Rat Breeders – West Midlands – Tribe of Rats

Tribe of Rats is a busy Coventry-based rattery focusing on breeding blues and dumbos in 2019 – along with many other colour combinations.

They are already planning litters throughout 2020, so if you were looking for a UK-based fancy rat breeder with the experience needed to create great colour combinations and friendly, healthy and easy-to-handle rat pups, then perhaps this rattery would be a great starting point.

We got some details off Tribe of Rats today about their 2020 breeding plans along with some cute rat pictures and some great baby rat images from their stock too…

Enjoy:

Tribe of Rats: Rattery Breeder Bio:

Tribe of Rats is a husband and wife breeding team based in Coventry, UK and we began breeding under this rattery name in 2018.

All our rats are family pets and not just for breeding. We occasionally take in rescues who do not form any part of our breeding program.

The rats we breed with for our main program are chosen primarily with health and temperament in mind. We aim to produce black self/berkshires, roans and British blues. Our black self/berkshire and British blue lines have both top and dumbo ears in them.

We promote good practice and research a lot into health and dietary needs of rats and aim to pass this information on to our clients and all of our rats have a home-made diet using a basemix from rat rations so we have lots of experiences in creating the right mixes for each situation.

We provide a lifetime of support and advice in relation to any rats that are homed from us and in return we would like buyers to keep us updated on our rats health and development.

If you wish to be considered for Tribe of Rats babies, please send us a private message for an informal chat and to express an interest via our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/ratbreeders/

In 2019 Tribe of Rats’ breeding plans were based around 4 young does:

Mrs. Brown (a stunning top-eared black Berkshire)
Taboo (a super friendly top-eared Russian blue roan)
Kali (a striking dumbo British blue)
Snow (a delightful pink-eyed white)

As they are all quite different in characters and genetics – here is a little bit more detail about each of our breeding does involved in our well-planned breeding programme:

Mrs. Brown:
Mrs. Brown’s variety is a ‘black Berkshire’.

Berkshire refers to the pattern of colour on a rats coat, and in rats; Berkshire means that a rat has white markings on their underbelly. The amount of white can vary from a dainty thin line to the whole of the underside being white.

Mrs Brown is also a top-eared rat, which means her ears are in the ‘traditional’ place on top of her head – the same as in wild rats (image below).

We’d already had one litter from Mrs. Brown that year – she was paired with Mr. Brown who is a black self. ‘Self’ is the term used for describing a rat that is all one colour including their tummy.

This pairing produced a litter of 11 kittens: 6 bucks and 5 does and consisted of: 6 roans (in 3 different colours); 2 black Berkshires; 2 black selfs and 1 blue self.

We bred Mrs. Brown again in the autumn.

Taboo:
Taboo is a roan rat, sometimes known as a Husky.

Roan rats are the only variety of rat that fade colour as they age. With every molt they gradually start to lose their colour (fade).  This fading is caused by an increasing number of white hairs growing at each moult replacing the coloured hairs. Some roan rats end up almost white in adulthood.

This process is known as ‘roaning’ hence the name. Roans can come in a variety of different colours and with different markings – basically the roan gene just sits on top of what else is already there.

Our roans are beautifully striped; they have a thick stripe of colour down their backs and either have an inverted V shaped white wedge on their heads (standard striped roan – just like the cute rat feeding (central) in the image above) or any shape of white marking on the face (known as a mismarked striped roan).

Taboo was paired with Meep who is also a striped roan on 27th February 2019, and had a litter at the beginning of March.

In our roan litters we have kittens that are both roans and hooded. Hooded rats are white-bodied with a coloured ‘hood’ and a coloured stripe down their back in a second colour – basically all the other rats feeding in the image above that have dark faces. We usually have agouti hooded mixed in the litter.

Kali:
Kali is a dumbo-eared British blue self.

The colour British blue is a dark slate shade of blue. Dumbo refers to the placement of her ears; where dumbo ears are set on the head lower than top ears, basically they are on the side of the head and rounder in shape – which gives them a ‘dumbo’ appearance (see PEW cutie below)

Kali will be paired with Pluto.

Pluto is a dumbo-eared British blue Berkshire. This will be our first time breeding British blues. The blue gene in rats is known to produce a plethera of different shades; anything from a pastel powder colour through to the very dark British blue.

The genetic information we have on Kali and Pluto suggests that as well as British blue Berkshires; selfs and other blue tones, we may also see browns and Siamese in the litter. Siamese rats are very similar to Siamese cats; they have a pale cream to beige coat with darker points at the extremities i.e the paws, rump/tail base, nose and ears.

Snow:
Snow is an albino rat.

In colour terms, she is a totally white rat with pink eyes – so she is known (conveniently) as a pink eyed white (PEW).  White rats can also come with red eyes (REW) or with black eyes (BEW) but they are not technically albinos as there are different genes at play.

Snow also has adorable dumbo ears – so she is infact a dumbo-eared PEW (and is in the image above relaxing in her pink hammock).

We plan to pair Snow with Pluto but from this pairing we hope to see a mix of PEWs and shades of blue throughout.  The genetics for PEW are often referred to ‘eye dilute’; the effect this has on our breeding plans is that it will also dilute the body colour in the offspring – but the kits will retain the pink eyes. Rather like adding white paint to a stronger colour – the result is a pastal shade of the original colour.

We are particularly interested in the possibility of light pastal shades of blue – but with pink eyes! It’s also possible that we may see brown, black and hooded varieties in the offspring of this pairing too.

So, if you are interested in any of the breeding plans for our rattery or you wish to reserve any of our kits – please do contact Tribe of Rats and we can certainly do our best to work with you. You can comment below with any questions or visit their active Facebook page – Tribe of Rats

Happy rat hunting…