This article is from the WSSF 2016 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Nicole Housel

Breeders who are working toward show standards are always in pursuit of improvement, finding or better yet producing, that perfect rat. But not everyone knows how…

The first step is to know your standard. Since I am located in the United States, I am most familiar with the situation in this country. We have clubs spread throughout the country (but not active in all regions), and each has their own standard. The standards are, for the most part, similar, but there may be a few small differences here and there. I am most familiar with the standards for the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association (AFRMA), because that is the club most active in my area and the club I show with. You also can’t just read about the standard and know it, you need to go to a show and see it. Watch the judges, listen to their comments, and learn how to develop an eye for what you are looking at. If you are involved in other animals, you may already have an eye, and you just need to train and fine tune it for rats. If you are new to exhibiting animals, then you’ll have a few more growing pains. But fear not! Anyone can learn. You just need to learn what you are looking at and looking for.

Once you know the standard, then you can start breeding toward that standard and working on improving your rats. There are a few things to remember though: You can’t get something from nothing, and blue + yellow = green.

If the trait is not in your rats, you can’t make it appear. All physical traits you see are controlled by genes. Colors are, for the most part, fairly simple genetics, but conformation is more complex, controlled by multiple genes that are not necessarily simple dominant and recessive genes. Knowing this, you need to look at your whole line, and what your whole line produces. The more inbred your line is, the more consistent its produce will be. The more outcrossed, the more inconsistent. These can be good or bad. If you have good type, then consistency is a good thing. If you have bad type, that inconsistency of an outcrossed line might be good, because then you could have those ideal traits lurking around in the background waiting to come out. This is why you should know your lines and what they have produced.

Once you know what is in your line, you can start making selections for improvement. But remember: you can’t get something from nothing. If your line is full of long heads, and nothing but long heads, your chances of improving in that area are slim. Your best bet is going to be to bring in rats with good heads, and choose your holdbacks from litters carefully. Once you are familiar with the standard you are breeding toward, you can work out your own personal score card, and use it to judge each of your rats periodically so you can keep current on your progress. If you are actively showing, you can also use the judge’s comments and critiques for this purpose.

When breeding for improvement, many people have the mistaken idea that if you take something not so great and breed it to something great you’ll get improvement. This isn’t entirely true. If dark blue is your goal, and all you have is blue, you should not add yellow in an attempt to make dark blue. Adding yellow to blue is only going to make green, which is not what you want.

By this I mean: If you have a rat with a great head, and you have a rat with a horrible head, you really don’t want to breed them together. Your goal is great heads, adding in a horrible head isn’t going to improve that horrible head, it will water down the great head, and create more rats with substandard heads. You can try to use those to breed back to the great head and improve, but you’ll be creating a lot more work for yourself than if you just started with great heads to begin with.

This is sometimes a hard learning curve for people, especially when that less-than-ideal rat is their favorite because it is so sweet and friendly. Breeding for conformation and improving type sometimes requires harsh criticism and strict selections. Ideally you should start with great rats to breed great rats. If you aren’t starting with great rats, you need to breed the best you have and improve in each generation, culling the less than ideal rats from your breeding program.

Of course this is easier said than done. Rats usually aren’t all great or all poor in terms of type. Most rats are a mix of everything: this one single rat might have a great tail, but needs improvement in the back and pelvis, has small ears but great shoulders and bone quality. Another rat will have a different set of traits. This makes the job of breeding for improved type all the more difficult. This is again why it is so important to know the standard, and know your rats and their lineage. If you have a line that consistently throws out poor bone structure, that’s probably a good line to avoid. But a line that sometimes throws good bone structure and sometimes throws bad bone structure, you might be able to work with, if you have nothing better to use.

All of that should be clear as mud now. Basically what I’m getting at is, you need to know your rats, know the ideal standard you are breeding toward, train your eye to recognize the traits you want to breed toward and the traits you have, and critique your rats ruthlessly. Don’t be afraid to remove a rat from the breeding program if it just doesn’t measure up or consistently throws poor quality. As hard as it may be emotionally, because we do get attached to our animals, this is what’s required for improvement. It doesn’t mean you have to get rid of the animal, you can still keep it as a pet. But if it doesn’t measure up or doesn’t produce animals that measure up, it is not an animal you want to keep using for breeding.

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