This article is from the WSSF 2016 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Karen Robbins

Alex Green, e-mail
Q I have been breeding rats for awhile and have had some many beautiful surprises in the litters. I love your website and always look at it when I do research. I never bought a pet rat, I always bought them as feeders and got some Rex rats for free. I have Hairless, patch works, double Rex, and Russian Blue. I also have a possible stub tail that came from a litter I have. I think I got lucky and it’s a mutation since I don’t believe that any I have were het [heterozygous] for Tailless.

My favorite genes have always been recessive because of the extra time they take. I would like to know if you know any good possible indicators that a rat is het for something. My thought is it may be something different in their eyes. Are there any different indicators for different recessive genes?

A Glad to hear you find the AFRMA site helpful. One option with your stub tail is that mom ate part of the tail when it was born which would not be genetic.

You have to be careful when breeding feeder stock as they oftentimes have health and/or temperament issues and are generally lacking in type and size.

In regards to your question on if you can tell if a color is being carried by the color displayed, some colors such as Black may be brown in color when they carry a brown gene such as Mink/Lilac, or Chocolate. Also, Russian Blue should not have any brown genes as that will ruin its color as well. Cinnamon and Agouti can have a duller color by carrying various other colors but you would have to know what that looks like vs. just being a bad version of that color. So, it depends on what the recessive is and what the color of the rat in question is. Normally you just have to breed them to see what they carry. If you want to know if they carry a specific trait, breed to one that has the trait you are looking for; if you get kids with the color, you know it was carrying it.

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