Inbreeding With Rats?

[Aedryan Methyus]

Is it alright for brothers and sisters/parents and offspring to breed or is that only acceptable in West Virginia?

[pretends2bnormal]

Aedryan - There is a very good Facebook group about breeding feeders of all sorts. Called Feeder Breeder Enthusiasts (shockingly minimal drama for a FB group, only 1 post in the 3 months I've been keeping up with it and admins shut it down pretty quickly.)

I'm far from an expert, but according to members on here, in that group, and the scientific community, rodents (rats and mice particularly) can be bred parent to offspring or sibling to sibling for many generations before hitting issues with inbreeding. It is a commonly used method to breed out negative traits, even, including biting, chewing, aggression, small litter size, etc. There are laboratory populations of rodents that have been closed populations (no new blood) for decades, although I forget which one(s) those were.

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[Bogertophis]

When I bred rats, I avoided much inbreeding, but as already noted, it usually takes a long time for issues to show up, & if they
are feeders anyway, well? (I still breed mice, same thing.)

[Aedryan Methyus]

Aedryan - There is a very good Facebook group about breeding feeders of all sorts. Called Feeder Breeder Enthusiasts (shockingly minimal drama for a FB group, only 1 post in the 3 months I've been keeping up with it and admins shut it down pretty quickly.)

I'm far from an expert, but according to members on here, in that group, and the scientific community, rodents (rats and mice particularly) can be bred parent to offspring or sibling to sibling for many generations before hitting issues with inbreeding. It is a commonly used method to breed out negative traits, even, including biting, chewing, aggression, small litter size, etc. There are laboratory populations of rodents that have been closed populations (no new blood) for decades, although I forget which one(s) those were.

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Very informative... Thanks! I've been holding a couple litters back for a couple of months for breeding and I just wanted to be sure...

[KevinK]

Breeder rats unless you're raising jumbos typically don't live long enough for tumor issues to arise and other gentic issues from inbreeding. It's just fine.

Inbreeding is fine, but yes, sooner or later your rats will learn the banjo and start singing bluegrass with a wad of dip in their mouth....

[pretends2bnormal]

Very informative... Thanks! I've been holding a couple litters back for a couple of months for breeding and I just wanted to be sure...

I'm getting some rats to start up breeding for myself in the next few weeks, I think, so I tried to do a lot of research. Feeders or hot, they deserve for me to have done research on how to do things well.

I will probably try to introduce fresh blood periodically, or mix pairs that are half-siblings where I can. (I.e. 2 different moms, same dad or vice versa)


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[Lord Sorril]

Selective in-breeding is fine for rodents if you are culling defects as they arise (hydrocephaly/malocclusion/runting etc). The more it is done though the more similar genetically the rodents become to each other. In a laboratory setting: this is desired for test vs. control group. In a non-laboratory setting this results in near-identical immune systems that are susceptible to the exact same pathogens.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Always fun to see people jump on others when they have limited experience with breeding feeders

I will speak from the perspective of someone producing a few THOUSANDS of rats each year and mice also (not as many)

I have not brought in new blood in my colony in 9 years (my colony was started 12 years ago) and my animals are perfectly healthy (well until the inevitable)

I brought in new blood in my mice colony because I was tired of dark mice and it was the worse mistake I have made, and now my colony is not what it used to be production wise and I am considering starting back from scratch.

Key word is SELECTIVE breeding, hold back strong healthy genes and you will produce just that for how long? I do not have that answer, again so far 9 years and going strong.

The only animals I do not holdback are hairless,blue, blade, and cape, hairless and blue because for me they have never been the best producer, hairless females are not the best when it comes to lactation and prone to tumors (again food wise) blade and cape because they are high white which are traits linked to mega colon.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

And we are back after a much needed clean up, some posts have been edited and split some were move all together in their own spin off which has become a bit of a train wreck, so if you wish to add the spin off feel free to do so here https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...-Rats-spin-off.

Now back to your regular programming.

[Bogertophis]

...I have not brought in new blood in my colony in 9 years (my colony was started 12 years ago) and my animals are perfectly healthy (well until the inevitable)

I brought in new blood in my mice colony because I was tired of dark mice and it was the worse mistake I have made, and now my colony is not what it used to be production wise and I am considering starting back from scratch.

Key word is SELECTIVE breeding, hold back strong healthy genes and you will produce just that for how long? I do not have that answer, again so far 9 years and going strong...

I got like 2 new mice about 10 years ago, but otherwise, my mouse colony has been going for at least 25 years now with no problems. Granted, I had a many more
initially than I do now & I have always had an enormous variety. My system to avoid inbreeding is simple: I have all different "fancy colors" & I continuously mix them
up...a solid black mouse is paired with gray & white, the gold & white are paired with chocolate, etc. When I used to sell mice I also had "silky" & "satin" mice, but
they don't reproduce well so once I no longer sold mice to others, I was happy to quit those. In all these years, my mice are healthy & produce big litters...but it comes
down to personally taking the place of "nature" as to which ones are breeders & which ones have the "short straw" as feeders. Like Deborah said, you hold back & breed
the best ones, & it's a judgement call that gets more accurate with practice. I rarely have or keep any albino mice either...a few show up, but most don't "make the cut".
It's like the old saying, "the wolf keeps the caribou strong" [by eliminating the old, weak or sick ones]...only it's me along with my snakes that function as "wolves".