Blues are being indiscriminately mass produced by people who look at them as a money-making venture and do not consider health or temperament when breeding. Our original stock of Blues had no particular temperament problems, and were well-adjusted, healthy animals. In the last year however, I have heard an increasing number of accounts of Blue rats with major health problems from people who bought them in pet shops. I have also heard several accounts of animals so aggressive they had to be put down. If you are buying a Blue from a pet shop, do so cautiously, and please consider buying from a breeder if possible. http://www.afrma.org/images/mouseb.gif " AFRMA (American Fany Rat and Mouse Association

I've had only one beautiful powder blue American Blue male rat. He was literally a show stopper in looks and I found him in a pet store. Unfortunately due to I'm sure bad inbreeding he had a very unstable temperment when he became sexually mature and almost slaughtered another male rat. He was also infertile though that may have been due to a testicular bite from another rat when he was still in a huge pet store tank. We ended up putting him down as he was not able to breed and was unsafe to be housed with any other rat and likely eventually would have started to bite us as well.

Blues also can carry the megacolon gene so do be careful breeding them to husky marked, high white or blaze faced rats. This link has a nice bit of info on what you can get breeding Russian Blues into other colors.

http://www.afrma.org/russianblue.htm

Im gonna keep adding pics here whenever I clean, all the dirty albinos that I thought I had, appear to be siamese and I have separated them into a couple smaller groups. and I will have to stop feeding them off. :P http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n...g?t=1167602992

A dirty rat. :) http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n...g?t=1167603390