Yellow Tipped Fur?

[Gloometh]

I just thought I'd ask this, since I couldn't find it online.

We've got some rats that have or have had yellow tipped hairs on them. It's just the ends, and it's shown up on albinos and my cinnamon berkshire had it on her stomach.

I recently got two new rats, and one of them has none, but the other rat has a bunch around her shoulders, like some sort of cape or collar.

What does this mean? Is she sick or old?

 

[jorats]

I wonder if you could be seeing porphyrin staining? Can we get a pic?

 

[Gloometh]

I tried to take a picture, but they are both pure white and moving at the speed of light.

I looked closer and noticed they both had it, and it was more orange or brown then yellow.

 

[Dazzle87]

Yellowing on PEW's is just poor coloring. My PEW is more of a cream than a pure white like they are supposed to be. I also have two barebacks, one has a bright clean white, the other has a slightly yellowish tinge to it, it's just variation, though to the standards (which are irrelevant for pets) the clean white is preferred.

There are two kinds of pigment, eumelanin, which creates black/brown, and phaeomelanin which causes the red/yellow. Then different alleles on different loci change the amount of these two pigments.

 

[Gloometh]

it's not that, I know they've got that, it's that their cream fur has some hairs tipped in orange/yellow, and I'm not sure what that is.

 

[Dazzle87]

Huh, can you post a pic?

 

[Gloometh]

I can try later, but they are very hyper right now and the light is bad, so it's just a pale blur with no color.

 

[xxchelle]

It sounds like porph staining. I had a PEW girl who had it around her shoulders.

 

[Gloometh]

hmm, alright, thank you~

 

[jorats]

Ya, especially since you say it's more orange, it's definitely porphyrin staining. So it could be that something is stressing them out to get this, could be too much noise, smoke or other fragrances or other animals around the cage.

 

[Gloometh]

they did come from a shelter where they were put next to the dogs in a small room. that was probably stessing them out bigtime.