As some of you might have heard, Wisconsin and Illinois have reported 8 people infected with a virus that is rarely seen in the United States and when it has been seen, it has only been in the wild rat population. You can find the Seoul Virus in the Norway rat all over the world. There have been reports of people catching it, but most have occurred in Asia. This is the first time in the United States, Seoul Virus has been linked with pet rats. Since the virus cannot spread from person to person, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) wanted to bring this issue to the public eye in case anyone had purchased rats from the affected ratteries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are now working with the ratteries involved trying to track the origin of this virus.
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SEOUL VIRUS SYMPTOMS: The CDC says that people can develop fever, severe headaches, back and abdominal pain, chills, blurred vision, red eyes, or a rash. (In rare cases it can develop into more serious symptoms that can lead to hospitalization.) However some people infected with the virus won’t show any symptoms at all. The IDPH said, all eight people infected have recovered and five out of the six people in Illinois who tested positive for the virus did not show symptoms.

Our objective is not to start rumors, or feed into the news' cycle of panic. Even though we are not involved with the investigation or personally know the people involved, we feel terrible for those who have lost all of their pet/ and breeding rats due to this virus. The virus does not usually show symptoms in the rat but to protect the public the CDC had to cull all the rats involved.  The best up to date information you can get will be from the CDC. Here is their most recent press release to date.
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If you live in the areas affected, and are concerned because you have recently added a rat to your mischief, contact the breeder where you obtained your rats from. Without more information, we all will have to wait for the CDC to finish their investigation. In the meantime, as with all animals in your home, I urge you to continue to practice good animal husbandry with your rats.

• Always wash your hands after handling your pet rats, or cleaning their cages.
• Do not clean the animals' cages or supplies in your kitchen or other areas where you prepare food.
• I would encourage you to not let your rats roam freely where ‘wilds’ may have been such as parks, or even in a unsecured basement or other places you have seen evidence of ‘wilds’.
• If you see ‘abandoned’ wild rat babies LEAVE THEM! Not only is it risky for you to bring a wild into your home but most likely mama is off foraging for food. Having observed several of the litters in our mischief, I can assure you, the mama likes to be off the nest more often than on after about a week old. This could be hours between feedings.

I just realized, we have not updated on here in a while. We are always posting on FB but must remember to keep this fun blog going!  

Things have been really quiet here at OCRA, giving us a lot of time to observe and choose the best pairings for the New Year. Very excited to hear the sweet lil pips!

Due to the ages of our a few of our girls, we should have several litters coming up in the next few months.

2016 Winter All Science Litter

​The group of babies above is from our OCRA Galileo and OCRA Penelope. From the picture, you can see that we will have at least 3 different colors in this litter because of their eye color. (We may even have 4.) Penelope is our sweet, quiet girl, which prefers to follow the others around. She would rather snuggle than jump from the couch to the table (so unlike her sister Phoebe) She is a wonderful first time mama! The sire of this litter is just as sweet as the mama. Galileo is also a quiet one that prefers to snuggle. He will even allow you to turn him over on his back and rub his soft agouti belly.
 
2017 Winter Guardians of the Galaxy Litter
 
This litter will be the last one for our beautiful OCRA Llyra. Unlike some ratteries, we feel it is important to keep the mama's here where they can enjoy the rewards of stabality and love from us after they have produced babies for our lines. It is often hard to read when another breeder has an 18+ month old male or female available to adopt knowing that they will be leaving "home" after such a long time.  After this litter, Llyra will be retiring with the rest of our loved mama’s. (We try to keep the older dams with the younger does, to teach the young ones manners and all the lessons needed to meld well in our Girls Sorority. )  Llyra has thrown some amazing babies. OCRA Beast, the sire of this litter, is our, “Let me love you by holding your fingers or even face while I kiss you for hours on end” guy. He is very outgoing with his humans and has thrown some beautiful babies (this will be his third litter). We are hoping for more dilutes, with a few possible minks, blues and agouti’s in this litter.
 
2017 Winter Friends Litter
 
This is the first pairing for both mom and dad. CRUS Christine is very active rex girl, who joined us back in August. We always joke about her ‘Fu Manchu’ whiskers. We are really enjoying having some rex in the mischief. She is the first rex we have bred and are looking forward to her throwing a few in this litter. The sire, Joey of OCRA, is one of our old boys. Because we did not know much about his maternal side we wanted to wait until he was almost two to breed him. This helps us rule out many of the genetic abnormalities that can arise later in life such as tumors, poor health or even short lifespan. We are so focused on health & temperament we couldn’t miss the chance to get some more of his genetics in an OCRA line. 
 
If all goes well, we should have some amazing babies available Feb/March and will also be able to take our keepers to the next rat show in April 2017, Ratapalooza​.  No joke, it is on April Fools' Day!