So I've been breeding rats for only a few months (started on accident, actually, had two snakes refusing food so the feeders got left together and ended up producing a litter, decided I wanted to keep doing it and now here I am ). I got rid of that first male because I didn't like his markings, a bit too much like high-white and I didn't want megacolon. While looking for feeders, I found a guy on craigslist selling 15 small rats for $10. I forgot to break my $20 before I went to pick them up and he didn't have any change, so he threw in two breeder females (blue hooded and black berkshire) and one of his stud bucks. I wasn't going to say no, but unfortunately the stud is blazed.


(I'm not actually sure what his color is... agouti something-or-other, but he's grey more than brown. Anyone know?)

The black berk female was already a couple weeks along when we got her (by this same male), and her litter is almost 4 weeks old now. I noticed while cleaning cages this morning that one little girl bloated, hunched over, and her anus is protruding weirdly. I was worried about this from when I first took that boy home, but I've never actually seen pics of it, so... is this megacolon? And is it safe to feed her to my snakes? I know they eat whatever rat poop is in the intestines anyway, but...

Her markings:


Here you can really see her bloated tummy:


And here's the anus thing... almost makes her look like a boy.