Toni's Litter!
           
        The Parents -
            Toni: Toni is a Silver Fawn hooded.  She's a pet shop rat, so I'm not sure of her genetics.  She's on the small/average size, but she's a very pretty little rat!  Not too incredible in the temperament department, but this is more my fault then hers; I got her last winter as a companion for Ashra because I didn't have time to spend with her, so obviously I didn't have much time to spend with Toni!
            Jack: Jack is an Agouti Berkshire; genetics are: AA Cc Hh Pp.  He's big and beautiful, great type IMH (not entirely sure yet how my opinion stands up against other peoples' opinions!), just generally a big lug :-)

            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:

           
        2 Light-eyed females
        2 Light-eyed males
        (The light-eyeds could be Silver Fawns or PEWs, I'm not sure which yet)
        2 Dark-eyed females
            As of today (1/4), you can tell that these two are hoodeds rather than berkshires.  They are more than likely Agoutis, although there is a very slight possibility they're Blacks (*if* Jack is carrying non-Agouti, and *if* Toni is, which I have no idea of).
           
        I'll keep you updated on them!

        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
           
       
         
       
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