Interesting Rat Litter

We got this female, Patches, a few weeks ago. She's a bit of a mystery as to what her color and pattern is. I just found her in a feeder bin and decided she was too odd looking to not bring home LOL. Well it turns out she was preggie when we bought her so sire of this litter is unknown. This is Patches the mother of the litter....

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...sfromAbove.jpg

This is her litter of 11 fuzzies. Kind of some odd colors in here. 4 appear to be white, 3 appear to be black, 3 are some sort of odd champagne color (almost white but not white when put beside a white littermate) and 1 is this very pretty sort of grey or grey/brown color. I can't say I've seen that grey color ever before in my litters as well as these odd very light almost beige/brown color (all I could think of was to call them champagne colored). Any ideas? None of her young seem to have picked up her coat pattern at all.

Entire litter of 11....
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...of11Sept06.jpg

One of each color....(the white is on the left, the champage is on the right with the other two between)....
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...lorsSept06.jpg

Send me some blackies!!!!!!!!!!:partyon: :grabbed: Soo cute!!

i like the champagnes

They look so cute. Food for 11!!!

:aww: They are super cute. I have a fondness for the black ones too. Are you going to raise up any of those champagne colored ones?

Perhaps the light colored ones are fawn? The colors darken with age. Mom is very unusual....

please dont kill any of them! you can make a pretty penny on them, they are to beautiful to eat!

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Originally Posted by tigerlily

:aww: They are super cute. I have a fondness for the black ones too. Are you going to raise up any of those champagne colored ones?

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I think the blacks and the whites will be feed off when they are big enough (we get a lot of that color) but the one and only grey/brown one I'll be keeping to see what it does and also likely at least one of the champagnes to see what they mature into. At this point nothing in our collection is eating fuzzies or pups (the ones that could eat that size want mice...dang em LOL) so they aren't due to be fed off until at least weaning age. By that stage I should have a better idea of what the heck is going on with these odd colored babies.

Jo, those brownish babies look mink, as that is probably what mom's coloring is :)

the ones you call champagne are i believe cream . i have a couple cream dumbos in my breeding colony and they look to be the same color .

Well Mike and I had a good look through this litter and whoever the daddy was he tossed in some nice genetics. Probably the prettiest black rat fuzzies we've ever produced so I think we'll hold this entire litter back and then resort them when they are good sized pups to see what everyone ended up looking like and for gender. May be some nice future breeders in here and they are unrelated genetically to our current colony.

The other female we got with Patches who was far too small for me to allow her to breed, unfortunately was already preggie it seems and delivered 8 pinks today. Surprisingly thus far she's doing okay with them and all seem to have slight milkbands. Hopefully it will work out for little Squeekers and her litter.