Ethan's

Merle Heads

Now some of you out there might have heard about merle rats, which is a type of genetic variance where parts of the coat are lighter than others. Amazingly enough, I stumbled on a similar situation when I first bred ahairless rat to a normal coated agouti hooded rat. The off-spring had varied appearances, but two were remarkably different. They were what I now call merle heads. Their base coat color was white, and their markings were chocolate. But on their heads the color was tan. Sadly, my little male was a runt and was eaten by his littermates, but my female grew up to have several litters. I don't have any real pictures (I tried taking pictures of her, but they all came out fuzzy.), but I have an artist rendition of what one looks like. I'm going to try to take some pictures of her last litter, as she died not too long ago and I still have her children.

As far as I know, this characteristic can be bred for any color, and I've had some in black or gray.

As you can see, this isn't a very good rendition, but it's close enough.

I'm going to leave on my mission sooner or later, so I don't know who's going to continue the line for me, but if you want to, and live in the KC area or are willing to come, I think I can arrange something.

If you have any questions or anything to add, e-mail the toadmaster@oocities.com

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