# Genetics



## haze (Mar 19, 2007)

I have a question on genetics. When breeding rats how can you determine what color offspring will be produced? I have a brown male rat and a female black/white hooded rat. She recently had a litter of ten babies. They had the following:

1 Tan
1 White
1 White/Tan Hooded
1 Black
2 Black/White Hooded
4 Brown

I thought that the babies either would be brown, black/white hooded and brown/white hooded but not the above. 

Now hypothetically speaking, if I were to breed to of the brown together(which I wouldn't do, due to not wanting to inbreed)  what do you think they would produce? All brown or mixture of the above? Any hooded? Again this is a hypothetical question to better try to understand how the genetics would work.


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## Nazarath (Feb 20, 2007)

http://www.geocities.com/Petsburgh/7989/rats/genetics.html

This is a helpful site, you can poke around on google and find some more information. However if you want to know what your rats made up of (as fare recessive traits and dominate what they carry and don't. You can get blood tests from your vet and they can tell you these things.
I doubt i would be able to make a very accurate "guess" to what little ones you would get because we/I don't know why type of traits we're dealing with. Hope i helped some  did u buy a preg rat or did you breed the little ones?


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## lilspaz68 (Feb 24, 2007)

now haze, when you say brown, do you mean agouti? Because that is a dominant, and if you bred 2 together you would get all agoutis I believe.

Here is a good basic site as well

http://www.boardmanweb.com/rattery/geneticbasics.htm


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## Rodere (Feb 26, 2007)

I've never heard of vets being able to take a little blood and analyzing it and being able to tell you what their DNA carries as far as traits, recessive and dominant. I'll have to ask my boss about that. If they can I am sure it is very expensive.

There is a good genetics pages on http://www.curiosityrats.com and you can look at the links on my page. http://arthoscastle.250free.com/Rodere/links.html

I need to expand the links, but I haven't had time yet.


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## Nazarath (Feb 20, 2007)

Yep Rodere,
Thats what my friends mother does with her breeding stallions. She gets blood tests to give prof if she has a ****. paint or heter. etc. etc. I will admit i made a guess you can do the same with rats at first but i called my vet and she said it's very possible. I never asked for a price though :roll: being the dummy that i am lol.


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## Sky14 (Aug 18, 2006)

If you are smart enough to call and ask you are no dummy.


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## Nazarath (Feb 20, 2007)

ty Sky14


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## Sky14 (Aug 18, 2006)

*Grine* No P.

P is for problem.


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