I recently got my first rats to keep as feeder breeders. I've had rats as pets before. I feel a bit uncomfortable about buying prekilled because I don't know what they ate, how they lived and how they died, all of which feels very important for me.

I picked the rats up from an animal store, the animals themselves was imported from the neatherlands of all places. It's just that the few big suppliers of rats have had all their contracts here torn because they mass produced and sent out sick animals full of fleas and diseases, and since there are no breeders here they had to import animals from other places. Since I am going to use them as feeder breeders it didn't bother me that much, they were all healthy and nice looking, the males are so nice to handle too, real gentlemen.

I bought two females and two males, all 11ish weeks old from a pet store and brought them home. The lady in the store couldn't guarantee that the rats weren't related, but I figured one mating wouldn't hurt, and decided I'd just get new males for the next generation.

I picked up a black and white hooded male, one really nice agouti male, one mismarked baraback agouti female, and one almost good agouti hooded female.
The black male and the mismarked bareback agouti female mated within days, and I planned on checking if she carried the black gene by doing this cross.

I figured she would have a small litter since she was so young, and only expected agouti hooded het black and possibly black hooded, but they threw a surprise party at me, since this is the 16 babies (!) strong litter:

After 11 hours:



After taking this pic, I noticed that a few babies had dark eyes, and a few of them have bright pink eyes. I figured there MIGHT be something going on, OR they may just take a little longer to pigment up.

This is after 48hrs:



Still very pink! So I either have albino or pink eye cream body type coloration going on, which is awesome!

This is after 72hrs (3rd day):





As you can see I have some hooded babies starting to color up, everyone with dark eyes are currently pigmenting up, but the pink eyes are still bright and shiny! I hope it's cream gene and not albino, because the creme colorations are so pretty O.O

And these babies were born on Friday the 13th! I was so scared something would go wrong, because I always have such bad luck on that day, but instead my young female delivered 16 babies that she is caring for with passion, and also showed me some hidden genes! Now I'm actually glad I mated her to her possible brother, otherwise I would never have known! Getting new males for the females I'm keeping from this mating though, don't want to inbreed them too much.

So far everything is going well, all the babies are plump and fat, and growing like weeds! I just wanted to share my first awesome litter of rat pups with you all! I will post more picutres as they put on their fur later, but I think I saw one that's really getting dark fast, the others are more redish-brown dark, so I think the mother is het for black and for albino/creme

I'll keep you updated on this litter! I also have three black and white varigated x black hooded (het creme/albino) coming up, and one black hooded (het creme/albino) x roan litter coming up in the next few weeks. Getting all pumped up now!