Baby Rat Color Guide

Most experienced breeders know what they are going to get out of a litter based on the known genetics of the parents. Usually, by looking at the parents' pedigrees, you can even tell what colors have a small chance of popping up. However, genetics are still complicated, and sometimes backgrounds are not fully known.

When a litter is first born, there are a few things you can tell right away. If a baby has dumbo ears, or a rex coat, you can see it by looking at the placement of the ears, or the curl to the whiskers. You can tell if it has black eyes or lighter eyes (red and pink eyes can be hard to distinguish early on). Using the eye color, combined with your knowledge of the parent's colors and ancestry, you can usually know what to expect. If you can see that your baby has black eyes, but its skin appears lighter than black or agouti, you know you probably have blue, cinnamon, or mink, etc.

To help breeders distinguish the colors of their babies as early on as possible, I am in the process of putting together a gallery of baby rats from 2 days of age to 6 weeks, so breeders can see comparisons of different colors, as well as what certain colors look like at the different stages of development. This guide is nowhere near complete, as myself as a breeder have not bred even close to all of the colors of rats there are. If you have any pictures to submit, please email me. Full credit will be given.

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Black and Agouti

Black markings can easily be seen and distinguished as early as two days (left) and are very visible at 1 week.

Black babies can easily be distinguished from agoutis once their hair begins to grow in.

The two "base" colors of rat, black and agouti are easily recognizeable to experienced breeders. No skin color is as dark as black, and agoutis, with their distinctive ticking and light grey belly, are very distinctive even before their hair grows in.

9 day old agouti

Other Black-Eyed Varieties

Though most black-eyed rats are easily differentiated from black furred rats, they can usually not be very easily told apart from each other. Usually in the very early stages, all you can do is guess based on the genotype of the parents and the expected colors of the babies. Once the hair grows in, however, it can be much easier.

13 day old cinnamon (mink-based). You can see how it looks like a much lighter agouti.

4 day old mink baby (left) compared to a black baby (right).

13 day old mink

(left to right) cinnamon, cinnamon, agouti, black, cinnamon

Red-Eye Dilutions

When comparing eye color, red (ruby) eyes are usually easily distinguishable. It comes easier as well, because most red-eyed rats have light colored coats. Lighter coated rats are a bright pink and their coat appears white until it begins to grow in a little more. It is usually visible around 6-10 days of age. It is fairly simple at this point to distinguish beige from fawn, havana from platinum, etc. Beiges appear as a flesh-colored tan, where fawns and ambers appear as a bright orange in comparison.

Beige (left) compared to fawn (right)

Pink-Eye Dilutions

Compared to ruby eyes, pink eyes can be difficult at first, but usually after a week there is enough noticeable difference. Pink eyed rats often appear to have no eyes at birth, as absolutely nothing is visible underneath the skin. After one week, you can see a brighter pink underneath the skin, and once the eyes are opened it is very easily distinguished. As with red-eye dilutes, pink-eye dilutes are mostly very light fur colors. At 10 days you can usually tell what colors you have, be it silver, albino, or champagne. Though silver and albino are nearly identical, and usually cannot be differentiated until their first molt, unless you know the genetics of the parents and know that either a silver or an albino would be genetically impossible.

1 week old silver kitten

Shaded Varieties

Shaded varieties (siamese, himalayan, burmese) are pretty easy to tell apart because of their distinctive shading, which appears as soon as their coat comes in. Their all over color is usually much darker than what their adult coat will be, and it molts away during their first molt, leaving them a much lighter color with dark points.

This one week old himalayan baby appears dark beige with a darker back end.

At 10 days, the coat appears to be much darker at the back end.

The same rat at 2 weeks of age.

13 day old seal-point siamese babies. Already you can see that their bottoms are darker, though their color will eventually molt out and they will be the same color as their mother.

The same rat at 6 weeks of age. You can see how the molt has begun up the rat's sides, and the brown color is turning into an off-white.

Blue point himalayan (left) compared to seal point himalayan (right). As with all the shaded varieties, they are born one solid color and the color molts out to almost white, leaving only the points dark.

Blues

Every color of blue is very easily distinguishable from as early as 5 days of age. When the hair begins to grow in, you can really see the blue coloring. At this point you can even notice variations of blue, such as powder blue as compared to slate blue.

A whole litter of slate blue babies at two days of age. Even at two days you can distinguish a blue baby from a black or agouti one.

1 week old slate blue baby.

1 week old powder blue baby.

Slate blue (left) compared to powder blue (right)

10 day old powder blue baby.

10 day old slate blue baby.

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