The mother of the babies was my German Blue rat Bonita, and the father my friend's Russian Blue rat El Toro. The litter was born on the 28th of July 1999 and consisted of eight babies, four black and four beige.
You can see the babies at the age of five days inthe picture to the left.
This mating was a test mating to see that my friend's Russian Blues were for sure not the same gene as my German Blue rats. Bonita and El Toro looked a lot alike from a distance, but close up they were not the same at all. Bonitas blue colour came from dots spread out along the length of her hairs, so if you blew in her fur it had the same colour all the way down. El Toro's colour came from mixed light and dark hairtips, so if you blew in his fur he had not the same colour all the way dow, on the contrary his blue colour was much more defined in the outer layer of his fur, from the dotted hairtips.
El Toro's mother and father was imprted from the Us, from a Rattery called Lizzie's Love Lies To the right is a photo of El Toro himself :-)
One strange thing with this litter was that they weren't that easily tamed as my litters usually are, a friend of mine took most of the litter, since he had gotten tired of all the red eyed rats he had, and wanted som black eyed rats. Since he took most of the babies, and I kept the rest, I would have learned if anyone turned aggressive, so none did.
El Toro was a nice tempered rat, not the kind that seeks you out to hangout with you (sit in your lap, check what you're doing), but the kind that is calm and don't react in a negative way. My friend who owned him still considers him the best rat she ever had, and she's had lots of rats and lots of litters since then.
To the left is a photo of one of the black babies in the litter, as a small baby.
To the right is a photo of one of the beige babies in the litter, as a small baby.
Here is a picture of Aristoteles Iksa, the rat I liked most from this litter. As usual my choice was based on temper.
Aristoteles Iksa was mated to Runatun Xi and they had a litter consisting of ten babies on the 6th of January 2000. That was my Is-litter.
Copyright Eva Johansson.
Last update: 12th of January 2006.