The babies were born August 29th, 1998. There were twelve originally, but due to some Problems, there were only six left.
These are the ones left as of 9/4:
Update 9/7 -
I can't find one?!? It just disappeared a
few days back; I searched the bedding very thoroughly, but nothing.
Presumably Toni ate it?? Ew. I would think it would be sick
or dead before she would it eat (I've never seen a rat eat their babies
otherwise, much less after they were a few days old), but still!
In any case, that was a light-eyed male, so we're
down to one male in the whole bunch. The hoodeds seem to be one agouti
and one black, tho it's hard to tell for sure, yet. The "black" has
a white spot on her forehead, it's cute. She's almost a bareback...
she only has one spot along her spine, not far back from the hood.
The other is just a really bad hood; a blotch at the base of the tail and
a few spots along the spine. Toni's not *that* of a hood, for a pet
shop rat, anyway... I wouldn've expected slightly better hoods on the babies.
Not that they aren't cute with their bad hoods!
The others, I'm still not sure whether they're Silver
Fawns, or Albinos, or both. The biggest in the litter, a female,
*does* seem "browner" than the hoods' rumps (which I *know* are white!)...
the other two, I'm not sure?? I'm more than likely keeping the big
female, regardless of what color she is; her larger size and chunky build
remind me of Eve's line (her father's line). Yes, *already*.
One of the others I'm keeping, too; my little sister
recently lost "her" rat, Stormy, and I'm letting her choose one from the
litter to replace him; she has her eye on the hood with the spot, but that's
not definate by any means.
Update 9/11 -
They're not more than a few days from opening their
eyes... they grow so fast!!
The big female is a Silver Fawn, berkshire.
The two hoods are both agoutis. The other two light-eyed ones are
PEWs; Julia might be interested in the little male, and I know I'm going
to end up keeping one of the hoods for my sister. That leaves only
two females I have to find homes for; and even then, Jes has a person that
might take them.
They're sweet little guys! Just barely starting
to grow teeth. They already lick me :-)
Update 9/12 -
They've opened their eyes! They're all named
now;
PEW female: DragonFuzz's Pocket Percival ("Percy")
PEW male: DragonFuzz's Riley Riley Riley! ("Riley", of course)
Agouti Hood w/ spot: DragonFuzz's Spot ("Spot", duh. Not imaginative,
I know; but I've always wanted to name a rat Spot, and what better rat
than one with a spot??)
Agouti Hood w/o spot: DragonFuzz's Thunder Storm Warning ("Boomer")
Silver Fawn: DragonFuzz's Perfect Genevieve ("Genevieve")
Update 9/17 -
They are SO cute! Jeez, you forget how cute
they can be after a few months of not breeding! Actually, now that
I think of it, this is my first litter in nearly two years... wow, that
seems like a long time?!?! But no, Jack was from my last litter before
this one, and his birthday was Halloween '96. Hmm, I hadn't realized
that. Long pause, there!
In any case, these guys are getting BIG. They're
such chubby little buggers :-) Percy's reserved; Julia is going to
take her. I figured she might, Julia's always been a fan of PEW females,
especially her Sass, which was this litter's Great-Grandmother.
And I think Sophie is going to keep Boomer, and
I'm definately keeping Genevieve, which leaves Spot and Riley needing homes.
Riley's a little bugger, absolutely adorable. Not that Spot isn't...
she's the chubbiest of the bunch, and already the most active! Licky,
too. They're just so cute!
Update 9/28 -
Five weeks old, fully weaned, and seperated now;
I could've left the girls with mom & Ashra (who live together, by the
way), but figured mom needed a break; that cage isn't really as big as
I'd like for a mommy & her fully weaned litter (part of it, even).
So I put them all in another cage I worked out, a plastic storage contained
about two feet long by a foot high by about 16" deep, with a wire top.
It makes a nice cage. I've still got Riley, the only male, in there
at the moment but I'll move him out of there later; he'll go live with
Jack and Billie until he finds a home.
Genetics stuff -
Okay, I'm still learning on some of this; I finally
figured out bird genetics, but for some reason rodent genetics just confuse
me. Right when I think I've got them figured out, some odd will happen...
Like getting a silver fawn in this litter, when all I should've gotten
were splits!
9/18 - Okay, I did finally figure out how I got
a silver fawn. I didn't think Jack was split to dilute, but looking
back on his pedigree, Laurence, his great-great-grandmother was a dilute.
I wouldn've guessed it would be rather unlikely for the split to be passed
all the way down to Jack, but that must be what happened!
IN ANY CASE, the remaining ratties should carry
pink-eyed dilute (Pp), and the ones that aren't PEW (cc) have an approxamately
50% chance of carrying PEW (Cc).
Um, here's what I would suppose the genetics of these guys might be...
The Agouti hoods:
AA CC hh Pp
Or:
AA Cc hh Pp
The PEWs:
Could be a number of things, because the cc masks out all the other
genes; so they could be carrying both genes for pink-eyed dilute, pp, or
they might not be, they could be hoods or berkshires; you can only kind
of guess at it. So here's my best shot:
AA cc ?h ?p
The Silver Fawn:
AA C? Hh pp
Their Pedigree -
Toni's a pet shop rat, so I
really don't know on her, although due to the fact that I got PEWs in this
litter it's pretty much fer sure that she's split, so one of her parents
or maybe a grandparent would hafta be a PEW.
Actually, the pedigree on Jack's mother's side goes
back another generation; Napoleon's parents were DF's Sullivan (PEW) and
Laurence (odd-eye blazed lilac), and Sassafras' parents were Eve and Dan;
yes *again*, it's a bit inbred there, I think that that was an accidental
pregnancy! No, it goes back even farther than that; *Sullivan's*
parents were DF's Rom and Hazel, and Rom's parents were Hazel and Adam.
Wow, that's like six, seven generations. I'm impressed! ;-)
What exactly does the "DF's" mean? DragonFuzz's....
We bred him/her. With some of the earlier rats, we hadn't thought
up the name DragonFuzz yet, but we still bred him/her so it counts!
Parents | Grandparents | Great-Grandparents |
Toni
Silver Fawn Hood |
??? | ??? |
??? | ||
??? | ??? | |
??? | ||
DF's Jack
Agouti Berkshire |
DF's Lily
PEW |
DF's Sassafras
PEW |
DF's Napoleon
Black Hooded |
||
DF's Damian
Agouti Berkshire |
Eve
PEW |
|
Dan
Agouti Berkshire |