Hairless?

Has anyone ever tried breeding hairless rats or mice? I am thinking about it as, to the best of my knowledge, the hair has no nutritional value to snakes. Might make digestion easier? Anyway, I am wondering if anyone knows of any downsides to this or has any knowledge of snakes reacting to these largs bald prey any differently.

Thanks for your imput!

I would think the hair acts as fiber to help clean out along the way. It will be interesting to hear other opinions.

...but they are SO ugly! I would like to hear about the nutritional value of hair, my guess would be the same, that it helps with digestion...but just a guess. It sounds like it would be good for moving up sizes without having to worry about adding hair to the mix...but still, they are SO ugly!

Heh, one of the funniest things I ever saw was watching my cal king (when she was little) trying to down a hairless fuzzy. It had very wrinkled stretchy skin, which just bunched up as it was pulled in by her teeth without moving the mouse... every time she'd open one side of her jaw to move her grip forward, the skin would spring back into place. It took her over an hour to swallow it. :eatpointe

I agree Ddot, they're fugly! As my husband says, they look like a testicle with feet and a tail...

I don't think I could raise them just because of their looks. And being in a temperate climate where I don't always heat my garage, I don't think it'd be any good to have something without hair.

I agree with everyone in saying that I don't think hair has any nutrional value, aside from fiber/roughage to help move things along and clear out the gut.

Although I did hear a guy in chat (ByronsBoas) say that hairless rat females don't have as many functional nipples. And that if you have them breeding, you have to make sure you have a haired female in there with them to make sure all of the babies are fed adequately. They have the usual 10 nipples or so, but the ones farthest back don't function for some reason. So I guess if you have 13 babies and only 6 of your nipples work, then some are going to suffer.

So I thought that was rather interesting...and something to think about if you were really going to consider raising such abominations.

I heard someone that breeds boas say that they feed the breeding animals at their shop hairless rats so that they don't defecate as much and that since the rats are so ugly that they don't mind feeding them live.(please no live v.s. f/t discussion) I will try to find the site.

Hairless rats

I have hairless rats, and I think they are cute. They feel warm, soft and fuzzy. It is a simple rec. trait. The one consideration you have if you are going to breed them is to breed a het for hairless female to a hairless male. The hairless females have a hard time nursing their pups due to lack of hair. As the pups get older their claws scratch at the mother's bald bellies, OUCH! This tends to make nursing offspring painful and the mother will stop nursing after the pups get to where they are hurting her.

I don't think snakes digest the hair from their prey, if you have ever washed your snake's poop off anything you can see the hair in the dark part of the poop. Drop a piece in water and you can really see the hair. Now, do snakes need the hair as roughage like we do plant fiber for bowel functions to be normal I don't know. I don't have enough hairless rats to find this out! :shrugs:

I have been looking for some hairless rats in my area and have had no luck. I found a breeder and was told that they only sell to reputable breeders. I don't suppose you have any ideas about where I could get some in the Corvallis, Or area?

Thanks!

I got them from my local Petsmart....

....just don't let them know you are going to be breeding them for snake food! They are the PETA people of the pet store world and don't even sell rodents for snake food, live or frozen, or the snakes that would eat them. My original hairless breeder came from there and was fruitful and multiplied. If you are looking for a male hairless to start with call the local Petsmarts and see if they carry male or female rodents. Their stores only sell one sex or the other to prevent unwanted breeding. I had to drive to a farther away Petsmart because the two closest to me had only females. I will say this about their stores, their livestock is always clean and healthy. I had a hard time finding healthy stock to start breeding rats and mice, most pet stores had sick animals with sneezy runny noses and the fancy pet breeders with the healthy pet/show rats WILL NOT sell to people with snakes. But they do sell them to the wholesalers that Petsmart uses! The rats I got from there cost 10 bucks but they were worth not getting sick stock.

I definately would not tell them what I will be doing with them

I have a list of places to call tomorrow in the next big town over.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

I raised hairless mice for a while. They are so ugly they are cute. But the females don't nurse (can't lactate) so need foster mommy mice. Hubby used them in his biology class as an example of punnett squares (and the mice cooperated, had exactly the predicted number of hairless babies) eventually I fed the last one off. I wouldn't be shocked to have some hairless pop up as I tried to keep some "hets" in my mouse colonies, but if so they will be surprises.

My snakes more frequently refused hairless mice as food than normal mice. They also genetically are predisposed to having very long claws.

I breed hairless rats along with regular rats. As sdmessmer said the snakes don't/can't digest the hair. Feeding hairless rats makes for less elimination. I usually feed them to my boas when they become too big for the corns to eat.

There are some concerns with them...the ones I had when I was younger were prone to illness...rather weak, and delicate.

On one hand, you need to keep these guys warmer and drier than you do mice or rats with fur--on the other, a heated reptile room around 80 degrees is probably right on target for their comfort.
The bedding should be soft and hypo-allergenic...scratchy or irritating bedding like pine is likely to be a problem. They'll need something to nest in, so they can stuff it full of shredded tissue or something, and keep warm while they sleep.

They get sniffles very easily, they get chilled very easily, and moisture makes it worse, so you have to be sure that their bedding is changed more often. Watch out for leaky water bottles. I recommend LOTS of outcrossing if you want to keep them as sturdy as they can be.