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Rat born with crooked tail...

L

LeeC

New member
So in one of our litters, a little girl came out with an extremly kinked tail, it looks like a corkscrew.
Im still deciding if I should feed it to my BRB tonight, or keep her as a pet? A rat with a screwed tail might be a cool sight. If its anything like a kinked snake I should just feed it tonight. What do you all think?

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and yes, we are still washing the sheets lol. We slept in out guestroom lastnight. (besides baby squeaks would keep us up in ours)
 
do youbreed feeder rats or pets? If that baby with the kink in the tail is a feeder and your wondering health wise for your snake? or are you wondering about putting the baby out of its misery? I wouldnt think a tail deformity would hurt the rat!

best of luck!
 
We breed pet rats, I just feed some to my BRB. Hes the only snake we have big enough to feed them to. The rest will be pets.

I was more wondering about if the tail my signify some greater health problem? If shes healthy and the tail is the only problem, we will probally keep her. (the only one out of that litter)
If it does mean other health problems, then its food for my BRB tonight.
 
I personally dont think you'll have a problem at all, I've had babies with missing legs,eyes etc. and they've been fine, its not like he's missing part of his brain or something, its a tail. I think she will be fine, and you will have a cool looking rattie!!
 
I don't see a problem with the kink. When we were breeding rats. I had 2 rats born with only 1 eye. They had the eye socket, the lids were partly open but because the eyeball was not there, so they stayed closed.
 
LeeC said:
So in one of our litters, a little girl came out with an extremly kinked tail, it looks like a corkscrew.
Im still deciding if I should feed it to my BRB tonight, or keep her as a pet? A rat with a screwed tail might be a cool sight. If its anything like a kinked snake I should just feed it tonight. What do you all think?
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Tail deformities (kinks, lumps) tend to happen a lot with very in-bred rats/mice.
 
batwrangler said:
Tail deformities (kinks, lumps) tend to happen a lot with very in-bred rats/mice.
Click to expand...

This was from a pairing of non-related ratties. The only thing is the parents weren't pedigreed so I cant tell if they were inbred.

And to clear things up, inbreeding rats isnt as bad as inbreeding other animals. Sceintists inbred a family of rats for 500 generations with no bad effects, no deformites, or attitude problems. (dont quote me, but I will look for a link to the article)

Alot of breeders achieve show quality rats with only inbreeding and linebreeding. Almost every rat that takes home an award is inbred.

I havent inbred any rats yet, but I am planning on it when our hairless carrier babies are about 4 months old. Im going to breed a son back to momma, and another son to a daughter.
 
In-breeding, line-breeding etc only increase deformity if there is the genetic potential in the stock. Any breeder could carefully choose new blood and unwittingly introduce problems.
 
LeeC said:
This was from a pairing of non-related ratties. The only thing is the parents weren't pedigreed so I cant tell if they were inbred.

And to clear things up, inbreeding rats isnt as bad as inbreeding other animals. Sceintists inbred a family of rats for 500 generations with no bad effects, no deformites, or attitude problems. (dont quote me, but I will look for a link to the article)

Alot of breeders achieve show quality rats with only inbreeding and linebreeding. Almost every rat that takes home an award is inbred.

I havent inbred any rats yet, but I am planning on it when our hairless carrier babies are about 4 months old. Im going to breed a son back to momma, and another son to a daughter.
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I ought to have said "indescriminate inbreeding" (I know what a useful tool inbreeding is). I've seen several cases of bad breeders (mostly small, poorly run petstores that have thankfully gone out of business) maintaning large tanks of mixed sex mice/rats that had numerous tail deformities due to unconsidered, constant inbreeding. :(
 
diamondlil said:
In-breeding, line-breeding etc only increase deformity if there is the genetic potential in the stock. Any breeder could carefully choose new blood and unwittingly introduce problems.
Click to expand...

Inbreeding in rats, is used to find any bad traits and weed them out. By inbreeding rats you can make them live longer healthier lives, and be upto 50% bigger then normal rats.

Ive been looking for that article, and so far all I have found is a couple articles stating 40-70 generations, not 500. So I was wrong with that number I think. Inbred rats, produce more/healthier babies.
 
LeeC said:
Inbreeding in rats, is used to find any bad traits and weed them out. By inbreeding rats you can make them live longer healthier lives, and be upto 50% bigger then normal rats.

Ive been looking for that article, and so far all I have found is a couple articles stating 40-70 generations, not 500. So I was wrong with that number I think. Inbred rats, produce more/healthier babies.
Click to expand...

As with so many things, inbreeding isn't a magic wand: how sucessful your inbreeding is depends on what you are selecting for and what flaws your initial stock may be carrying as hidden/recessive genes.

I spent about 15 years breeding fancy rats and saw many cases where intensive inbreeding (to fix color/pattern) resulted in smaller rats with smaller litters that greatly benefited from the hybrid vigour of thoughtful outcrosses.
 
diamondlil said:
In-breeding, line-breeding etc only increase deformity if there is the genetic potential in the stock. Any breeder could carefully choose new blood and unwittingly introduce problems.
Click to expand...

There's *always* the genetic potential for deformity, in part because undiscovered recessive genes are still legion, and in part from naturally occuring, spontaneous mutations, some of which are beneficial, some of which are detrimental, and some of which are neutral.

Inbreeding is far more likely to reveal previously undiscovered recessives, whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. It's a matter of statistics.
 
batwrangler said:
There's *always* the genetic potential for deformity, in part because undiscovered recessive genes are still legion, and in part from naturally occuring, spontaneous mutations, some of which are beneficial, some of which are detrimental, and some of which are neutral.

Inbreeding is far more likely to reveal previously undiscovered recessives, whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. It's a matter of statistics.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%
 
Tail kinks tend to be small, minor things that are not visible at birth but become obvious by 6-8 weeks old.

Honestly? I wouldn't keep that one back for breeding, definitely not. My concern with tail deformities is always that inbreeding on it might end up with spinal deformities in future generations. Shouldn't cause that actual rat problems though.
 
toyah said:
Tail kinks tend to be small, minor things that are not visible at birth but become obvious by 6-8 weeks old.

Honestly? I wouldn't keep that one back for breeding, definitely not. My concern with tail deformities is always that inbreeding on it might end up with spinal deformities in future generations. Shouldn't cause that actual rat problems though.
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Yeah we are going to keep her, but as pet only not a breeder.
 
I would say use it as food. Deformities aren't cool. If you want a pet i would advice you to pick a healty one.
 
Personally I think I would use the kinked one to feed your brb. I presume you have other babies out of the same litter that you can keep as pets/future breeders. Either way, tails are there primarily for balance arent they? If you do keep it, dont go entering it into any tight rope competions........
 
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