Judging the upcoming spring show

Well, since Emilie from Echo Rattery is taking a semi-permanent hiatus from the rat world, I’ve volunteered to the NIRO BoD to judge Best In Show at the spring show this year. The problem with BIS judging is that it’s hard to predict whose rats will be up on the table. The best solution is always to have someone who is not showing at all be the judge. It should also be an experienced judge and breeder.

In the past, we had Claudia Nix, who had stopped breeding but still ran the shows and judged BIS. It was ideal because she was not exhibiting any animals, nor were any of the animals on the table of her breeding, so there was no worry about bias. The only problem was that her long hiatus from the breeding world was beginning to give her a somewhat outdated ideal to judge from, as the local standards improved and evolved.

In the past, we’ve made an agreement between our four active judges that whichever of us does not have a rat on the final table will judge BIS. However, that’s a very uncertain way of doing things, and there’s always a good chance that all of us would have a rat up in the final six.

I volunteered to take over for the spring show, and will not be exhibiting, in order to ensure that none of my own rats are on the final table for judging. There’s a certain feeling of relief to not showing this time; there’s been a lot of pressure on me with regards to winning consistently, both positive and negative. Additionally, that will let me breed Stars and Friday in April, as I wanted to, rather than trying to squeeze them in directly after the show.

It’s got me thinking about some of the good and bad I’ve seen across the show table in the last 2 years, and what I’d like to look for, whatever I end up judging (I have no idea which classes I’ll end up judging, but I have asked not to judge Siamese, since I judged it in both shows last year and it’s not fair to the folks who breed Siamese never to get fresh eyes on their stock!)

So here’s the stuff I’m personally looking for this year, both in my own stock and the rats I’ll be judging!

Color saturation

We’re seeing a lot of silvered rats out there, and dull-colored rats. I did not really realize how bad the problem was until Tiffany Robbins (So Licky) started showing up with her AMAZING Russian Blues. I have no idea where it comes from, because they still have silvering and they’re mostly out of the same stock I’ve been using, but no one else has RBs like this. I want to see more of this, across all colors. Less “lilac” Minks, less “silvered” Blacks, less golden Russian Blue Agoutis – MORE RICH COLOR!

Tails

We’ve got a couple good tails out there, but they don’t seem to pass on consistently. I want to see more nice, thick, heavy tails. I want to see less long, thin tails that look like someone tied a shoelace to a rat’s butt!!

Coat Types

We’ve got a lot of Standard coated rats out there with Satin guardhairs. A lot of Rexes with dreadlocks instead of curls. A lot of Satins who have all the hallmarks of Satin in guard hair and length but no real gloss – they could almost be Standards. Enough of that! Let’s see some great representation of coat out there!!

“Fluffy” Rats and Weedy Rats

Obesity is becoming less of a problem than it was, but we’re still seeing a LOT of rats with excessive belly fat and side flaps. We’re also seeing many of the rats who aren’t fat are very delicate, especially the does, excessively small and light for their ages. It’s so hard to get rats to tone, and to control portions in a group setting!

Those are going to be my big 4 points walking into the show I think, and to watch in my own rats this year! I think many of us have gotten very fixated on conformation in the head and neglected some of the other aspects of our rats, I know I have! Hopefully, we can repair some of this in the coming year before it becomes too “set!”

 

Genetics Tutorial: Agouti Locus

Genetics Tutorial: Agouti Locus

The Agouti locus is one of the few loci which expresses on a dominant gene. Few people realize it, but Agouti creates the only two real colors for rats: Agouti and Black. Further modification of the color dilutions is all the differentiates a Black from a Russian Blue.

Because Agouti is a dominant gene, either homozygous A/A or heterozygous A/a will produce an identical Agouti rat. There is no visible difference between them. For this reason, many people will use A/- when working with the genetics of an Agouti rat, to indicate they do not know what the second gene is. The only way to know if a rat is homozygous or heterozygous is to breed them – any Black-based babies in their litter indicates heterozygous, however, an all-Agouti litter doesn’t guarantee that the parents are homozygous.

One should always remember that chances are at work, not certainties. If you breed two heterozygous Agoutis, you should get 25% homozygous Agoutis, 50% heterozygous Agoutis, and 25% Black – however, you may get a litter of 100% heterozygous Agoutis, simply as a roll of the genetic dice!

Agouti creates a ticked coat, where each hair is made up of bands of different colors, and there are black (or dark) guard hairs interspersed throughout. The “wild coat” of rats, rabbits and squirrels is an Agouti coat. Agoutis also have a lighter, silvery belly that is a washed-out version of the top color. The line of demarcation – where the top color ends and the belly color begins – is visible on young rats who are just getting their coats in, and can help differentiate Agouti babies from Black-based babies who are under a week old.

8 day old Agouti, clearly showing the line of demarcation between belly and top color.

The same Agouti at a month old

 

Genetics Tutorial: Part One

Rat color genetics are extremely simple. It’s really disheartening how many of the breeders out there simply do not know what produces what, or are unable to identify the colors on their own litters.

Most rat colors are the result of a double recessive gene on a single locus. The more loci involved, the more complicated it becomes, and the harder identification of a rat by sight alone becomes. That is why it is so important to keep good, complete and consistent pedigree information, and to try to work with as few extraneous dilutes as possible.

The basic information for working with rat genetics:

Gene – the genetic information passed from parents to child, one from the mother and one from the father, which affect rat color

Locus – plural loci, this is the paired gene location. Each locus affects a different type of dilution.

Dominant – indicated by a capital letter in a gene pair (A/a for example) this gene is dominant and will prevent the recessive from expressing. There are very few dominant genes which have expression in rats – most of the time, you are looking for the recessives.

Recessive – indicated by the lower case letter in a gene pair (A/a for example) this gene will only express if both genes are recessive. However, a rat can be a “carrier” for the recessive gene, as in the example, and has the possibility of throwing double-recessive babies when bred to another rat with the same recessive.

Homozygous – A matching pair of genes, with both being either dominant or recessive. An A/A rat is homozygous for the Agouti gene.

Heterozygous – A pair of genes with one dominant and one recessive or carried, gene. An A/a rat is heterozygous for the Agouti gene.

Punnett Square – used to work out the chance of a single locus to express in a given mating. The father’s genes are listed on the horizontal of the table, and the mother’s genes along the horizontal. Example:

	A	a
A	A/A	A/a
a	A/a	a/a

In the following example, both parents are heterozygous Agoutis. They have a 25% chance of producing homozygous Agoutis, a 50% chance of producing heterozygous Agoutis, and a 25% chance of producing Black-based babies.

Genotype – the genetic color identification of the rat. There are rats who can appear very similar to another color, despite not sharing color genes with them.

Phenotype – the color the rat appears to be. This can be quite different from the genetic identity!

Expressed – when the color gene is visibly affecting the color of the rat

Carried – when a recessive is hidden by the expressed color genes, but is still present and may express in offspring when bred to another rat with those genes.

Modifier – A little “tag” on the locus which tells the gene to produce a slightly different shade, while genetically remaining the same color as another rat without the modifier. This can cause endless confusion when attempting to identify babies, and is where selection to standard comes in.

 

Epilepsy

Above is a 15-second video of a very young rat named FHR Kobol having a grand mal seizure. The event happened during cage introductions when Kobol and his brother Arthur came out of quarantine and were introduced to three large, amiable adult bucks. The seizure itself went for about 180 seconds, included foaming at the mouth, and was followed by a period of about 40 minutes of post-seizure behavior known as a post-ictal state, where his head bobbed, he made strange mouth motions, blinked sleepily and cycled behaviors.  About a half-hour later, another identical seizure followed, followed by another 40 minute post-ictal state. There were no injuries found on Kobol at any time that might indicate one of his new cagemates had hurt him and caused this.

After discussing the event with my vet (who was on the phone with me while Kobol was having the seizure and in the post-ictal state) we evaluated different causes that might trigger this event in a baby only 9 weeks old. Because there are causes that can be contagious to both animals and people that are parasitical in nature, the decision was made to isolate the cage in which he had been introduced and where FHR Arthur still was, and to euthanize FHR Kobol and send him to the MSU Diagnostic Center for Population and Animal Health to have a full workup. Because this animal was not in my breeding program, ordinarily I might not have gone the full 9 just to get information for another breeder’s program, but because there was a possibility of something that could spread through my rattery, I really had no choice, despite the expense right around the holidays. 

A full gross necropsy was done, looking for brain tumors, leisons, scars or other abnormalities that could have been a physical cause of the seizure and nothing was found. There was also no indication of inflammation or parasitic infection.

Then the tissue was examined microscopically and bacteriology and virology testing was done. Results read that there was no evidence of infection, neoplasia, inflammation or congenital conditions grossly or on microscopic examination of the tissues. Because there was no evidence of injury or infection within the sections of the brain, the most likely differentials are an ideopathic seizure disorder or a metabolic disturbance such as low blood sugar. However, blood tests, signs and responses did not support a metabolic cause.

After receiving the results, my veterinarian Dr. Rebecca Vincent consulted with Dr. Isaacs at the Animal Neurology Center. He stated that idiopathic Epilepsy is the most likely diagnosis. There are 2 possibilities: Kobol could be a point mutation, meaning that he is the first in the line to be affected, or he could be the “knock out,” meaning the trait was uncovered in this breeding. This means the trait may be passed on with varying degrees of expression in future generations. To be absolutely safe, he recommends not breeding this bloodline, as this could be inapparent (hidden) for generations before showing up again.

Dr. Vincent also explained that rat epilepsy is not only extremely genetically linked, but can have very mild expression. It is very possible that litter mates have and exhibit epilepsy, but the signs are too mild to be noticed. It is very possible that the stress of transferring to a new colony and being introduced to strange rats precipitated Kobol’s first seizure – or he could have been having them all along, since they are so short, and were simply missed.

Because Kobol is the result of a mother-son inbreed, at the very least, his parents and their siblings, as well as all of Kobol’s siblings, should be stricken from any future breeding plans. The reason we do these inbreeds is to force disorders like this to the surface so we can choose whether or not to continue the line. With something like this, where a rat can be a carrier or even an active sufferer of the malady without being able to be tracked, the ethical answer is to shut it down. This cannot be bred around.

Kobol’s breeder has this information. What she chooses to do with it is up to her.

 

Continuity of Bloodline

Well, the 2009 rat show “season” is now over, and everyone gets to hibernate for the winter. We take what we’ve learned from the shows and our conversations with one another and we plan for the coming year, we make lists of the rats we really liked and hope to see bred, we evaluate our own plans in light of everything we’ve seen.

I have to say on a personal note how proud I am to see the “continuity” of my bloodlines, and several bloodlines I share in, at the shows.

In Fall of 2008 we saw EKO Hungry Hungry Hippos (BVR Ahmose x EKO Heidi Van Dankelein) take Best Colorpoint Doe. In Fall 2009 we saw her son EKO-FSTR Silver Surfer (EKO Check Engine Light x EKO Hungry Hungry Hippos) take Best Colorpoint Buck and then Best Buck!

In Fall of 2008, we saw FSTR Eadhadh take Best Doe and then Best In Show. In Spring 2009 her daughters BVR Lake of Summer and BVR Lacus Temporis took 2nd and 3rd in the Agouti Doe category. This fall, BVR Sea of Tranquility took Best Agouti Doe, with her sister BVR Lake of Summer taking another red ribbon in second place there.

In Fall of 2008, we saw BVR-FSTR Beware take Best Non-Agouti Doe and in Spring 2009 her daughter BVR-FSTR Caterpillar took Best Doe at 3 months old, with her sister BVR-FSTR Dinah taking a third place in that category. This fall, BVR-FSTR Caterpillar took Best Doe again, and then BIS, with her sister BVR-FSTR Dinah a close second place in the Best Non-Agouti Doe category.

It definitely makes me feel like steady progress and improvement is being made in these bloodlines, and I’m so proud of them! Here’s hoping to watching the sons and daughters of these winners continue to do well!

 

Background: The Marked Rcinn Outcross

The basis of my Russian Cinnamon line has always been very good Selfs. This is sad because I’ve always wanted them to be Berkshires! Sadly, because of the enormous suppression of markings we have going on in the population locally, our rats tend to swallow marked lines and spit out bad Selfs with three white hairs on their bellies and white gloves.

Usually, building a bloodline involves one good male and 2-3 good females, which you then half-sib inbreed for a few generations. For this line, I’ll be starting off with one female and three males. How in the world would that work?

Our primary female is ODD Pikelet, a Russian Cinnamon Berkshire with top ears and a standard coat. I’ll be breeding her to BVR Oceanus Procellarum, a Russian Blue Agouti Self with top ears and a standard coat, and a good chance of carrying Satin.

The purpose of that breeding will be to mix my genes into the outcross from the get-go. Mind you, this will not be going in the other direction, this line will not be bred into my main line for at least 4 generations. However, this should help to minimize the amount of gene-disagreement when it does finally get folded in, considering that Ocean’s bloodline will be heavily inbred into both lines. Hopefully, I will be getting Russian Cinnamons out of this breeding – Ocean’s father was a Dove, so I just need to hope that the does in this litter line up for both recessives.

I will be keeping every single doe out of Ocean x Pikelet, in order to choose the best does for the next generation, which will be to my other two foundation bucks: DAZL Gadzooks and DAZL Triptych. Zooks is an Agouti Varigated Dumbo Rex and Triptych is a Russian Cinnamon Headspot Berkshire Dumbo Rex. I’ll have to breed out the Dumbo and the Rex. Zooks carries both Mink and Russian Blue, which is good – and RED, which is not good. That’s one more thing I’ll have to breed out.

The plan from here forward is to keep the best doe from one of these litters and the best buck from the other (which necessitates me keeping at least three of each sex to pick from) and breed them to one another.

 

Anatomy of a Bloodline

This is going to be an ongoing series of posts, probably stretching over the next several years, so strap in, gentle reader!

I occured to me that in the coming year I am taking on two new “outcross lines” into the rattery. One line will bring markings into my Russian Cinnamons and one line will be to hopefully add Black-Eyed genes into my Siamese. Because of the way I’ve been thinking more about what I do, planinng ahead and really trying to follow my own advice and learn from my own mistakes, it occurs to me that this is a perfect opportunity to really watch a bloodline develop in real time. In other words, I can follow this through from the planning stage until years from now when it’s folded into my main lines. In the end, whether I succeed or fail, I’ll have a good, succinct record that I (and hopefully others) can use to improve their own breeding processes in our ratteries. Public mistakes become everyone’s learning opportunity, after all, and public successes are too!

Because of the mistakes I’ve made in the past (and checking out the visual pedigrees on my bloodline pages would alert you to most of those mistakes) I’m very adamant that I will NOT be adding these new bloodlines into my main bloodlines until they have 4 generations at least of inbred observation to go on. Then it will be mostly a matter of adding my main bloodline in to them, so that at any point I can still back out.

Will it hurt to back out? Yes. But I know what the alternative is. Right now I’m having to end a part of my bloodlines that are carrying severe respiratory disease from one rat – luckily, I can contain that one. There are several other health problems that outcrosses have brought in that I can’t cut off, because there’s no clean line to bring them out of.

With that being said, to follow along, just look for the Anatomy of a Bloodline tag on future posts, and they’ll be related to building these two outcross bloodlines!

 

To tide us over!

Enjoy a video of the babies playing until the website is fixed!

 

Russian Cinnamon – Selection and Mistakes

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about selection with my Russian Cinnamons lately, and talking to Kirstin about it. We’re both very disturbed by the tendacy that the new fad of Russian Cinnamon breeding has brought out (and can I say how much I HATE that my personal project color has become the “new thing?” I really really do!!) which is to say that something is either a “dark Russian Cinnamon or a light Russian Blue Agouti” and not being able to tell the difference.

There ARE dark Russian Cinnamons, who shade more toward Russian Blue Agoutis. And there’s been a whole mess of very light/reddish RBAs, way lighter than they should be. And this is the result of just one thing, in our opinion – mistakes and poor selection. Those of us who are trying to get Rcinn are selecting for light, reddish RBAs, thinking and hoping they’re Rcinns. Also, very light, gold Cinnamons, again, selecting them and hoping they’re Rcinns. We tell ourselves that “oh, they’re going through a dark phase,” and then when they moult into an adult coat, they’re a “darker” Rcinn, instead of being recognized for what they are – poor RBAs.

They’re poor because they don’t fit the standard.

This is the color an RBA should be. Yes, it’s reddish, and there’s gold highlights in it, but it is NOT Russian Cinnamon.

Here’s an Russian Cinnamon. They are not in the same ballpark. Russian Cinnamon is LIGHT and GOLD. That’s what the standard calls for: “Color to consist of a mixture of light gold, cream and brown hairs giving an overall golden and sparkling appearance on a pale silver-blue base. Undercoat to be pale down to the skin. Belly and foot should be a lighter, gray version of top color. Faults: Overly dark or diluted color, patchy or uneven ticking.” Dark Russian Cinnamons are not the right color, and in fact, I think we’ve been shooting ourselves in the foot by keeping poor Russian Blue Agoutis and calling them poor Russian Cinnamons!

I think that ruddiness is the issue. Russian Cinnamon doesn’t – or shouldn’t! – have ruddiness to it. But that sort of red/orange highlighting is common in RBAs. I’d like to see RBAs darker, and more than that, I think ruddiness in Rcinns should be heavily faulted by judges. We can select away from that, and we should be.

The selection should be obvious from the beginning – the very beginning, in fact. I’ve been mulling this over through the last year of litters, and it’s clearly where we’re going wrong. Russian Cinnamons are not dark-skinned babies. Russian Blues are. A Russian Cinnamon baby should not ever be mistaken for a Russian Blue Agouti – it should be mistaken, if anything, for a Dove, or for a Platinum Agouti. They are LIGHT. They start off SILVER and then turn GOLD as the ticking comes in. More and more, as I’ve seen these babies fur out, and get bred from and produce their own babies, I’m seeing what should have been obvious from the beginning.

It would have been easier, of course, if I had initially produced Russian Cinnamon on purpose, or realized what it was. At the time that Teacosy, my first Russian Cinnamon was born from NXPR Kaeman (Dove) and MAN Ha’Kan’Ta (Russian Blue Agouti) there WERE no other Russian Cinnamons identified in the US. I found the name and the genetic description on an Brittish rattery’s website. There were some people in the US producing “Golden Agoutis,” but they had not genetically identified them, nor had any club standardized them. And in fact, the immediate reaction to Teacosy’s identification was several breeders saying “Oh, THAT’S what I have!” …and promptly misidentifying RBAs as Rcinns.

If I had realized how rare and strange the color was and how much confusion it was going to cause, you can bet your bippy I would have documented that litter much more assiduously! Especially if I’d realized how hard it was going to be to successfully recreate it.

This is the only baby picture I have of Teacosy. You can tell she is NOT a Russian Blue Agouti. In fact, she could easily be mistaken for Dove, except for the ticking.

Here’s some more baby pictures. See if you can guess which ones were identified (or misidentified) as Russian Cinnamons.

 #1

 #2

 #3

 #4

 #5

 #6

 #7

 #8

 #9

 #10

The answer? All of them. Every single one of those babies was identified by myself as a Russian Cinnamon or a possible Russian Cinnamon. #1 and #9 I now feel are definitely Russian Blue Agoutis. They are simply too dark. And they’ve moulted out to be very light (wrong to the standard) Russian Blue Agoutis who could be mistaken for bad/dark Russian Cinnamons. This is not a good thing, IMO.

About #6 and #7 I still have doubts – they are either bad Cinnamons or bad Russian Cinnamons. The red has faded from #7’s coat as an adult, and #6 is both red AND gold, giving her a very attractive “strawberry blonde” look that is nonetheless dead wrong for the standard. #2 is very strange – that strongly yellow color is not typical, but is the same as BVR-FSTR One Night of Song, who is a Russian Cinnamon Pearl – and since that is one of her daughters, maybe it comes from there. Regardless, I won’t be breeding 2, 6 or 7 – who are all siblings from that breeding – for other reasons, but if I had to judge on color, only #7 would still be in the running. The other two are simply wrong to the standard.

The other babies are the ones I feel are the actual, true and proper Russian Cinnamons. They don’t have dark eyespots when they’re born, and they never have dark fur. Their fur grows a gold tone as the ticking comes in, but primarily for most of the baby-coat phase they could be mistaken for Doves… which is correct, since they’re Dove Agoutis!

When selecting Russian Cinnamons from now on, these will be the babies that I consider to be actual Russian Cinnamons. And I’ll do my best to select out the ruddy ones, the ones who look like really over-bright Cinnamons but otherwise are also non-dark eyespotted and come in quite light at first. Whether or not these guys are Rcinn or Cinnamon, they’re definitely wrong to the Rcinn standard and shouldn’t be selected for.

 

Cage cleaning day!

So, every Monday, I have to…

Put all the rats in travel tubs. This necessitates 10 tubs. When I have a litter in a tub I’m missing one and have to haul out a spare cage for those rats.

Pull all the cages off their bases. Each cage gets hauled outside to the driveway (up one flight of stairs) if the weather is nice, or to the washing station I’ve set up at the utility sink (shower doors and a curtain around the place in front of the sink so I don’t hose down the entire basement, and a washing-machine hose attached to the sink faucet, then hung through a chain loop from the ceiling like a car wash, with a garden hose sprayer on the end).

Today is a basement day, since I have AC and it’s 80 degrees and stupid-humid out.

Cage gets sprayed down with Simple Green and scrubbed, them hosed with as much direct stream as possible (in the basement the water is scalding hot, which helps!)

Then I spritz a chlorhexidine spray on to kill any germs (very low dilution, but still very effective, recommended by both Kirstin and my vet!) and set them to dry.

Repeat x 10. More if there’s litter cages that need to be cleaned.

Trays are emptied into the trash and subject to the same spraying and scrubbing and then disinfecting.

While they dry, I scrub down the tables the cages sit on, sweep the floor.

Bring the trays back once the tables and trays are dry (this is the part that’s easier outdoors! Sun > now-humid basement for letting things dry!) and refill the trays with Sani-chips.

Bring the cages back, snap them back on.

Fill food hoppers, top off water buddies and put out their daily flax seeds.

Refill cages with rats and go shower! LOL

I usually start around 11:30am and it’s usually 2:30-3pm when I finally finish. Unless I stop frequently to diddle around on the internet >.> I have an ipod and find that listening to audiobooks keeps me content and focused most of the time.

What’s your routine like?