Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I picked up a trio of natal rats today, and so far, I'm happy with them. I don't know exactly what color combination they would really be called. I'd go for plain old piebald, but the one site I found about them (Eva's) has several different types of piebald. Seems like rodent people really like fancy names for every single little speck on an animal (kind of like crested people, neh? and this isn't meant to be offensive- I breed fancy rodents, and i have cresteds.)

So, Rflagg specifically, did yours show a bad attitude right from the start? I bought a male and two females, and all three seem OK so far. I got 'em home and put them in a cage, and all three came up to me & sniffed my fingers. When I put corn in for them, the male specifically came right over to me to check it out. I don't know if this was just because they were bounced around for an hour in the car on the way home, or if maybe they aren't too standoffish. I know I should expect them to be unfriendly, but, hopefully they won't be too bad! At least none of the three tried to bite me.

The big news, the news worth updating for anyway, is that the breeder I got them from came up with albinos! He bought two unrelated animals from two different people, paired them up.. And came up with albino babies! He said they've got the same pattern as these ones, but they've got red eyes, and instead of brown, they have yellow, like some albino mice do. No pure whites, yet. He said he's gotten a bunch of babies out of them, and the adults are still together. He's pairing up half of the babies with each other, and the other half with unrelated rats, to come up with hets. He said that in two or three months, he should have them available for sale. I can't WAIT to see those! Definitely gonna have to get my hands on a couple of them.

So, that's all for now. As soon as I find anything else interesting about them, I'll update again. And Randy (can I call you Randy? Or would you prefer the Walkin' Dude? Maybe the Tall Man?), please keep me (and everyone else on the boards here) updated with yours as well! I'm excited about them, and I'd love to hear more about them.

So, here are my little ones. Please excuse the crappy pics. I broke my camera, so I had to take them with my phone.

Nice to see you got them, hopefully yours will be more friendly than mine.

When I brought them home and put them in their tank they were just afraid of me and would run and hide whenever I went near them. Hard to tell from the pics but maybe yours are older or maybe they had more contact with the breeder. Mine didn't start biting until they got more used to me, and so far it's just the first female that bites.

Nothing new to report here, no litter yet, and while the female looks larger it might just be normal growth.

The coloring on yours look pretty much the same as mine, though the 2nd female I bought is more of a solid color, kind of like a berkshire rat.

Mine look to be about half grown. The male is about the size of a breeder mouse, and the females are the size of small adult mice.

Maybe being young will make them impressionable enough.. *shrug* I'd love to see these things hit it off here in the US!

Here's a couple of pictures of one of our Albino males with a regular colored male. Sorry for the blurriness. He never stopped moving while I was taking the pics.

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Louis Kirkland
Cornerstone Reptiles

I take it you have a bit of experience keeping these guys?

Have you noticed anything with keeping them in groups? Like, is there a perfect ratio for breeding? Will multiple males get along, or fight? For some reason, I hadn't thought of that up until now.

We keep our breeders in trios (1.2). That seems to work best for us. We do occasionally keep some extra males together (siblings) and they do ok, but there are some exceptions, especially as they reach 4-6 months of age.
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Louis Kirkland
Cornerstone Reptiles

My first Natal Rat litter occurred some time within the last 24 hours. Here are 2 pics but I didn't want to disturb them beyond the pics so I don't have an accurate count or weight yet. They look slightly bigger than mouse pinks, but still pretty small. I count 8-10 maybe, which seems a bit smaller than expected, but it was the first litter for this female.

Oh yea now both my females are biting whenever a hand goes in the tank.

Actual count is 8 live and one dead/stillborn pink. They weigh 2 grams ar less than 1 day old and are slightly larger than newborn mouse pinks, close to the size of a 2 day mouse pink, perhaps.