Ikaros was the perfect rat. A silver fawn rex male that I got from Åkello, a company that breeds small pets and sells to pet shops all over Sweden. Actually I got two silver fawn rats, siblings, the other one being a female with the normal silver fawn colour. Both were rex. But since I had no intentions to breed I found a new home for her. I had just ordered one silver fawn rex male anyways.
Ikaros was truly one of my best rats ever!!!!! He was not tame when I got him, he came directly from the big breeder and was about three months old. But still he was extremely gentle, and soon he was really tame.
Ikaros became the foundation sire for my new line of rats. I had no intentions to breed but I did let him have one litter with one female, Ina, that sadly enough turned out not to have a good temper. Ina had both German blue and English blue in her pedigree, since she came from a testmating to see if these colours were related. The litter was born on the 22nd of May 1996 and there was 14 babies. Ann-Zophi kept one baby, I kept none, my friend Jalle got 4, so we sold the other 9. You can see some of the 14 babies in the photo to the right.
Another picture of Ikaros.
Ina belonged to Ann-Zophi Pålsson, and we worked together a lot at that time. Anyways, another friend of mine, who had Runatun Rattery (the same person I got my first rats from), took 4 babies, 2 males and 2 females, from this litter. He started breeding, me and Ann-Zophi helped him decide which rat to mate to which. After a while I started getting rat babies back, and they were the rats I turned into my new silver fawn line. All came from the 4 babies in Ikaros litter. Yes, there was a lot inbreeding going on, but the result was wonderful.
Actually when I got Ikaros I didn't believe he was a true silver fawn, since he had blue undercolour and not white as a true silver fawn, and he also had a yellow belly instead of a white belly. It took me a few years to learn that he was in fact a A-B-pp silver fawn, and most of the silver fawns I had before were A-bbpp silver fawns. He had rich colour, though.
The reason we placed 4 babies with my friend Jalle (Runatun Rattery) was he had proven himself to be the best person to feed and care for rats we had ever seen. He had one rat that was a close relative of my first rats Råttis & Thumpi that had a litter of 19 living rats, and all the 19 babies were huge at the of 4 weeks.
The 4 rats we gave to Runatun Rattery were Ixa (chocolate female), Ios (chocolate agouti male), Ilo (chocolate male) & Inna (black Irish rex female). We later had to exclude one of the males, Ilo, from the breeding, since he was too dominant. There are photos of Ixa and her brother Ios on on this page.
Here's a photo of Ikaros, just as he arrived, that first day I got him. I got him from Ann-Zophi, who had aquired him especially for me. He is just months old in this photo, and he wasn't very tame, but he was extremely easy to tame!
Ikaros died on the same day as his friend Ixy, on the 23rd of December 1996. He was put to sleep because of respiratory problems.
Here's a photo of all the 14 babies. And another photo of Ikaros and two of his sons: Apollonia/Aristoteles Ior & Apollonia/Aristoteles Ilio.
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 25th of August 2005.