Overall Goals

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Outside of the obvious health, temperament, and conformation goals which should be a given for any fancy rat breeder my overall goals are as follows:

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I have recently decided to change directions with my breeding program. I will no longer be working on Siamese or Himalayan rats, though several of my rats carry the Himalayan gene so I will continue to get them on occasion.  They will not have show quality markings or color. I have decided to focus primarily on Essex rats in black, blue, agouti, and hopefully mink. It is my goal to reach a point where 100% of the babies that I produce are dumbos and I am aiming for having rex in this variety as well. I am also in the beginning stages of producing bristle coat with the intention of achieving near hairless double bristle coat or patchwork rats. The decision to work more with Essex rats is something that I thought about for a long time but the truth is I was producing better quality rats in this variety than any other at my rattery without even trying and I fell in love with the markings. My Siamese rats are still here and living out their lives as pets with me. Additionally I chose to pursue the patchwork rats because many true hairless have health problems. One of the major problems they experience is an inability of females to produce milk for their babies. I would like to produce hairless rats that are hardier. I understand that they will never be completely hairless but I think that the sacrifice is worth the benefits to their overall health and that I can in time get them close to being totally hairless. Eventually I would like to have these rats in blue, black, and white or champagne. I will aim for Essex and self markings as well. This is simply due to personal preference.

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Annual Goals

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2017

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1. My Essex line has good type overall and they are large. They are also at the point where they are all dumbo. Their temperaments are excellent and they have excellent health. My goal for this year in this line is to produce more Essex and work on producing blue and potentially mink in this variety. I also want to continue to work on type as they sometimes have smallish eyes and slightly long noses. I want to work on improving the dumbo ears in this line as well. They are better than they were last year but I still get some tulip shaped dumbos in my litters. The markings need a little work in this line as well. I need to work on cleaning up the lines on the sides and getting head spots  to come through more and improve their size. ( I have one male with a small head spot and the rest are missing theirs) 

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2. I have one bristle coat female that I recently acquired and I will be pairing her in April. That will produce more bristle coats that I can then breed for patchwork rats to start developing this line.

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3. I have my first generation of blue rats and will be pairing a female later this year. I will be working on the quality of color and markings as well as improving type. I did have some babies in this line that ended up with a general failure to thrive so this will be closely monitored and I will be working on breeding this out as needed. Fortunately this showed up long before weaning so I will not have to worry about adopting any of the babies that might have this problem out to people. I will be out crossing first to help strengthen the line and then line breeding to continue to weed this out if needed. These were produced from a rat I purchased from another breeder that I believe was the source of this anomaly as I have never had it happen before. Another factor may be that the litter was incredibly large. My female had 18 babies in that litter. She only raised ten so I don't believe that it was a result of not getting enough milk but it may have been caused by such a large pregnancy. Both parents that produced those babies have been retired and the rats that I kept from the pairing for breeding are very healthy and normal. They will be monitored longer than usual before pairing just in case anything else pops up.

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4. I have a male rat that I recently acquired whose coloring is yet to be determined. He is likely either a blue or a mink with two copies of a red eye dilution. His appearance is a color like tea with plenty of cream and his eyes are light ruby. I will be pairing him with a black female that is not known to carry any recessive traits at the end of March and will then be breeding the babies together to determine what he is. His type and temperament are both excellent, though he is a little on the small side for my taste. He will be a valuable stud from what I can tell but I need to know what he is. He was purchased from another breeder in the area but I wasn't supplied with much information on his lineage.

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A note: My rats have lineage information or "pedigrees", however some of the stock I have brought in from other breeders have little information so the pedigrees can look a little lopsided. Eventually this won't necessarily be the case as I have almost all of the stock that I need for a good long time. Regardless of how much information I have on each baby, they all have a health guarantee and a temperament guarantee as I feel that it is my responsibility to ensure that adopters have support throughout the life of the rats that I produce. As always I welcome any and all questions and I am totally transparent with the information I have about my lines. I will always provide potential adopters with any and all information that I can give them. That being said, most of the rats produced here at Sandiva have "pedigrees" (background information and known lineage) for three or more generations and I always keep any rats that  I breed if I keep any of the babies for future breeding so I continue to collect information on health and temperament throughout the life of any rats used for breeding in my lines.

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