Show me your rats!!!!!

[luckies4me]

Hey everyone, having been posting at another post, a color topic has come up! So if anyone needs help with a color or rat genetics question you can ask me and I will try to do my best, plus I just love to see cute pictures of rats!




Unfortunately all mine were erased by my significant other, uh hum!:mad:


Anyways, enjoy a cute pic of my son, lol!

[Cookiebaker]

Cute! What's your boy's name and how old is he?? :D

[luckies4me]

His name is Dylan and he just turned ten months last week, :( . He is growing way too fast! Next month he will be a year. He turns 11 months this month on the 25th. But he is a cutie pie and he is such a nice sweet boy! I love him dearly!


Thanks for thinking he is cute, hehe:D

[Aspen and Misty]

Aww your son is so cute! I serisouly thought the picture in your aviator was a professinally taken by a baby who was put that way! It was just to cute! O he is adorable!!!!

Well anyway....Here are my rats.... Melony (grey hood) Hope (Black hood)

[Desert Arabian]

Shy Rats
Howdy-

I have two brown rats- Nugget and Sweet Pea, who are really afraid and scared of me. I have no clue why! They are mama and baby, and I did nothing to them to make them scared of me. Everytime I give them a treat, they bite my fingers (REALLY hard-so I bleed), or when I go to reach for them they run. My other three rats absolutely love me, and have never done this type of stuff. Nugget and Sweet Pea try so hard to escape all the time. They chew on the bars, and try to squeeze out.

One time they did escape- OUTSIDE!! I was so frantic- we have so many hawks,cats,raccoons,and coyotes around my house- they'd never surive. Well, around midnight I found Sweet Pea in the garden hose box, but I never found Nugget....til the next day. My mom just so happened to be looking out of the kitchen window, when Nugget poped out of the chimpunk hole and the base of the big Beachnut tree. We went outside to try and get her, we looked in the hole and saw her standing there. When she saw us, she shoveled dirt into the enterance so we couldn't get her. So, we went to Fleet Farm and bought a Havahart trap. We got home, and sent it up, and loaded it with treats. We put a towel over it, so she couldn't see us. She finally went inside 45min later, and we heard the door slam shut- we got her. Ever since then they have hated me and my mom. (The escape thing happened back in April.)

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could possibly get them to be less frightened of me? It makes me sad, because I can't bond with them as much, because they are scared of me. I still love them tho!

[luckies4me]

Where did you get those little two from? Most petstore rats are mass produced and therefor not socialized when they are young. My rats are held since birth and every day after to make sure they are as socialble as possible. I would give you the much needed advice now but I have a big migraine and it is hard ot look at the monitor sO it looks like Ineed to get off the computer.



Oh, but I have pictures os my rats that i found. They were uploaded to PageBuilder and so I can retrieve tham back! I am so happy, those are the only pictures I have of them!:D

[lv4dogs]

I have a couple pic's pf 2 of my rats here on another post but lost the pics in my com. so I am unable to download them again. I do not have a scanner or dig. camera yet. I have 4 all together.
I just moved back to ny a few months ago I used to live in Eugene OR!

[luckies4me]

Cool! Where abouts did you live? I live off Franklin by the U of O. :D

[Redd]

I have sad news. My rat passed away yesterday. Master Splinter was only 16 months old. He died in his sleep. He was SO sweet, he loved to ride on my shoulder and give me kisses. He was a standard chinchilla berkshire, and a big one at that. Your ratties are adorable. And your son is to die for! Good luck with the baby!

[Desert Arabian]

AWWW.... I am sorry to hear that, I know exactly what it is like to loose a rattie! :(

[luckies4me]

Oh I am so sorry to hear about your loss! I hate losing a rat, It is a shame they do not last longer. That is when of the things us breeders are strving for, longer lasting rats whose bad genes are bred out.


YellowLabLover, I am sorry to hear about your ratty also. :(

Well at least we had the pleasure of having them in our lives. :D

[Desert Arabian]

luckies4me-

I forgot to answer your question a while back about Nugget and Sweet Pea. I rescued Nugget from the pet store, she was really tiny- she was living in a tank with her brother and one other adult male. About two weeks or so after I bought her, she had a litter of babies. I raised em till they got big enough to leave, I held them everyday- after their eyes opened. That's why I don't get why Sweet Pea is so afraid of me, because I have been handling her since she was tiny.


I am happy to say, tho, that they are getting better- so hopefully they will stop all together sometime soon.




Here's a picture of Nuggets babies- they are a little shy of the camera.

[luckies4me]

When I have a litter, the babies are held as soon as possible after birth. Sometimes right away if the mother is having trouble cleaning, this sometimes happens the first birth. Then I leave mommy alone and just watch her for the first two hours to make sure she is cleaning, hiding and feeding them. After that two hours I take all the babies out and check to see if they have milk tummies. You can see the milk bands through their abdomen. They are handled for about an hour every day from day one. This makes sure they are tame, however some problems are genetic and no matter how much you handle them they will still run or bite. Rats like this SHOULD NOT be bred from.

SweetPea is Nuggets daughter right? The buck could have had temperament issues and passed it on. Feeder and most "pet" pet store rats are not bred for temperemant or health. They are bred for money. This is why petshop rats are more prone to tumors than breeder rats. Breeders breed out the bad traits and breed for health and temperament, and longer lasting ratties who are not as prone to tumors or Myco infections.

With patience though, Sweet Pea can turn around as long s it is something that was not genetically passed on. Try taking her out of the cage and letting her run awhile in the bathroom or a safe room while you watch her. Try giving her reats. NOT FROM THE BARS of the cage. This is a big no-no! This leads to biter rats becase everytime you stick something through the cage, whether it is food or not, she will think it's a tasty treat and try grabbing or biting.

Try offering new toys and a secure place she can go if she feels threatened. If you can't get her out of the cage, leave it open and let her explore a little. Then when she is out offer her the treats and try picking her up. Don't just grab her, go slowly and kind of scooot her into your hand, not cupping her. This way she feels less threatened. Try this twice daily for a few weeks and then gradually increase her out time with you. If she doesn't change just know it's just in her background to act that way. There is nothing you can do about it. Some rats just don't like to be held, period.

I wish you the best of luck and hopefully this will work for you. Those babies are sure cute!:D

[Desert Arabian]

Thanks for the advice.

They are a lot better now, today they were crawling all over me, and tickling my ear- boy oh boy does that tickle! I never held them when they were pinkies, because my teacher did that once with the classroom pet rat, and she abandoned the babies- and Mrs. Poetzel had to bottle feed them til they were weened. I did lift up the box every now and then to make sure they were all nursing - they were.

I remember Nugget did have one runt in the litter which ended up dying. :( She came dragging him out of the box, and set him in the corner, and ignored him. I picked him up right away with a warm glove- since my hands were cold. I noticed he/she was EXTREMELY tiny compared to the other guys- and he had a huge hole in his/her neck. Before I could go buy him some replacement milk (or do anything for that matter) - he passed away :( He was the 9th baby in that litter. :eek: My friend and I had a little candle light burrial in the garden. We called him Little Man- even tho it could have been a girl.

Yes.... Sweet Pea is Nugget's daughter.

[kingrattus]

May my ratties RIP.

Mike in his cage with his mice (http://www.iahu.ca/jess/images/Mikes%20big%20cage.jpg)

This is Rattus, this pic makes me cry every time (http://www.iahu.ca/jess/images/RATTUS1.jpg)

This is Rattus' little girk named Rat (http://www.iahu.ca/jess/images/RAT1.jpg)

A rescued rat that I named Y, because of a big white Y on her chest (http://www.iahu.ca/jess/images/Y2.jpg)

I didn't get time to take pics of the other rats I had. They were all murdered before I got the chance to take pics of them. Rosie was a pic I so dearly wish I had, she looked just like her father, before he became horribly ill & I was forced to put him down. I would love to own rats again, I miss mine dearly. They'll always be kept in my heart & on the webpages detacated to them. God how I miss all 7 of them :(

[luckies4me]

Was the Y in the center of her chest in between her upper arms? I can see she has white feet also, therfor you had an irish! Good marked irishes are hard to come by, consider yourself lucky!;) I love irishes. Sorry to hear about your ratties. If anyone wants to get a look at some of my rats, go to my profile and click on my webpage. You can see cute little rittens there too! :D


Oh ya for those who don't know what a ritten is, it's a baby rat. They are actually called kittens but some breeder (like me, hehe) like to call them rittens. R for the rat. Get it? :p

[kingrattus]

Y & her twin sister looked like this.

C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\Y.bmp

but their front paws were all white, up to their wriste's then it was only white on the inside, Wishbone's Y went right to her tail. I had no idea they were special, I just knew they were imbread, living in poor conditions & felt sorry for them. I hope this pic works, if not,, I think u got the gist of it :)

Are their fur suposte to be really weird looking, because the top of their backs was one shade, then there was a strip of a diff shade then there below that it was a nother diff shade. I thought it was caused by them being inbreed.

Too bad they turned out to be agressive Rats & tried to kill my other rats.

But it was their beauty that caught my eye (& of course I knew I could provide better for them.

My cage was large enough to house 15 rats, if I wanted to. But 10 was the limit for me. Not including all the babies.

I miss them :(

[luckies4me]

Their fur problem is just molting. At 8 weeks babies will shed their old fur and start getting their adult coloring. They can go through a dramatic change in this time period. Some rats start out of beige and then turn into siamese etc. Adults usually molt once every three months or so. However their problem could be dinginess in color. Some poorly bred rats color is not as good as it should be. Although it sounds as if they were molting.

Rex and velveteens fur will sometimes appear to be different shades as the sun hits it from different angles. Rex and velveteens are curly whiskered and curly furred rats whose undercoat is sparse. The undercoat of velveteens is missing all together making them very very soft. Since their fur is curly it tends to seem like they have three different colors. :)

[Cincy'sMom]

Originally posted by YellowLabLover



Here's a picture of Nuggets babies- they are a little shy of the camera.

I usually do not look at rat threads...I just can't get interested in them as pets, nothing against them, just not for me.....but, i looked and Nugget's Babies are adorable!

[kingrattus]

My rat wasn't molting, I got her at 3 months & had her for 8 months & the colour never changed.

[Desert Arabian]

Hee- Hee, thanks!

[luckies4me]

Originally posted by kingrattus
My rat wasn't molting, I got her at 3 months & had her for 8 months & the colour never changed.

Have you seen a rat molt? The color doesn't change it just looks different on the back and sides when they are. They molt every three months or so. Although like you thought, what you are describing could be due to poor diet/husbandry/background. They looked find to me in the pics though. Good thing you rescued those guys!;)