Genetic trails?

[JD'S Exotics]

I recently started breeding rats for food purposes only. I am now more interested on tracking the genetics of different breeds of rats. I believe I have mostly hooded rats but am not sure of this new curly hair version that popped up in my last clutch. I am also interested in what makes a "blue" rat? Is it a very light grey version? I was hoping there was a site such as world of ball pythons but for rats? Any info would be appreciated.

[tomfromtheshade]

Curly hair is called rex. Its a co-dominant trait with a "super" version (double rex = hairless).

There are several varieties of blue, but it is a dilute of another color. There are a lot of good sites out there to read up on it. Just google blue rat genetics or just rat genetics.

[BAMReptiles]

double rexes arent always hairless. from my understanding certain lines are and some arent. my particular line isnt hairless, they lose all their hair at some point but grow it back

[snakesRkewl]

Actually most doubles regrow their hair but it is shorter and stiffer, rougher than the regular coat.

Blue is a recessive trait, light blue is called American blue

Read away

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

[BAMReptiles]

iv got a double rex dumbo that lost most of her hair, it was hilarious, but now shes back to full hair. however, from my understanding some hairless can "interact" with rex/double rex. thus causing hairlessness with say 1 hairless gene and 1 rex gene

[snakesRkewl]

from my understanding some hairless can "interact" with rex/double rex. thus causing hairlessness with say 1 hairless gene and 1 rex gene

That's interesting, I have not heard that.
Rats have a lot going on with all the different traits they can carry.
Something new to research, thanks

[JD'S Exotics]

Actually most doubles regrow their hair but it is shorter and stiffer, rougher than the regular coat.

Blue is a recessive trait, light blue is called American blue

Read away

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

Excellent site with quite a bit of Info. thanks

[JD'S Exotics]

Here are a few pics with a crappy camera but hopefully some of you experts will be able to give me a little helpful info. The first is just a hold back Hooded I believe. The next 2 pics are of the scruffy or curly type hair. They came from a regular looking mom whom I would assume would be Het for something if this trait came out. All the babies in pics are from the same litter. I am guessing that the original colony I bought from a local breeder were not that far outcrossed so I would assume that the father has the same het traits from somewhere down the line.






I would be interested in trying to breed towards a hairless just for fun but is it really safe to inbreed that far down the line? I had originally planned on holding back females and trying to get males from other breeders just to open the gene pool up a little more, but with these possibly being rexes as Tomfromtheshade said, I would like to give it a try and see what I get. I guess my question to all of you long time breeders would be how you outcross and how far down a line you will inbreed?

[snakesRkewl]

I have 3 completely different lines that I cross back and forth and every so often I bring in new genetics to keep things fresh.
I don't breed brothers and sisters but have bred offspring back to parents a few times.

Your rats look like it has a rex coat, the whiskers seem to straight to be a hairless rats.

You say the mom was a standard coat, do you know what the daddy rat was?
I frequently breed double rex coat rats to standard coat rats so I can have full litters of rex coats, maybe the dad rat was a double rex?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

2 good links if you breed rats

http://www.ratbehavior.org/

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