Rainbow Magic Rattery

Rattery update!
Super thrilled with this precious litter of 3. Due to family health reasons, very few pairings were done last year. Buy the time things settled enough for us to look at pairing our girls, they were all well over 12 months of age when they were being put into breed for their first litter. Unfortunately this increased age significantly reduces their fertility, both in regard to their ability to fall pregnant and their litter size. Which had us very concerned that we weren’t going to get babies from our best lines that we’ve been developing over the past 5 years. So out of 15 girls we put into breed one month ago, this is our first litter, which we are just estatic about .
A little Berkshire boy and 2 sisters. And there are another 2 girls who have started nesting, so fingers crossed a few more babies may arrive in the next week. Needless to say none of these babies will be available as all will be retained to continue our Rattery’s breeding program. At this stage it is likely to be 6-9 months minimum before we may have babies available for adoption.

We have some young (2 month old) champagne hooded baby boys available. They are white with cream head and cream stripe down their back, and pink eyes. If you are interested send our page a pm with some info about yourself, the home you can provide, your knowledge about rats health, dietary and enrichment needs, and a photo of your cage. NB. We do not sell our rats to homes to be children’s pets sorry.

We are currently having a rough time with my daughter’s asthma and having time in hospital. So much slower than usual to read and respond to messages. Sorry.

Thank you to QRF and the lovely rat community for a fun, friendly day at QRF’s last show of the year. I rarely (pretty much never) post our winning show results, but so proud of how our ratties did today so sharing our results. It’s been 5+ years of breeding (and high and lows) with our sole breeding focus being health and temperament, to get where we are now. And to unintentionally produce some rats that are also of a standard to be shown in varieties has been a nice surprise. When choosing holdbacks to run on as potential breeders, if all other things are equal, we will avoid breeding from rats whose markings suggest they carry the h^e (extreme) allele. This is to eliminate the possibility of producing BEW babies (which are due to 2 copies of the h^e allele at the hooded locus) which have a higher incidence of deafness. This selection in our breeding has led to us producing hooded rats with nice solid stripes, some of whom appeared to meet the show standard!! So we decided we may as well enter some in the varieties section of the show and see get some feedback on them in relation to the varieties standards. Breeding to meet the varieties show standards has never been an objective of ours, as the health and temperament of pet rats in Qld has always had so much room for improvement, so health and temperament always has been, and will continue to be, our breeding focus.
So it was a wonderful surprise today when our sweet “RMR Candy”, an 11 month old girl who had her first litter just 3.5 months ago, won Best Rat in Show. She birthed 15 babies, raised 12 of them herself (3 were fostered into another mum with a smaller litter), and the whole time she held her condition amazingly, and didn’t develop RI at any stage. I’m ever so happy that several of her babies have gone out to amazing pet homes where I know they will have the most amazing lives, and I look forward to seeing how they grow up and wish them a long and healthy life in their new homes, and their owners many successes with them at future shows.
Ps. My daughter insisted I include some babies in the photos of our “Best Rat Breeder” and “Best Pet Rat Breeder” awards.

🚀👾👨‍🚀☄️🌌🛰 Rats Weekly 🛰🌌☄️👨‍🚀👾🚀

Space edition! 😊 Hope you all enjoy. ❤️

For anyone who is new to the page, Rats Weekly is our imaginings of what a magazine would look like if it was written by rats, for rats. 🐀

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🐀 'How Long Do Pet Rats Live?' 🐀

This is a question we commonly seen asked, and debated, on rat groups online and is something we feel is super important to discuss.

On the Internet, you may see many unsubstantiated claims of rats live well over 3 4 or even 5 years old that can make you feel bad that your beloved baby 'only' made it to 2, for example. The reality is, that although there are varying factors and exceptions, the average age of pet rats is 1.5 - 2.5 years, with somewhere around 2 ish often being the average 🩷

After quite a hiatus from breeding, we have our first litter in nearly 7 months. An older mum, hence the smaller litter. A very big thank you to Kerri-Anne once again, for allowing RMR Parsley to come for another visit to get some ladies pregnant. He is nearly 2 years of age now, and still in excellent health with no signs of HLD, so I’m very grateful to be able to continue using him in our breeding program. His parents, grandparents and great grandparents were all born at RMR, and his is certainly our best line we are working with. And I’m especially proud of the fact that this is the 3rd time he has come to have some lady-friends, and each time he happily reintegrates with his male companions without issue. He is a jackpot, and exactly what I am aiming for in my breeding program: exceptional long-term health, amazing temperament (both with humans and ratties), no HA but enough hormones to be able to breed. Thank you Kerri-Anne and Parsley! Perfection in a rat 💜💜💜. Can’t wait for some more little parcels to arrive in the next month! Ps. For anyone wanting to enquire about adopting, we breed for our own goals, not to have babies available to sell. So it will likely be a minimum of 4-5 months before we may have any babies available, and even then it likely won’t be many. Priority always goes to owners that have demonstrated they can provide exceptionally good homes for our ratties and are willing to stay in touch long-term to keep us updated on our babies.