Show Results

It was the Scottish Rat Club’s September show on Saturday. I only took four rats with me to show as I had quite a few to be delivered to their new owners and I got a bit stressed working out how many carriers I needed and who would travel together!

I took my gorgeous Aquarius british blue boy, Stan, Fratton and two home bred agouti kittens, Ellie and Bonnie.

Stan got best british blue and was 4th in the Self Challenge, Fratton was 2nd Ivory and 3rd in the Self Challenge.

I was particularly pleased with myself with the two agouti kittens. I took two of their siblings (one buck & one doe) with me to go to their new owner and she had them in the show. I was very pleased that the two I kept beat the two I’d given away – I obviously have a bit of an idea of what I’m looking at in a keeper! They came 1st and 2nd in Agouti, getting the agouti rosette and then came 2nd and 3rd in the AOV kitten class (out of 10) and Ellie came 4th in the AOV all ages challenge (out of 20) which bodes well for the future.

I have some slightly more up to date photos to share of Evie’s babies as well. They are so gorgeous and full of mischief, four weeks old yesterday – time is just flying by! I will get them up shortly and hopefully there will be a mating in the next few weeks to make some marked babies.

Show winners

As so often happens I didn’t update this after the last post, so here are a few piccies of my SRC March show winners:

Rivendell Babs, best Silver Fawn:

Aquarius Evie, best Black and Best Self:

and Aquarius Stanley, best British Blue and Stud Buck:

Thyme also got a third in the Pet class.

I also have some Scottish Rat Club news which I will blog about later

Just a quick one

I have a lot to talk about so I will do a quick update on all things in this post then do further detailed posts about each thing over the next few days.

Firstly, the sad news. In the last week we have lost Onion, Elvis and Jasmine. Onion had an operation to have a really horrid lump removed from the base of her back on 1st March, she seemed to be recovering fine but I found her dead on Friday 5th. Elvis passed away in his sleep 10th March. He did pretty well, he would’ve been about 2 years, 9 months. And lovely little Jasmine had some horrible respiratory bug that took her away from us on Friday. She was only about 10 months old.

In Happy News, we had a great day at the show, bringing home 5 rosettes, Babs got 1st Silver Fawn, Evie got 1st Black and Best Self and Stan got 1st British Blue and Stud Buck. I have also become a member of the SRC commitee and taken over the position of Show Secretary which I’m really looking forward to getting into.

In Exciting News, we should be having babies this weekend if all goes to plan. Lovely Moss and sexy Stan had a one night stand and will hopefully produce the first step on the way to making british blue variegated ratties.

And I have a new aviary. It is a tall, narrow one but should be suitable for 6 – 8 ratties and will make a nice girly cage. And, best of all, it was free! It’s not in use yet but I will add photos when it is.

So, the Northern Lights Rats news in brief. More details will follow.

The boys are getting big…

I took some photos of the boys the other day as they are now 5 months old and getting lovely and big. Farleigh especially is getting a real round lump! Here are some pics:

Curly wurly fatty Farleigh:

His brother Hew, troublemaker:

Lovely soft squishy Stanley:

And escapee Nedd:

The Aquarius Boys….

Here are the photos of the gorgeous Aquarius boys. Will sort out and crop the rest at some point and post some photos of the cariad guys & girls & older girls and the new adoptees, so they can all have their own posts!

Aquarius Stanley (British Blue):

Aquarius Nedd (Black):

Website Update

Just a little post to point people in the direction of the Northern Lights Rats website, specifically the My Rats page as all nine new guys and girls have had their own pages added, after having a photo shoot last weekend.

I will add some of the photos here tomorrow as I got some new, quite nice ones of the older girls as well.

The newcomers

My new ratties are here – 6 new babies all the way from Gloucestershire and West Wales! I drove down to Wiltshire to my parents’ house on Friday, collected ratties from Stroud on Saturday then drove all the way back up the road on Sunday! 670 miles from Warminster to Wick.

So I now have a British Blue buck (Stanley) and his Black brother (Nedd) from Aquarius Rattery. These guys will be the foundation bucks for my blue line.

And I have a Chocolate Agouti Rex buck (Hew), his Black smooth coated brother (Farleigh) and their two sisters, a Chocolate Rex (Keeley) and her Agouti Rex sister (Fearn), all from Cariad Stud. The choccy guys will be foundations of my champagne line.

Keeley and Fearn have been moved into the top half of the aviary with Jasmine, Rosemary and Thyme and they are all getting along really well. They are a wee bit nervy still but they’re only young and have had a lot to deal with over the past few days.

All four boys are living together temporarily in the Rene 82 cage until the younger boys get big enough to not fit through the bars of the Tommy cage. They are full of mischief and up the bars as soon as I speak to them.

I will get some photos of them shortly but would like to take some in daylight and the weather is truly grim at the moment and I seem to be at work continuously and never home during daylight hours!!