# Hairless Rat Genetics Help



## slimeysnail (Jan 29, 2009)

After reading a few different sites.. I am now at the conclusion that the hairless gene is recessive.. in which case both parents must carry the gene to make the offspring hairless.

My question is.. if two hairless are mated together.. their offspring should all be hairless? But I was told that hairless ratties could not be bred together.. either they wont breed together or (something else I cant remember what was said). My two nakes rats have been kept together but never bred, so are now separated..

So when putting my hairless boy to my hairy females, am I correct in thinking NO offspring will be hairless, but will ALL carry the hairless gene. So really to get hairless babies, I would need to mate the babies bred from the above pairing, back to a hairless.. and then all (or most) the babies will be hairless.

But then I found a site saying hairless has a dominant form/gene... meaning mating a hairless to hairy could produce hairless in the first breeding.

I am confused!

I am desperate for more hairless.. but I am unsure as to how to get more based on the genetics.

Is the hairless gene in rats dominant or recessive!!??


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## CE1985F (Jan 22, 2009)

slimeysnail said:


> After reading a few different sites.. I am now at the conclusion that the hairless gene is recessive.. in which case both parents must carry the gene to make the offspring hairless.
> 
> My question is.. if two hairless are mated together.. their offspring should all be hairless? But I was told that hairless ratties could not be bred together.. either they wont breed together or (something else I cant remember what was said). My two nakes rats have been kept together but never bred, so are now separated..
> 
> ...


When we had the shop, we bred our own hairless by putting hairless to hairless and all babies were hairless!


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## ami_j (Jan 6, 2007)

slimeysnail said:


> After reading a few different sites.. I am now at the conclusion that the hairless gene is recessive.. in which case both parents must carry the gene to make the offspring hairless.
> 
> My question is.. if two hairless are mated together.. their offspring should all be hairless? But I was told that hairless ratties could not be bred together.. either they wont breed together or (something else I cant remember what was said). My two nakes rats have been kept together but never bred, so are now separated..
> 
> ...


theres more than one kind of hairless 
mostly recessive and some hairless females have lactation trouble so its advised to breed a hairless male to a haired female and then breed the father to one of the carrier daughters. some hairless females have no trouble lactating but hairless use more energy in day to day keeping warm and can loose condition quickly so it tends to take more out of them raising a litter.


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## saxon (Feb 26, 2007)

I think it's unfair on the hairless females to have them have litters as Ami says they lose condition after birth no matter what you feed them.

It takes too much out of them so I use carrier females to hairless males.
I've never bred a hairless male to a hairless female so I wouldn't know if they would breed or not...can't imagine it would make a difference to the male whether his female had hair or not though!!!!

I've never tried t mate a hairless male to a hairless female so wouldn't kn


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## BenjaminBoaz (Jan 6, 2006)

I've breed hairless to hairless for the past five years but they often have small litters and in some cases don't catch. If kept in a group always remove pregnant females to birth on their own for better success rate. It dosent take long though to breed to anywhere and mate girls back to their dad. Problem with mating haired to hails and babies back is u often get a lot of haired young that have patches of hair missing, more drops out as they get older.


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## slimeysnail (Jan 29, 2009)

Brilliant, thankyou all very much for the answers  :2thumb:

Hehe looks like I will need another cage to keep my hairy (het hairless) females in then !! :whistling2:

Awww I cant wait to get hairless... they are absolutely amazing little things.. hehe. Sorry Im just excited !!!:flrt:


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## saxon (Feb 26, 2007)

animalstorey said:


> I've breed hairless to hairless for the past five years but they often have small litters and in some cases don't catch. If kept in a group always remove pregnant females to birth on their own for better success rate. It dosent take long though to breed to anywhere and mate girls back to their dad. Problem with mating haired to hails and babies back is u often get a lot of haired young that have patches of hair missing, more drops out as they get older.


 
I would say if your babies are growing hair then it is falling out as they moult you actually have double rex and not one of the hairless genes going on. 
My hairless are born hairless, obviously, they never grow any hair and the most they would have is a small amount of fluff around their muzzle.
As there are a few hairless genes, not including the double rex ( false hairless), there are some hairless that have a very small amount of fluff at their extrememties.
I never put rex into my hairless line as this the problem you get...people thinking they have true hairless when in fact they have double rex!

I agree with seperating does to birth alone but that goes for all does not just hairless..you always have a more successful birth if the doe is alone.


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## BenjaminBoaz (Jan 6, 2006)

I have both. I mainly keep true hairless but have a Rex line also.


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## saxon (Feb 26, 2007)

I also have a rex line but I wouldn't put my hairless into it.

A lot of the hairless that are being bred are actually rex x hairless and if the hairless has rex behind it then you can never know if the young are double rex or indeed hairless. I dont' even put my hairless carrier does to my rex bucks.


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## LisaLQ (Jan 29, 2009)

I prefer double rexes to hairless, your hand doesn't get stuck to them when you stroke them lol.

To answer the original question, theoretically a hairless carrier to hairless carrier should give you...25% haired non-carriers, 50% hairless carriers, 25% hairless.

But that's depending on whether my use of a punnet square is actually correct, so I'd check that with someone with more genetic knowledge.


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## BenjaminBoaz (Jan 6, 2006)

I don't mix Rex with hairless.


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## TwistedWhiskers3 (Mar 27, 2021)

BenjaminBoaz said:


> I've breed hairless to hairless for the past five years but they often have small litters and in some cases don't catch. If kept in a group always remove pregnant females to birth on their own for better success rate. It dosent take long though to breed to anywhere and mate girls back to their dad. Problem with mating haired to hails and babies back is u often get a lot of haired young that have patches of hair missing, more drops out as they get older.


I own a small rattery and recently started a double Rex line. Our first try and we got 15 little beans! All survived and thrived. I think pistols are confused about double Rex and what everyone has been referring to as “true hairless”. So a “true hairless” is a Sphinx rat and they will have ZERO hair, note even peach fuzz and will not have whiskers. If your hairless rat has any hair on its body or whiskers it’s a double Rex. A patchwork is essentially a double Rex who continuously grows and molts patches of hair throughout their lives. Most DR’s grow a coat as babies and then molt, losing their coat and stay hairless the rest of their lives. Sphinx females tend to have lactation issues and therefore you would have to breed a Sphinx male to a Sphinx carrier female to get some Sphinx pups. You can breed DR to DR without having the same lactation issues. I’m not saying she will absolutely not have issues as any female coated or not can have lactation and other issues. I’ve been successful with my DR line. My DR females have zero hair on their body but have super kinky whiskers. My DR males mostly have a little peach fuzz on their noses and super little my whiskers. I feed extra protein to my DR pregnant and nursing momma’s and make sure they have extra nesting material at all times and are kept in a temp controlled room so they never have to burn energy to stay warm. I’ve never had a mom become underweight or have any issues whatsoever. I haven’t even had any small litters from my DR pairings? In fact my smallest litter I e ever had was out of a Russian blue dumbo Rex female and a standard coat cinnamon self dumbo male.... she had 6. I’ve been quite successful but I did a ton of research and have a lot of mentors to get advice from. I also made sure to get high quality start up rats for my DR line. I breed for pet quality rats. All of them have great temperaments and we’ve had no major health issues! I’d like to add we produce red and black eyed and dumbo and too eat. We also produce hooded DR’s.... usually blue. We’ve gotten some black pigmented self DR’s but most of them are pink. I sure do love my DR line! Easier to breed (less issues then Sphinx) ❣🐀


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## elishacoombes9 (Sep 5, 2017)

TwistedWhiskers3 said:


> I own a small rattery and recently started a double Rex line. Our first try and we got 15 little beans! All survived and thrived. I think pistols are confused about double Rex and what everyone has been referring to as “true hairless”. So a “true hairless” is a Sphinx rat and they will have ZERO hair, note even peach fuzz and will not have whiskers. If your hairless rat has any hair on its body or whiskers it’s a double Rex. A patchwork is essentially a double Rex who continuously grows and molts patches of hair throughout their lives. Most DR’s grow a coat as babies and then molt, losing their coat and stay hairless the rest of their lives. Sphinx females tend to have lactation issues and therefore you would have to breed a Sphinx male to a Sphinx carrier female to get some Sphinx pups. You can breed DR to DR without having the same lactation issues. I’m not saying she will absolutely not have issues as any female coated or not can have lactation and other issues. I’ve been successful with my DR line. My DR females have zero hair on their body but have super kinky whiskers. My DR males mostly have a little peach fuzz on their noses and super little my whiskers. I feed extra protein to my DR pregnant and nursing momma’s and make sure they have extra nesting material at all times and are kept in a temp controlled room so they never have to burn energy to stay warm. I’ve never had a mom become underweight or have any issues whatsoever. I haven’t even had any small litters from my DR pairings? In fact my smallest litter I e ever had was out of a Russian blue dumbo Rex female and a standard coat cinnamon self dumbo male.... she had 6. I’ve been quite successful but I did a ton of research and have a lot of mentors to get advice from. I also made sure to get high quality start up rats for my DR line. I breed for pet quality rats. All of them have great temperaments and we’ve had no major health issues! I’d like to add we produce red and black eyed and dumbo and too eat. We also produce hooded DR’s.... usually blue. We’ve gotten some black pigmented self DR’s but most of them are pink. I sure do love my DR line! Easier to breed (less issues then Sphinx)


Post is nearly 11 years old. Not sure you’ll get a reply. X


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