Planning on first pairing: Opinions on conformation?

[sorraia]

Fraido- Yep... just don't tell anyone there my dirty little secret (that I'm going to be breeding my rats... on purpose) lol. The breeder forum here has excellent advice and mods and isn't anti-breeding. It's nice to post on a lower-key site. The people on RF can give good advice too, but can sometimes be a little fanatical in their beliefs on certain topics.

Um yeah, I know that feeling... I'm waiting from some fall back on my own head.
Since I use the same username here as I have on rat forums (dumb if I were trying to keep everything a big secret), and I was quite well known in the rat circles, its really only a matter of time. I've pretty much left the rat communities to avoid the black listing that will come sooner or later. Or maybe it already has and I just don't know it! lol

Okay so this it totally, completely ignorant on my end, but I did not know breeding rats was such a big thing, if that's the right way to describe it - like, I didn't know they were bred for showing and conformation and whatnot. I know with horses breeding is a huge topic with tons of variables (conformation, temperment, color, show history, all the same things) and talking about breeding horses with other horse people is guaranteed to start a trainwreck... I did not think that would apply to rats! I guess I figured they're rats, you know? how much can there be in it? It's stupid, I know, and again it's very ignorant on my end!

This thread is very interesting, though! I didn't know rat conformation was a thing. What do you do in rat shows? What do you show in, what are the categories? Can you post an example of a conformationally correct rat? I don't plan on buying or breeding them but I'm interested!

Rat shows are quite similar to other small animal shows, i.e. rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens. Some clubs have classes other than conformation, but I'll start with the conformation....

In a conformation class, the rat is (supposed to be) judged primarily on conformation. The judge looks at how the rat is put together, its bone structure, soft tissue structure, how it moves, etc. The rat that conforms most closely to the prescribed standards gets the most points. After conformation, then other traits are considered: color, markings, fur, whatever else they have these days. Those traits are also judged on the standard: hairless are ideally completely naked without fuzz even, rex ideally have tightly curled fur and whiskers, black rats are ideally pure pitch black with no brownness, dinginess, or silvering, etc. It all depends on what color, fur, and body (dumbo, manx) category each rat falls into.

Now, some clubs have other classes. For example, "most lickiest", "most friendly", "most cuddly", whatever. These cutesy classes are very subjective, and basically judged on a whim. They are meant for fun only.

AFRMA (which really only has shows in Southern California) also has a couple other classes: kitten class, progeny class, etc. These are judged on conformation, but also look at a few other things. The progeny class, for example, looks at the improvement over the generations, as well as consistency. AFRMA also has a couple "non-standard" classes, like "British", any rat or mouse entered into that class must be 100% British bloodlines (basically imported stock). I am not aware of other US clubs that have these same classes, but AFRMA is also one of the longest standing clubs in the US (founded in 1984). Shows in the UK might be a little different, their organization (NFRS) is even older.

From what I gather, the "pet" rat community (much like the pet guinea pig community) online is very anti-breeding. They see people turning over their GPs / rats to shelters and say that everyone should adopt and not dare breed their own because they assume that you will breed unhealthy rats / GPs and/or not find homes for the babies resulting in more rodents in rescue, etc. If you look at the forum rules for RF it explicitly says that you aren't allowed to even mention breeding. Apparently the show rats community has others issues. For them (from what I've heard) it's only ok to breed if you have goals and morals that line up with theirs and it is a very closed community. As I said they say that all GOOD breeders will make you sign a no breeding contract if you buy from them.

I for one, am very glad of the experienced breeders willing to post on this stie and help out newbies like me.

Its very much like the dog/cat world. You have your rescue people who see the evils of society, with all the dogs and cats turned over and euthanized in shelters, and think that any and all breeding is bad. Then you have your show people who breed for ribbons, and think everyone else should do the same (and ideally health testing, etc is added to the breeding mix, which we don't exactly have in rats). And then you have those in between: The "backyard breeders" who don't necessarily know what they are doing and/or have been ostracized from the rest of the community because they don't follow all the guidelines everyone else believes they should adhere to (this is basically what the rest of the rat community calls us feeder breeders), and in the dog world you also have the working dog breeders who breed their dogs not for show, but for a purpose (the show and rescue people in the dog community might call those breeders "backyard breeders" too, depending on exactly what the person is doing). Feeder breeders can consider themselves as breeding for a purpose, but the rest of the rat community still considers us "backyard breeders" regardless how exactly we go about our business. They prescribe the same stereotypes to all of us, and don't care to get to know any of us enough to see how we really operate. Part of it is, they can't come to terms with the fact that the species their beloved pet belongs to actually is a food animal (pet pot bellied pig vs bacon?).

I've been on all sides of the rat community. Just throwing that out there. They would probably hate me now because I'm breeding rats for food.

[artgecko]

Good points!
Sorraia- I kinda see my rats that way. I want to breed them mainly to improve on their health and temperament and make them better "pets" for my own enjoyment and possibly to sell as such, if there's a market for them here, but while doing so, I will also be using the ones that don't "make the cut" so to speak, to feed my snakes. I am going slow at first to see how things go, but would ideally like to have a colony that will sustain my reptile hobby (I only have 6 snakes, so it wouldn't need to be a large number of rats) and also produce consistently good pet animals with few or no health issues. I think rats make excellent small pets, but have also seen first hand the results of bad temperament and unsocialized animals... I consider myself lucky to have gotten two males with passable temperaments that weren't socialized (from the feeder bin at petco). I am planning on not placing any of the rats I produce as pets until at least the second or third generation so that I can be sure of their temperament as adults.