Fancy Rat Breeder looking for "Feedback"

[Jayson]

I have been breeding rats for about 9 years now and i suppply a great many as feeders and and pets at pet stores and i assure you that my rats and mice have a very good life while they are alive and are fed only the best of foods.
I feed these animals to my own snakes as well and only want the best for them. Also I rely on the money made from them to keep my reptile hobby alive so only the healthiest of animals are kept for breeding.

The opinion that rats are living and breeding in these appauling conditions are just that (opinions). Its just not profitable to have sick and unhealthy rats in a breeding colony as they breed like crap and will eat the babies if they do.

[TessMillerDT]

Again thanks for all the input, and honestly if you have the room for it breeding your own stock sounds like it's the best plan (for those of you that need that many animals to feed).

Yes, being able to sell the stock we don't "need" for breeding would give us more space, but that really isn't much of a concern. Every breeder that I know personally (about 26) never has a litter unless (a) There is too much interest in it and there are more babies reserved for pet homes than a litter could provide, or (b) we have enough room to keep all of the babies if there is no interest. In my personal experiance I've never had too many, or had trouble finding homes for any of them, but I'm sure it does happen to smaller breeders. But then we step into the irresponsible breeders, you shouldn;t breed if it's too expensive for any unexpected outcomes.

You can procide a good quality of life but how much more would that cost?

As far as this one goes, I really never expect to make money off of anything I do with my rats. I spend an average of $600 a month raising my litters and keeping my animals. I NEVER make money and anyone who does is doing something wrong! lol. But really, selling the "undesirables" as feed isn't about making any profit off of it, it's about the goal behind lowering the demand to mill bred rats. And I'm not talking about ending it, there's too much to end it all, but anything is an achievment.

If breeders were to sell their stock as "feeders", I doubt the prices would be higher. For example, our most desirable exotic types can be sold at prices from $20-$40. But when we have standard animals, we sell them for about $10, and the older retired breeders are sold for around $5 or given away to good homes. Even selling a whole litter at $40 a peice doesn't bring in profit, and doesn't come close to covering living costs. At my local petstores the rats are sold for about $5 a peice, and I can't see charging more than that for feeder rats myself, if I as a breeder expected to encourage herpe owners to buy from me.

You are right about supply of course. I've read how many litters feeder breeders (even responsible ones) pop out of their females, and it really goes against what is healthy for the mother rat. When you are breeding for the prolonged health and weight of a show winning female, you are going to have only three litters in her whole life. She cannot be bred until at least 6 months of age, and should stop breeding by 1 1/2. These are completely different standards than feeder breeders, simply because our first concern is the health of the mother, and the higher expectations of the babies to grow large and live long.

[rrrrr]

Originally Posted by TessMillerDT

At my local petstores the rats are sold for about $5 a peice, and I can't see charging more than that for feeder rats myself, if I as a breeder expected to encourage herpe owners to buy from me.

Ahh...but pet store prices aren't even close. Rodentpro for example charges no more than $3 for any rat. and for that price you get a 1lb+ rat. A standard rat, full grown (275-375 grams) from them is only $2. They make a profit at these prices, and by all accounts, the product is of the highest quality. They use CO2 for euthanizing the animals humanely, and I have yet to hear one complaint about their practices.

I admire your zeal for reducing "rat mill" business, but you actually need to compete with good guys like Rodentpro.

[TessMillerDT]

Understandable, I mean honestly if I decided to cull, giving the rats away would matter nothing to me, cause like I said $5 won't even make a dent in expenses.

The thing is I understand buying from a private breeder isn't going to be an option for large scale breeders who need to purchase rats by the hundreds every month. But for the small breeder and individual owners who only need a few rats a week or month, we may be a good option since they don't have to buy in bulk to begin with.

[TessMillerDT]

Just out of curiosity, how do I see how they actually raise and house the animals at Rodentpro? The site says they are laboratory tested for health and quality, but what do they feed them, how many do they keep to a home, what type of beddng....etc.

Do I just not see the link?

[Jayson]

You professonal breeders would not even put a tiny dent in the feeder breeder market with your breeding practices, so keep your rats for pets as what you are suggesting will have zero impact.
The big guys produce 100,000 rats per month because they are already sold as feeders.

I love snakes and i will only feed them the highest quality feeders no matter if they are my snakes or my customers snakes.

[peterm15]

you must understand that your rats will of course have better quality conditions than rodentpros.. and the pictures you see on PETA s site is probably the only one like that.. anyone who breeds for feeders most likely own snakes.. and nobody in the right mind would feed rats living in thoes conditions to the snakes... so.. with feeders you not gonna get the greatese quality bedding.. or the "proper breeding ages" ect ect. but you will get the healthiest food possible... when the feeders are healthy so are the snakes.. for the feeders TO be healthy they have to be brought up in good conditions.....

many of these large scale breeders have automatic feeders and waterers.. running straight off their tape.. waters always clean.. foods always fresh.. ect ect.

[Ciddian]

I personally have no problem choking out bad mill breeders... I think you will be able to tell by the rats/mice themselves too.

As peter said before, you want quality food going into your pet.. not malnurished and near death feed.
So when i find a feeder supplyer that has clean, healthy looking animals that are put down humainly i stick to them. I have a supplier like that and i couldnt be happier.
If i could find a breeder with fresh rat pups, killed for me preferably and humainly i will buy.
Those people are just hard to find... And i dont mind going a bit out of my way to help.

But the point that was brought up before... I think a lot of us who feed frozen buy a lot at a time, and i just dont think a professional breeder would have that to give up.

I think every little bit helps, but these mills are so large it makes it so difficult to think that we could hinder thier business in any way ~_~!

[-okapi-]

I love rats, they are the same thing as a cat or a dog to me. At the shelter where I interned during high school I was exposed to every thing from dogs, to cats, to pythons, to rats. I am in college right now to become a vet. Whenever I bought frozen rats (which was only when we had a burm at the shelter) from a local pet store, they always seemed in good health before they died, and ive worked around alot of sick animals so I would know if they were in good condition. However that website was pretty gross. When I keep snakes, I will breed my own rodents. That way I wont have to buy the sick, overbred, under fed, retired breeders from mills.

[peterm15]

ok im gonna repeat this for like the 1000th time.lol.... that picture and site is from PETA.... do you think these are ppl you can really trust... they dont even want us to own snakes....

ill give you a story about these kind of groups..

a bunch of newfies a long time ago were reamed on for the pratcice of seal hunting.. green peace took a graphis documentry where certian people were paid a good chunck of money to inhumainly and butaily kill baby seals.. the people paying were green peace.... granted the money didnt have to be taken but when you see how and on what some newfies live on.. youd understand.. these are the "anit-hunting" activists that are out there.... im personally not a hunter nor can a bring myself to kill any animal in an inhumain way... but i dont trust these Green Peace groups and PETA as far as i can throw them...

dont fall into the propaganda bull crap that you see on there websites... there a bunch of 2 bit idiots that wouldnt know the proper way to act on animal cruilty if it slaped them in the face.. handing a very graphic flyer that states " you mommy kills cute animals" to 4 year olds out in front of the ACC is not the way ( true story, its sad to see a 4 year old ballin because of the picture they put on a flyer)..

if anything we should not be supporting peta AT ALL by visiting there so called "factual" website.. at least until they change there actions.

[impy]

hello just lettin u know befor u read this i can't spell worth sh-t

yes i bread my own rats for food & they r well taken care of. they r feed 6f rat food & given fresh frut & veges as well. also they r kept on aspen with a water system that give them fresh water on demand. they r kept @ a ratio of 1.3 or 1.4 in a there own room & there bins r more than large enough for them to run around and play in. when it is feeding day for my snakes the rats are gassed in small #s using Co2 and it only take about 1 min to kill them (normaly less than that) i think that the rats NEED to be well taken care of because in the end they are food for my outher pets & i dont want them getting sick or dyeing because there food is sick.

I also keep some rats as pets & i find them to be very smart (u can train them to do things just like a dog) & they r also very friendly.

hope this helps

lindsay

[Ciddian]

Good job Linds ^^ Happy to know you take the time to care for your rats

If i raised all of my feeders...I'd just end up keeping them as pets >.>
I had a large male rat, rescued from work and he was named wilber.. To this day people still ask of him. The most sweetest and adorable rat i've ever known. Funny to say... but he was my buddy! Took him to work, the store.. everywhere lol

[TessMillerDT]

f anything we should not be supporting peta AT ALL by visiting there so called "factual" website.. at least until they change there actions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of PETA, but the point is that those pictures on the website came from Somewhere, meaning that rodents ARE being milled, and these actions ARE taking place.

But letting go of PETA entirely, the RSA went on a visit to one of the mills in Florida recently to get a first hand look at what was going on. So this is something I've seen first hand, and I chose the Paw of Justice website because it had photos that properly illustrated the kinds of conditions that we saw there. The rats at this mill appeared healthy yes, but it didn't change the fact that they were housed on Pine bedding, and kept in unisex groups to breed consistantly, at great danger to the females.

Again, I'm not saying all places do this, and I'm not saying PETA is a good organization...but not all of their opinions and articles are bullshit, and I've seen this stuff firsthand.

[Topaz]

I think feeders should be well cared for as in good food, clean living, etc. But feeders and breeders are different and should remain different. Breeders put effort into their lines to breed for friendly healthy, lovable pets. They are very attached to their pets I completly understand why they would be upset by the idea of an animal they raised and got emotionally attached to being killed off young. Knowing their beloved pet so and so was being used to produce feeders would upset the breeders who came before you. I am sorry to say that snake owners don't have a good reputation for humane treatment of prey items when so many horror stories fly around about kids throwing live rats in a tank just to watch the snake kill it, people whacking rats against a wall, well we all know the stories. As well rats should only be bred a few times in an ideal breeder situation as it puts strain on their resouces and can shorten their lifespan if fancy female rat is perpetually being bred to meet demand.
I personally try to strive for well cared for and humanly killed frozen prey items, and I am willing to pay a bit extra for that assurence.

What you need to focus on is educating the snake owner about rat mills and how potentially they can be a less than nutritious source of food... as another in this thread said, "you are what you eat". Trying to convince rat and mouse breeders that they should cull their litters or full out sell them as snake food should turn a pet rat buyer away from that breeder as it puts into question the breeders commitment to raising and happy, lovable pet. It comes across as cold, in my opinion.
I buy my pet rats from breeders, I buy my feeders from CLEAN well run faculties.

[Mark]

Well I might as well comment on this as it makes us rat breeders look like people who are out to mistreat animals. As far as Tess is going on about the use of pine and such. I know that in the long run that it can and sometime does hurt the rats respitory system but you have to take into the fact that mot feeder rats are kept for very short periods of time (excluding breeding stock) and it is not feasible to keep 10,100, 1000 cages of rats on aspen or other such hardwoods as your selling price would have to be so high as aspen and such as double to triple the price of pine. As for the keeping of mixed lot of rats together. As most breeders do you keep the young NOT YET BREEDABLE rats together as they don't bother each other and if they can’t breed who cares if you have 10 males and 8 females together as they don't bother each other.

As for myself I do breed rats. I also use pine as I got through 100-200 cubic feet of the stuff per month so I can't afford to house all my rats on aspen. Would I if I could....sure but it is not realistic to do so. All my rats get cleaned every week or every three days depending on how loading the bin is. Do I keep mixed groups together.....Yes. I haven’t had any problem with keeping large groups of mixed sexes together ever. They get along and don't kill or seem to bother each other. They usually just pile on top of each other to sleep regardless of how much room you give them. As far as caging goes. Most breeders try to use the largest pans they can while still keeping in mind space and cost. Yes big bins are great but you can’t get setting up 5x2x1 cages for every 5 rats you want to breed as you’d go broke just trying to afford the space and bins.

As far as myself. I run up to 1.6 rats per bin. I give them as much lab block as they can eat as well as fresh water giving to them off an automatic watering system plumbed off the main water line. They get changes every 3-7 days with PINE. They get chews for their teeth as well as seed or nuts when available and all extra food that isn’t going to be use (yogurt, eggs, and veggies). I leave the group intact through the 8-10 month breeding life as it causes more problem and drops production to take the male out every time the females get pregnant and Tess I do have just a bit of experience and have seen many rats to know what a healthy rats looks like as currently I’m running 60+ cages and increasing weekly.

So don’t try to give us good rat breeders a bad name based on ONE rodent breeder that you guys went to see. Take into account how many good breeders there are that you guys will never hear about. You only hear about the bad thing never the good.

Thanks

Mark