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Colorado Rat Breeder | Camarattery

Website Updated March.18.2024

We have babies available!
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Please be aware that breeding season only lasts through the end of Spring. Breeding season is over during the Summer as rats loose fertility in hot weather.

What is a Prefix? And How Does It Work?

Ratteries use prefixes and suffixes to show who bred or owns the rat. For example my prefix Is registered as "Cama" So if I breed a pair of rats all of the babies get the prefix "Cama" at the beginning of their name. 

Example of my prefix is: "Cama Blue Dress." This means that I bred Blue Dress. My prefix is in front of her name.

Or if another rattery breeds a rat and I adopt it: Like my rat HGLR Russian Surprise. This means that Happy Go Lucky Rattery bred this rat. But to add a more official title to Russian Surprise, things change now that I own him, so his official registered name is now: HGLR Russian Surprise Cama. This means that he was bred by HGLR and now owned by Cama. My prefix now becomes the suffix. 

What if I get a rat that was already pregnant when I got her? Well I did not breed that rat so it CANNOT get my prefix. Say I get a rat from another breeder from even say out of state and she was pregnant when I got her, well officially all those babies even though born here in my rattery do not get my prefix of "Cama". They keep the breeder or person who bred that females prefix. But if I keep a baby I can add "Cama" to the suffix. If the rat was bred and got pregnant before you got her and you don't know who the breeder is or the breeder does not have a prefix assigned to them the babies DO NOT get a prefix at all, you cannot make up a prefix for that breeder, this would be dishonest.

What if I do a co-breeding with another rattery? What is a co-breeding you may ask? A co-breeding is when two ratteries do a breeding together, for example my female to their male. So who gets the prefix then? The correct answer for registering a co-bred rat is, the owner of the female gets the 1st prefix and the owner of the male gets the 2nd prefix. So there are actually 2 prefixes. 

For example if I were to breed my male "Cama John" to "HGLR Cheyenne" the babies would look like this, should I name the baby say, "Flower": Cama HGLR Flower. Now if another rattery adopted this baby with the two unique prefix's they would need to add their rattery name to the end of Flowers name. So this would be a very long but correct way of naming the animal.

Do general rat owners get to add a suffix? 
No. If you are not a breeder you do not get to add anything to the name. But you do get the pleasure of naming the individual rat! What is more fun that that!

Many breeders allow litters to be born at adopters home so they can experience the wonderful miracle of birth and raising a litter. In this case obviously the babies retain the supervising breeders prefix.

This is how the rats are officially registered through the North American Rat Registry (NARR). These are the correct and official ways to use a prefix in the rat community.