Breath honey.

It would be best for you to post out independantly of this thread.

While there are some bad stories out there, there are also some good ones.  What's done is done, we just hope you don't do it again.

Yay! You sent babies to a pet shop. Probably not the best thing to post, as one thing we tend to discourage here is due to most pet shops not being where ratties belong in the first place. Well planned litters belong with waiting lists and open arms awaiting their arrival. Mistakes happen, good homes can be found, and pet shops should not be considered an alternative. This goes to show that there are those that still continue to breed without a care in the world for their "pet", the pups, or their customer. I received a baby from a very poor "breeder" who worked through a pet shop. He had to be brought back immediately. He had severe respiratory problems, and I'm sure passed them on to all in the immediate area (as the small animals are all kept together, in small, useless tanks). This was such a sad experience, and all because they just "threw together" a male and female to see if they could get babies and make money. Breeding should be done with papered animals with a lineage, so as to show respiratory, and other illness patterns, as well as socialized behaviors. Without it, the babies born can add to those pets needing homes and requiring extra care due to illness and other issues. Breeding rats shouldn't be done because they're cute, or because everyone wants a baby. It should be done to promote the health and standard and socialization of a particular breed. Kudos to those who do this and follow up with their contracts etc, to those who turn to pet stores to "adopt out", I'm sure that you'd get a fast "adoption" line at your local reptile store... just think twice about the homes they may or not be provided and that you are responsible for that. There are hundreds of rescues available, and if you can rescue more, open your heart to them, don't breed unless you plan to promote the standards, not just a male and female you got from a friend or family who can breed and you know that they're just good rats....

The first time that I bred was in november last year with my first Rat, Psi (who unfortunately succumbed to heat stroke in february his year while I was moving house). She was the largest, most friendly rat I had ever seen - she was even bigger than my male who was the largest male I had seen.
Psi had a whopping 15 babies in her first litter, but lost one in the first week. Psi's second litter was an even greater surprise with 19 baby rats, and my other female had her first litter of 11 at the same time.
I have since had 8 other litters born to my other younger girls, all successful and ranging from 11 babies to 15 babies, however I had one girl who got a kidney infection and I treated her with antibiotics whilke she was pregnant which resulted in her giving birth prematurely. I hand fed the 7 babies that she had for three days before they all died due to my own failure to check them in time on the third night.
She is now pregnant again, and although her kidney infection has returned, my vet has assured me that it should be alright not to treat her until until next week when she gives birth as it would be better for the babies to treat her while they are feeding.
I now breed twice a month for three local pet shops so I always have buyers for my babies, and every now and then I will keep one baby whose colouring I think is unusual or different from what I consider normal.
The only problem my rats have is that they get colds in any weather below 22 degree's. I've had them checked out and treated them with antibiotics and everything to no avail. They don't have myco or rat flu or any other respiritory illness, they just sneeze constantly every time the temperature gets below 22, but once they are put into a room that is over 22 degrees in temperature they stop sneezing altogether. Even my pet shops can't explain it when they suddenly stop sneezing after a couple of days in the warmth. It only starts once they hit 4 weeks and get weaned.

Well, this is more of a positive story than a negative one. I'm expecting to get yelled at for the decisions that me, my partner, and my flatmate made during our rat's pregnancy, but we've had spectacular luck and I'm happy with the result.

We had three rats before we bred - Tea and Coffee, six-month females from Jansens, and Sugar, a three-month from a small pet shop that bred their own rats, and owned their own pet rats at home. After we decided to breed, we arranged with the pet shop to borrow a male rat (Sugar's uncle, as it turned out) and set up a breeding cage with Tea and Amsterdam in it.  I'd looked up as much info as possible online, and I'd also talked to the two owners of the shop about it - they assured me that their rats were healthy.

The servicing went well - we bred Tea as she was a little more sociable - and Tea gave birth on the morning of her 24th day after intro with her boyfriend to ten healthy pups. Coffee and Sugar were kept away from the boy and neither were knocked up. Seven girls, three boys. We kept three girls (Squiggle, Fog, Princess) and gave the rest on to the pet shop to find homes, as per the lending agreement. They were absolutely NOT sold as feeders, and I believe they were mostly sold in pairs.

Out of the three rats we kept, we have two remaining. Sugar unfortunately passed away to unexplained causes (No distress, no squeaks, just there one second and gone the next) but Fog and Princess are the healthiest and friendliest of our five rats. They love cuddles, and while Princess is on the small side, she has displayed no health issues in the nine months we've had her. Fog is on the large side, but again, no problems.

I am aware that we were incredibly lucky to get through what was a moderately well-prepared breeding with no serious accidents - but I do believe that we did well by our girls, and by our temporary boy. We looked on as many sites as we could find, asked the shop owners for help, and (with the aforementioned dollop of luck) I think that also contributed to our positive outcome.

I don't think it was quite that bad.  Can we not bash everyone who comes through here with a happy ending?

My little Squishy is 19 days old today and he is doing great.  He's nibbling my earring from my shoulder right now =].  However, i do not plan to endorse breeding or try again based on my experience.  So we all have something to learn.  THE END!

Gee, I'm sorry for trusting people.
The impression I got from the shop we gave to (Gave, we made no money) was that they were effectively breeders themselves who liked to get outside blood for their rats so as to prevent excessive inbreeding. They also ran a small vet clinic, and Tea was checked out before we bred her. I don't believe that any of my babies went to awful people, because the owners of the shop owned pet rats themselves, looked after our rats when we moved house, and only let us get Sugar because she wouldn't be alone. I think they had enough people sense to screen people a little.

I understand that pet shop rats in general may be bad to breed, but (As Tea shows - she is over a year and a half old and still no problems whatsoever) they aren't all the mangy fleabags that everyone seems to make out. Tea, as far as I can tell from two books, four websites, and my own common sense, does not have genetic predisposition to disease, myco, or ongoing problems. She may have predisposition to tumours, but no one (Not even breeders) can reliably tell that until they get them - which is after breeding age. Amsterdam, the dad, was also prime breeding age, and visibly healthy. I do not believe they would have let us continue if we had faulty rats. Especially as they also kept one of the girls we gave them, and homes had been lined up for most of the litter before they even arrived.

In general, pet shop rats may be lower quality than bred rats, yes. But bred rats can often be bred by irresponsible breeders (Just as well as pet rats!) aiming for a perfect "look" and forgetting about the health problems that might come with it. (Examples in dogs are daxies have back issues, labradors are prone to joint problems, persian cats are prone to respiratory issues, and oriental cats are prone to ear problems.) I'm sure these people were respectable breeders with pedigreed animals.

The point I want to make is that not all pet shop rats are the scum of the earth when it comes to genetics. Not all bred rats (Most, yes, but not necessarily all) are the pinnacle of success. There are pet rats at or near breeder quality out there. I am not telling everyone to go buy some feeders and breed them, but if you have a few decent pet rats and you've done all your homework, and you're ready to look after anything that misfires, then I don't see what the problem is.

I am not trying to argue that we didn't have a better chance of success with breeder rats - it would have been more certainly a positive outcome, yes. But I am trying to get people to see that not all pet shop rats are created equal, and while two feeder rats bred together are likely to give a bad result, and two bred rats are likely to give a good result, it's more of a gray area with non-feeder pet shop rats. It can go either way.

We got lucky, yes. But I do not regret trying, and I do not regret getting Princess and Fog out of it. I don't intend on breeding again in a hurry, but I don't believe that I should be flamed quite so much for something that turned out well. Surely, on a rat-happy board, more people would like to see successful litters, regardless of stereotyping the parents?

Everyone tells me - whenever I mention that all my girls are pet shop rats - that I should have got breed rats, and such and such, because they're better, because you know they'll be healthy. Everyone says that you should only ever breed if you're bettering the species, by making them healthier and happier, and such. So, I simply concluded that everyone believed that pet shop rats, with a higher likelihood of issues, are seen as lower quality and worse to get.

Maybe I should mention that I live in New Zealand. I don't really know many other people with rats, and there is a lower demand for rats than in other countries. We have next to no reptiles in the country, I believe, due to strict restrictions, which means few or no feeder rat mills. As such, every time I've visited my local animal shelter (SPCA) there have been no rats, mice, or guinea pigs up for adoption. I think that there were two rabbits, once. But nothing smaller. I have never seen any advertisements for unwanted rats, heard of unwanted rats, or seen unwanted rats, apart from one or two wild rats in parks. As such, I doubt our girls were taking homes from other possible rats.

I understand I would have been better off breeding rats from a breeder, as they're more likely to have better genetics. But I also wanted to point out that not all pet shop rats will automatically be genetically predisposed to all sorts of nasties. (As far as I can see, it's actually terribly bad practice to sell sick animals, as you'll end up losing all your customers...) As ours show, they're still perfectly healthy at nine months. If I were to breed again, I would breed bred rats, but I do not believe that it was a mistake to breed this litter in particular.

As for the screening, what I mean is I do not think they would have sold the rats as feeders, or to anyone who was obviously looking for rats on a whim.  It gets rid of the worst people.

If no one who cared about rats bred rats, the only people who bothered breeding would be the ignorant, selfish people who were doing it for kicks or to get lots of rats really fast, to sell as snake food. Only being happy for a litter if it's a rescued litter seems a little...odd...to me, but each to their own. I personally disapprove of litters that are bred by accident (letting rats out of the cage together, or such), litters bred with obviously inappropriate rats (Too old, too young, not healthy, bad nature) or rats bred when they're never going to find a home.  If I had thought for a moment that our rats would not find homes in a short time, then I wouldn't have bred them. As it was, every rat that we gave them had a home within two weeks, and I believe half the litter went home within the day. I don't think that would have been the case if we were taking homes from other rats.

It's not so much that you disapprove of breeding totally, whereas I'm more selective. It's that you came across as disapproving directly of my litter (And therefore coming across as thinking that half my rats never should have been born) and me. I apologise if I read you wrong, but that's what it came across as, and that's why I was irritated.

Reading this thread has made me realise how lucky I've been.

I've never had the desire to breed any of my animals. Possibly because I'm extremely tokophobic.

But I never realised how lucky I've been to never bring home a pregnant female. I guess there's really something to be said for getting your animals from good sources.

Yes, I've gotten all my rats from pet stores, but all but three of them have come from a very good, locally owned independent pet store in my town that is really quite good. The owner has rats herself, most of the staff is extremely knowledgable about all the pets there (or if the person you're talking to doesn't know about the animal you want, they'll call over someone else who does). They get all their rats from several local breeders, and seem to sell consistently healthy, friendly animals. All my rats from there have lived to a ripe old age, and I've never had an unexpectedly pregnant female, thank God. Also, they charge more money for their rats than most places to keep people from buying them for snake food.

Anyway. Just wanted to point out that not all pet stores are terrible. It's unfortunate that so many are, but there are some good ones out there. It's only been until recently that I've become aware of how many rats end up homeless and need rescue, and since then, have decided that all my rats from now on will be rescue rats, but not all pet shops sell horrible, in-bred animals. Some really do care about selling quality animals to quality homes.

I never, ever plan to breed my rats. Not only do pregnancy and childbirth terrify and disgust me, but I just can't imagine how I would feel if something went wrong and I lost the mother. I don't think I could forgive myself. If I ever have the time and resources, I might consider rescuing a mother with young babies, because rattie babies are painfully cute and it would be fun to watch them grow up (a lot of hard work, but fun), but that's as close as I'd even consider coming to breeding.

I have to say that that sort of reasoning really bothers me.  You don't have to be a bad person to mistreat an animal.  The latest rat I took in off of Craigslist had a family that loved her dearly.  They spray painted her cage neon pink (shudder) because they wanted it to be pretty for her.  They got her the most expensive rat food they could find, they said.  They bought her the cage with the most levels, and they fed her the best treats.

Unfortunately, they were pretty ignorant.  The "best food" was a seed mix, the cage was less than 1 cubic square foot, she had to have been saturated in paint fumes.  They had her on pine.  Now she's wheezing away with what's most likely lung scarring problems (like my dear Phedre) and her nice cage with all the shelves gave her bumblefoot.  She had a filthy little washcloth that they had bought just for her (it was pink!) covered in blood from the burst wounds on her feet.

Being nice does not mean you are a good home, and in some cases is worse because the suffering of the animal goes on and on and on.