Purchasing lab strains?

If you had a preference for using an established laboratory line of rodent, can you actually buy them? Is there a lab supplier who will sell to the public, or would you have to show that you're affiliated with a legitimate scientific project? Thanks!

Sorry, I have no idea on this, but what are you planning with them? Experiment or feeders? Just curious :)

Breeding colony for feeders. I just keep seeing references to diseases and genetic problems, so I was thinking if I went with a known lab strain I could get something consistently "clean" in a genetic sense.

When I was in school, I had to do a hypothetical research project, and include sources for all of my materials. This was the site I got my model animals from: http://www.criver.com/find-a-model?animal_type=Rats. I'm not sure how much they'd run though... I think your best bet might be to get a few high quality animals from a registered show/pet rat breeder. If I remember correctly, a lot of the lab strains are purposefully predisposed to various cancers and conditions.

I *think* you can purchase from Jackson Laboratories, Simonson Labs, and Harlan Laboratories. However, Jackson only does mice.

I don't think it's worth buying a specific lab strain. They can be really expensive depending on the blood line and strain. We work with mainly immunodeficient C57 black mice in our lab for stem cell research. Some mice can cost $80+ per mouse.

Many of lab specific strains are designed for different purposes so finding a 'normal' rat may be a challenge. Like there are some mice that are bred to become obese for obesity research. There are some animals that have no immune system like the animals I work with. etc etc.

I know some labs do let some of their extra animals become feeders. I know a reptile shop that got in a batch of clean lab rats and they went down hill fast due to their immunodeficiency. They were exposed to the "dirty" breeding feeder rat colony and just were dying off within 3 weeks of exposure.

Like Mootworm mentioned, your best bet may be a pedigree breeder for rats.
But even some feeder breeders are pretty meticulous about their rats' lineage and genetics as well.
I know I am. I've personally tried to breed for health and wellness my first few years of breeding rats rather than mass produced feeders since I don't have a very large snake collection. My rats are my project animals when not snake breeding. ;)
So don't be afraid to scope out some nice animals from feeder stock.

I'd offer you some of my rats, but I've only been breeding for under a year, so I don't have full histories on some of my rats. Two of my main females are from a breeder that pedigreepedigrees her rats, but they were bred with males of unknown descent. So I'm still trying to suss out the genetics, waiting to see if any issues pop up, etc.

Hmm, maybe I'm just going to have to come back on here and convince one of you two to send me some delta dash when the time comes. I just want happy, healthy animals (at least right up to the point where they meet what is hopefully a very swift painless end in the coils of my beasties), and because I'm moving to a rural area I'm going to have to breed all of my own feeders next year (petco is the only pet store in a one hour drive radius, and I am NOT buying feeders there).

ETA: Ok I admit it, my OCD tendencies also really like the idea of them all matching :oops:

Are you still in Phoenix?

PM Coleslaw. She lives right outside of Phoenix. She has really nice rats.

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Originally Posted by MootWorm

Are you still in Phoenix?

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Until December, then I'm packing everything up and hauling it all to VA.