Australian Cinnamon

'Aussie Cinnamon'

I have had a lot of questions regarding this color, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of accurate info about this color, so to help people out I took a bunch of photos of our Aussie Cinnamon boy Gussie with American based cinnamons for color comparison. I have also been working very hard to try to gather as much accurate information as I can.

Facts: Aussie cinnamon was imported into the US by Connie of Rat Genesis in California in 2002 along with the other amazing gene we love, Downunder, among others!

Aussie mink has been test bred to many different "browns" here in the US. I have (and other ratteries I work with have) bred the gene to both UK mink (in our European roan line) and the American mink ( the mink/pearl merle line that I work with) and our test breedings show that it is a separate gene from American mink or UK mink and that they do not produce cinnamon/mink when bred with either of these colors.

Connie had a cross with an American line to a direct Aussie cinnamon line that did produce Aussie Cinnamon. We are unsure which mink gene (likely the same "mock mink" gene that was imported into Europe from America, based on test breedings) the American rat carried that produced the Aussie cinnamon. Due to test breeding variances there is a highly likely hood the American allele(s) has mutated more than once (meaning there is more brown [mink] mutations than we thought)

When they get their first color when they are babies they look fawn, as they molt out their baby coats they get their beautiful cinnamon color. They have black eyes. Their adult coats are more reddish then American or UK cinnamons.

Here is an archived article written by Connie about her imports from Australia in about 2003

These first photos are of our wonderful Aussie cinnamon boy Dmtn Augustus

These next three photos are of my girl Dmtn Sweet Potato who is a Aussie Cinnamon also. These pictures show her at about 2 or 3 months old molting out her baby coat. You can still see the fawn color she had as a baby on the top of her head.

These photos show baby aussie cinns on their aussie cinn father Gussie for color comparison

The next photo is of Gussie with Dmtn Ruby an american cinnamon merle.

This is Gussie with tBBR Pistachio a dark american cinnamon dwarf.

This is Gussie with Dmtn Maple a american cinnamon pearl merle.