Weird Genetics? Or a common Occurance?

[Magick]

I had my augoti, top eared, black eyed male in with a blue badger faced, top eared, black eyed female. I wasn’t expecting anything special AT ALL - Just feeders. I held back a resulting male only because he was a Dumbo - which was exciting for me. Today I was playing with him at noticed that not only is he Dumbo, but he has one red eye & one black eye!!! Has anyone had any experience with "bi-eyes" - I’m wondering if it’s simple receive or something else.

[SatanicIntention]

Odd-Eyed(what you have) and blazed(also what you have) are very susceptible to megacolon issues. I would urge you not to breed any rats with facial markings because if bred to another rat that carries megacolon, the chances are high that the resulting litter would suffer the consequences(ie: foul smelling diarrhea, stunted growth, bloating, failure to thrive, and a very slow painful death). Megacolon babies literally starve to death, but slowly.

Finding females that are only self, irish/english-irish, berkshire, hooded, without any headspots or facial markings is very important to raising quality offspring. I would recommend you not breed the odd-eyed holdback male and just keep him as a pet and buddy for your other males. I would also remove any other blazed/odd-eye, or otherwise, females from your breeding group.

Plus, the snakes don't care what color they are. If they are pink-eyed white or all black, they don't care. What you need to care about is that the prey animal is as healthy as it can possibly be, and breeding animals that possibly carry a death sentence for their offspring, isn't what the goal is.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

satanic,

Are there any other color patches or marks that us new bees should look out for in our efforts to produce colonies??? Rats or mice?

[littleindiangirl]

self, irish/english-irish, berkshire, hooded, without any headspots or facial markings is very important to raising quality offspring

She has already gone over some good markings:

Self (or solid color),
Berkshires (belly is white)
Irish (small heart of white on chest)
Hooded or bareback (color on head, neck and shoulders with a stripe running down the back, barebacks have no stripe down the back)
Notched cap (color on head with small indent on the back)

Coats:
Straight
Wavy
Rex
Harly

Safe Colors:
Black
Brown
Cream/beige
albino/white
fawn
gold
russian blue/grey
agouti/cinnamon

Ears:
Dumbo or normal top


What patterns to avoid :

Baldies/essex (white spots on head,often looks like a bald spot)
Blazes or badger (white from nose and spread up to the ears)
Odd-eyed rats, often with blazes (one red eye, one black eye, sometimes the red eye looks black unless light shined into)
Lightning marks on face or split caps (split cap looks like a capped rat, but their is a line going through the middle of the head)
Black eyed white rats
Banded/husky/roan rats (looks like a high sided berkshire, a long band of color down back of animal)

High white rats (rats with irregular patches of color, can be combined with any before stated markings, )

Colors to avoid:
English blues from pets store: often weak immune systems, prone to many problems and die young. (buy from established breeder)

Merle and pearl: Pearl is homozygous lethal and can accompany merle.

Coats:
Hairless or fuzzy
tailless


I think that's really it. If I forgot something or made a mistake, please feel free to correct.

[SatanicIntention]

Thanks for the help Always appreciated.

Last thing though, I doubt that anyone will ever get Harley rats from any pet store. There was only one ever found, and she was bred to create the line of Harleys(or long-haired). They are only with reputable breeders, that I know of.

I also wouldn't breed capped as they are considered pretty high white and can come out of HW litters . This isn't something that one will be aware of when picking a rat out at a pet store or wherever. Bareback are fairly safe as long as they don't have any facial markings.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

thanks for all that information! are their similar rules for mice?

mike

[SatanicIntention]

Sometimes with mice, different color combinations can cause the lethal gene to pop out, resulting in dead babies or failure-to-thrive babies. I just prefer to either breed my brindle mice or the PEW mice(pink eyed white, albinos, whatever). The Pink eyed whites are great producers