Breeders

The Rat Shack Forum

Help Support The Rat Shack Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Caeser

Well-Known Member
**
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
149
Location
NULL
I was wondering why there is so much hate on breeders. Do you guys think there are some that actually do care and work daily on making a `better`breed. how do you guys judge who is a good breeder and who isnt. Unless your breeding for feeders, do people take the time to figure out what are the best rats to breed for good temperament health and looks. or do most breeders just put male and female together and sell what they get. I cant understand why the rat community looks at breeders as a bad thing but the dog community praises breeders.

Also to get into a more touchy subject do breeders separate possible bad rats from the rest like dog breeders would do to dogs.
are these breeders breeding the same few rats over and over or do they have a litter and once the rats are of age breed those one`s.





:ratwave:
 
Last edited:
Ok well first of all..dog breeders and rat breeders are different things but there are bad dog breeders as well. The big difference between dog breeders and rat breeders in that there are no different breeds of rats....a rat is a rat is a rat! Now there are obviously lots of different colors and markings of rats and of course there is dumbo and standard ear but there are lots of very specific shapes,sized and breeds of dogs...If you wanted a german shepherd than I would recommend a german shepherd rescue just as I would if you were looking for a rat. Rescuing is always the best thing to do in all animal situations because there are so many pets out there that need homes.Most of us on here rescue whether it be full time or when we see a rat in need and alot of these babies floating around come from crappy breeders and then we end up footing the bills most of the time for these health issues that someone bred into them because they wanted to try and make a quick buck pumping out rats....That is not even counting some the the mental,emotional issues that some of these babies end up with as well. We aren't saying that all rat breeders are bad..there are some good ones out there but they are few and far between. The breeder that is near me is not bad but there is always room for improvement...She produces 2-3 litters a year. She has actually paid a couple of my vet bills by buying some of my hammocks that I make on occasion and I talk to her about once a week, have been to her house and seen her ratties. Would I call us friends? no I wouldn't but we don't hate each other....I rescue and she breeds and those are two completely different worlds and I know she isn't going anywhere and vice versa so we try and do what we can for each other to make sure all our babies rescued and bred get the best homes and good lifes! She actually has the link to my rescue on her site for anyone that might want to rescue instead of buying from her :)
 
Awwwe makes sense. im going to remember to use this, btw i always looked at rescuing before i went to the breeders.
 
I'm not sure dog breeders are looked happily upon either... I am a huge dog lover and I hate the dog breeding too. Breeds aren't real, they are a thing that humans assign to a dog's appearance and personality. Breeds are not defined by genetics, which is exactly why "breed DNA tests" are pointless to get. Also, I think it's important to mention the large amount of inbreeding that happens with pure breeds. I don't think it's in the best interest of the dog at all. It's all about the human, in those scenarios.

Here is a GREAT video on the subject: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCv10_WvGxo[/ame]
 
Yea the history of dog breeding is really messed up. here is a whole documentary
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHa5hd8-94[/ame]

I understand but not a lot of people bash dog breeders like ive seen people bash rat and mice breeders
 
For one thing, this is a rescue forum ..... and so people are encouraged to rescue not support breeding of more rats when so many are in need of good homes.

The other reason is that I don't know if there are any truly ethical breeders doing it right - I don't know of any

Not that many years ago rats lived much much longer then they do now. If breeders were really breeding for health and temperament then why don't their rats live a lot longer then rescue rats? If breeders are really doing it properly, then why aren't their rats living at least as long as rats used to live?

With all the advances in medical care and advances in knowledge about things such as proper nutrition and healthy diets, rats should be living a lot longer then they used to when there was little or no medical care and diets were poor.
 
Last edited:
Exactly ---

Case in point: I had a rat MANY years ago when I was a teen. He lived to be 4 years old. Never was ill & hate to admit this, but being a teen, I was not really aware of proper diet & he had pine shavings in his aquarium :redface:.

Geez - how stupid was my husbandry?!?!
 
I know what you mean 2Rats. I actually got two male rats from a pet store back in the good ol 2005-2007. Between those years, I cant remember. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I was WAY to young to know how to properly take care of them and my parents didnt either. I forget what we fed them and what bedding we used, but they did stand on wire all the time and there was no real chewtoys in their cage as they were constantly doing that. Again, we didnt know that that was bad. We thought all rats did that regardless. They still lived to be over 2 years old though, which I think is sad since they didnt have the best living situation when I look back.

So its strange to see so many rats dying before they even reach the year and a half mark of their life when I know mine lived to be at least 2 if not older. My memory is foggy as this was when I was in grade school. Im not old now, almost 18 actually...I know I'm young, but my memory from grade school is foggy in general.


Exactly ---

Case in point: I had a rat MANY years ago when I was a teen. He lived to be 4 years old. Never was ill & hate to admit this, but being a teen, I was not really aware of proper diet & he had pine shavings in his aquarium :redface:.

Geez - how stupid was my husbandry?!?!
 
That's why I am desperately looking for a way to get deeper pans for my Critter Nation... I'm going to scrap the fleece and put them back on aspen, because all my "rats-in-a-tank-on-aspen" lived much longer than the rats I've kept on fleece and I DON'T KNOW WHY. ;.;
 
That's why I am desperately looking for a way to get deeper pans for my Critter Nation... I'm going to scrap the fleece and put them back on aspen, because all my "rats-in-a-tank-on-aspen" lived much longer than the rats I've kept on fleece and I DON'T KNOW WHY. ;.;

Genetic health issues, GMOs in their food (incl blocks), multiple strains of myco in their bodies creating damage .... to name just a few possible reasons

You can purchase metal pans that are deeper for CNs and FNs
 
Genetic health issues, GMOs in their food (incl blocks), multiple strains of myco in their bodies creating damage .... to name just a few possible reasons

You can purchase metal pans that are deeper for CNs and FNs

I'm looking for plastic pans... Don't feel like waiting weeks for the rustoleum to cure, not to mention we are going to get 14" of snow in a few days and I have nowhere outside to let them dry out and the apartment is too small to be breathing in rustoleum fumes for that long.

My first two rats (boys) were purchased from a petstore, lived on aspen shavings in a tank, and were fed seed mix. They lived past three and my family gave them to our neighbors when we moved. (This was back before the internet existed. :p )

I feel like living in a DCN wire cage on fleece that is changed weekly with a non-ionizing HEPA filter running 24/7 and being fed a diet of Oxbow + fruits + veggies HAS to be an improvement, but most of my rats do not make it to three years of age.

Of the few rats that have made it past three years, two were neutered, which I think definitely made a difference... One was pedigreed 8 generations back from a decent breeder and one was a feeder-bin rat from a reptile store. Both were Siamese. /shrug
 
In the past, rats were rats, some people had them as pets and most did not. Then all of a sudden they became very popular as pets and what this means is they became valuable to the backyard breeders and millers. For the same effort they could make rats that sell for $20 instead of of $4, and the terrible unethical breeding began. Pretty to pretty, not even one tiny thought on health or temperament and especially longevity. The pet rat craze went through phases, I am sure you have seen it...blue dumbos (Ohhhh I want one! I would sell my soul for a BLUE DUMBO!), siamese went through a terrible phase here in Ontario, ending up with terrible people breeding anything that remotely looked Siamese. These rats lived at places like the Chilly Rats did. Outside wire cages, no protection, the ones that escaped through the bars were eaten by the hungry pack of dogs this person kept running loose. They also bred a TON of other animals as well. :(
Then there was the blazed, high-white rats...more selling of souls. But they were easy to get as Petsmart sold them en masses and they were bred at the mills they got them from. The chances of megacolon were very high and a LOT of rats suffered and died in ignorant owners hands :(
I was sooo thankful when the high whites slowly disappeared and the pearls and pear merles and minks showed up instead in the pet stores. Unfortunately breeders like Atlantis brought back the blazed and high white rat (and megacolon) and spread it around the breeding community, so now the rescuers and owners in the know, are keeping their eyes out for MC once again :(

The terrible ethics of our so-called "breeders" ruined the rats genetics to the point where it may never come back in Ontario to those rats living well over 3. And Atlantis keeps "mentoring" these new breeders who look ethical on paper but are not really doing it right as we know. Empire Rattery in Niagara Falls is new, and her stock is from Ashley, her kijiji ads are just like Ashleys and I am sure her ethics are similar as well. Her SO was a mass breeder of feeder rats for many many years so that is where her experience started, but I assume she wanted the bigger prices a breeder can ask for. :(

I have rats from breeders in my cages...6 from Atlantis (no return policy), 1 from Rambling Rattery, and 4 from some nasty breeder from Brampton...these are the ones I know of, I might have many more from so-called breeders but will never know. You honestly cannot tell the difference between my rescues and the breeders, and most of my rescues are prettier and even nicer for some.

In the Red Flags you see that Nicole says a breeder should NOT compete with the rescues and sadly all these breeders are doing is pumping more "desirable" rats out into a market already heavily saturated.

My rescue babies sit home and I am unable to take in more, the rats from these breeders being dumped outside, or being offered up for free (snake owners look for these ads), or the owner is moving, allergic, bored most likely, has a sick rat (why pay for the vet when you can just get another? is a mindset that is coming back again), etc. If you look at the kijiji ads in Ontario, you are going to find multiple breeders, or oops litters from Petstore Surprises, and there's only so many rescue homes to go around, as there are few active rescues now. I try to take in the sick, aging or mentally unsound as most rescues do not want to, or are unable to help these rats and they are the true deitrus from the breeders. Unfortunately this means many many perfectly wonderful rats die in horrible circumstances every day.:(
 
Last edited:
I have always used aspen in combination w/ carefresh & those packaged shreadded paper crinkle things.

My rats feet do not come into contact w/ wire. To do this, I have cardboard tops in their cages w the bedding I mentioned above in them & they also have hammocks & igloos & whatever little plastic container I think might look cute. My boys use fleece hammocks. I had to stop using hammocks for the girls becuz they ended up chewing them till they fell down and then I would find them in the morning looking all stupid in a crashed hammock !
 
Okay thanks everyone this all makes a lot of sense. im guessing im not the only person but you have to feel terible for some of these rats, ontario seems more and more sketchy about rat breeders the more i look into it.

I have also noticed that my city (brantford) and surroding city's (hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener) dont have any rats for adoption but then you look at Toronto and some places in the GTA have ALOT. Also this picture scares me.
$_20.JPG


This is from and add on kijiji for feeders and pet rats
 
Lilspaz that is one of the saddest story's ive ever heard. why outside. and yea the blue dumbo's are a thing here, there like 15 bucks at the pet store and regular dumbos are 10.
 
I've been seeing a lot of ads on Craigslist from local rat breeders lately. Sadly they all seem to offer feeders as well. How they can stomach doing that is beyond me. I guess the rats that aren't as pretty or the ones no one buys have to go somewhere, right? :wrong:

I was curious of one Rattery and went to her facebook page. I scrolled down to a old post where she stated that she found a tub (yes tub, not cage) of her females all dead inside. She wasn't sure what went wrong, but thought it must have gotten too cold for them. She stated that it wasn't a huge loss because it wouldn't mess with breeding plans.

Other local breeders actually link this woman on their websites. They either haven't taken the time to research other breeders before recommending them, or they must not be all that great either. Seeing someone so casual about such needless loss of life is quite disturbing.
 
A breeder has to look at their rats a little differently overall, being more practical and not letting their emotions tell them which pair to match up to improve on both of the parents....but the good ones still consider their rats, pets first, so this lack of respect for those lost lives is a sign of a not very good breeder and also not a truly caring person.
 
Back
Top