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We are excited to have the opportunity to work with the burmese gene from TMCC. While it may take a while for us to infuse russian silver into it and work with that level of it, this will give us a chance to establish burmese here. We also have an unpointed russian silver burmese girl from them (who sadly failed to successfully breed) to give us an idea of what the color may look like!
TMCC Peaches, a Russian Silver Burmese girl without the colorpoints. A nice illustration of what the base coat will look like!
An artistic rendering of what russian silver burmese and russian silver sable may look like with some work!
A special project for me will be an attempt to produce Russian Silver Burmese and Sable rats. This is a variety I can find very little precident for, but one which has caught my imagination as a potentially beautiful rat. Russian silver has been a favorite color of mine for many years, and ever since meeting my first burmese I've been fascinated with their shading. I believe combining the two has potential to create stunning rats. This project was going to be far in the future for me, and certainly the introduction of burmese is not likely to happen in the near future, but changes in the plans of a friend rattery has given me the chance to start working with russian silver now, not only getting a chance to get an earlier start with this variety, but also helping to preserve the russian silver genetics within our group. I'm very excited to have this opportunity!
At this point in time we will be working on getting a solid base of russian silver established, with hopes of future introduction of burmese to the line to bring together our complete project. We will be focussing on standard ears and standard coats in this line.
Russian Silver is a double recessive color, and happens when a rat is both american blue (g/g) a simple recessive, and russian blue (d/d) another simple recessive. Combined they make a rat with a beautiful, light (but still rich) icy blue coloration. This has long been a favorite color of ours, and we welcome the chance to get to work with it. There is a wonderful writeup about Russian Silver on So Licky Rattery's Russian Silver page.
Burmese is an interesting gene, that seems to be a modifier that displays only on colorpointed rats, much like pearl and mink. It is dominant, one copy of it making a burmese rat, and two copies making the rat a sable. A standard burmese (seal point) is a rich brown base color with darker seal points. Sables are almost solidly that darker seal coloring, with darker shading towards the points. In russian blue burmese and sable, it displays in the same pattern, but with a creamy blue base coat and russian blue points on the burmese, and the darker on the sable. We have found very few reliable instances of russian silver burmese or sable, and are not sure anyone else has attempted to breed this variety. Its possible that, as with siamese at one point, breeders have thought the color would not display well in this variety (a fact which was proven wrong with russian silver siamese by So Licky Rattery and their beautiful rats!). We believe it has a potential to make a beautiful, silvery blue rat with darker points, and in the sable form be a wonderful russian silver looking rat with some shading for distinction. We hope over the years to work on developing this variety into our mental image of the beautiful rats they have the potential to be!
Standard coats are dominant to varieties like satin, and recessive to varieties such as rex. Standard coats tend to have a very smooth look, and we will be working to get nice, thick, straight coats, without the wispy guard hairs seen in satins and satin carriers. We want the sleek look standard coats can provide for this line!
Standard ears are dominant, and we will be looking for nice, large, well placed ears, set wide but solidly on top of the head as they should be, without being overly small or rounded like dumbo ears..
All of our breeding rats will be chosen as stated in our selection section.
Further reading on these varieties and the standards we follow can be found on the following Fancy Rats Wiki pages and the United Rat Standards Affiliation (URSA) pages.
Russian Silver:
URSA Standards
Fancy Rats Wiki Article
Burmese/Sable:
URSA Standards
Fancy Rats Wiki Article
Standard Ears:
URSA Standards
Fancy Rats Wiki Article
Standard Coat:
URSA Standards
Fancy Rats Wiki Article
Self Markings:
URSA Standards
Fancy Rats Wiki Article
What will we get if we carefully select and combine burmese and russian silver? Time will tell!
Thank you to T&M Curious Critters for allowing us to use photos of their burmese rats!
