Megacolon

[frankykeno]

Just thought I'd post this thread as a bit of a warning. We've never had megacolon in our rat colony and have had 100's of rats born here. Awhile back we got a female rat from a pet store who turned out to be preggers by some unknown pet store male. She produced this very cute male offspring who our son named "Lightning" and we subsequently kept as a future breeder male. There was some concern re his facial markings and the possibility of megacolon associated with some blaze faced rats.

(pic of Lightning when he was a little pup/weanling)....


Lightning recently fathered three litters. In one litter a megacolon baby was born and it was sad and awful. That young rat was put down to end it's suffering immediately. Lightning will be retired and paired with another nice tempered young male who is his son and will soon be weaned, to become Mikey's new pet rats. It may be that Lighting could go on and breed more and produce only the occasional megacolon baby but I just can't risk that for the sake of the colony and the risk of sickly, suffering young rats.

Just a caution folks to watch these blaze faced ones, especially ones like Lightning. I really should have listened to Becky's warnings about this but we'd gone so long with never a sign of megacolon that I guess I just got over-confident but since Lightning came from an unknown male I should have been more careful.

[stangs13]

Do blaze faced ones carry the gene for it? Why just the blaze faces?

[frankykeno]

Actually it's not just blazed faced ones. Husky marked, high whites, etc. can also carry it. Here's a great link for reading about megacolon.

http://ratguide.com/health/digestive/megacolon.php

In our particular case it was early onset megacolon. The pup was just starting to eat food (as well as nurse of course) and it was visually obvious that is was a megacolon offspring.

Having said this, one of my best producers is a Husky marked female and she's never produced a megacolon offspring. I have though been careful to pair her with only low white males with no blaze faces and never to another Husky just to be careful of that risk factor. It's handy have multiple male breeder rats.

[stangs13]

Oh!! I see! That will help alot when I get into breeding rats. Does it pop up in mice also?

[frankykeno]

I'm not really sure Justin. I'm not overly familar yet with breeding and genetics with mice as I've just started breeding them or rather hoping they'll breed (so far nothing...dang mice!) I'll do some research and get back to you on that.

[JLC]

He sure is a CUTE rat....I'm glad he gets to be Mikey's pet.

[frankykeno]

Yep he's very cute. Mikey actually picked him out as a fuzzie and named him so he was never slated to be a feeder. His son (yet unnamed) is also very nicely marked and is an odd sort of agouti but not agouti in coloring - sort of a blend of browns and whites. I'll get a pic of them together at some point. Once the son is ready for weaning we'll get them a nice roomy rat cage and install them in Mikey's room where they can live our their lives spoiled ratten...errr...rotten.

[recycling goddess]

thanks for sharing this with us jo. great "lead by example" as usual from you!

[SatanicIntention]

Just in case, I wouldn't breed any of his offspring or any of the husky girl's offspring. You never know which rat is carrying it. Sometimes it just takes one specific rat to be bred to another specific rat and Bam, there's the MC.


Same goes for those rats in the Free Dumbos thread. Those rats are definitely high white and really shouldn't be bred. Too much risk as no one knows their lineage.

I can always post some pics of my high white rats, specifically my Black Eyed White male who is an extreme example of high white markings.

I'm sorry you had to have a real life experience with the MC, Jo. It can be heartbreaking. But at least now you know who is carrying it and know that it can be prevented with careful breeding. *hugs*

[frankykeno]

Nope his only offspring that will be kept Becky is his one son for a companion for him (I really must get pics today!). The others will never be used as breeders. Our husky female, Alita has always produced feeders for us and all perfect. The only one I ever kept is her solid black daughter, Jet, who I did keep as she was a particularily nice black rat (really stood out from her littermates). Jet's been bred exclusively to Damian who is a black self also (unrelated to her) and they've produced two litters now that are just fine so I'm assuming that the black to black self has negated any chance Jet carries anything from her Husky marked mother.

Thanks Aleesha. I think it's just as important to talk about what goes wrong as what goes right. Thanks Becky. I really hated to see it rear it's ugly head and should have known better than to try that male with his markings. All the other litters he fathered are fine and the little rat was put down quickly and humanely but I still hated to see my first case of megacolon *shudder*