I am looking for a small healthy female rat. He says the genders are seperated and there are no inherited lung problems. What else should I put in consideration before buying one?
Answers:
You know lots about rats and you are a gret mother to you babies but i would ask for the rat that is the most social and gets along with other rats best! (i know how olli is with others) i feel the same with mel mel but luckly waffle is such a sweetie that there are never any real problems.good luck! luv ya~babe
Ask him if they carry the plague
You just need to make sure that they are healthy and in the right living conditions.
do you have the time to interact with the rats? it is recommended that you spend at least one hour a day playing with your rat...rats make GREAT pets, they are very friendly and smart.
Does he raise the rats on hardwood or softwood shavings? Does he handle them as pups/hand-raise them, or not?
What conditions do they live in--what food do they eat, how large are their cages, etc.?
Be sure to handle them yourself to make sure you get the best-socialized one; otherwise you could end up with a problem rat.
If he is breeding genetically small rats then you can be sure that your adult female will be on the small side. The average weight of a female pet rat is 250 g to 450 g so you need to find out if the majority of his females are down around the 300 to 350g mark.
Careful of those small girls though :) I speak from experience when I describe them as mischievious little escape artists :)
Since you've had rats before there is no need to go into details about the rights and wrongs of rat-care. However, because this is a new person you are dealing with, your conciderations could be:
Does **he** know the rights and wrongs of proper rat care? Does he give them the right food? Are their living quarters spacious to avoid over-crowding? Does he have them on the right bedding? Etc.
Will he let you come into his rattery (to inspect his breeding practices), or does he want to meet you somewhere to sell you the rats (red flag)?
Did he separate the boys from the girls by the time they were 5 weeks old to be sure that he is not selling a pregnant doe to an unsuspecting clientele?
Has he gently handled the babies from birth? This is what makes a rat an awesome, human-loving pet. Do his mothers let him handle the babies, or are they mean, nippy, nervous moms? This is not a good inherited trait to breed into the females in the litters.
I am very concerned about what he says about, "no inherited lung problems"??? Is he trying to tell you that he is the first rat breeder in the world to breed Mycoplasmosis-free pet rats? Because so far all pet rats still carry the Mycoplasmosis pathogen in their nasel passages and lungs. Myco is indeed inherited as it is passed on from mother to pups via natural birth.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?search=my...
Or is he telling you that thus far he has had no Myco flare-ups in his breeding colony. That he is able to breed a stronger, more Myco-resistant pet rat. Now that is a rat I would like to have as a pet, and this is the ultimate goal of all good rat breeders.
I would only buy from this person if I knew he wasn't a feeder breeder (mass breeder, "puppy-mill"), but that's just my moral ethics.
That's all I can think of for now.....
spazrats
"my life has gone to the rats"
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