Where do you get rats to start your colony?

Personally, I got 1 albino,1 hairless, 1 agouti, 1 berkshire, and 1 fawn hooded (all female) as a package deal on craigslist, and went to petsmart to get my male because those rats are generally pretty sweet and a genetic grab bag which I find awesome. I managed to produce some blues which I thought was pretty cool, and ive been eying up a male rex they have right now haha. I dont like the idea of breeding predestined feeders because some people just dont care if they have aggression in their lines. Rats that are aggressive dont make it in pet stores. Their goal is to keep and sell rats that are good with people. My albino female was slightly aggressive, and I think the fathers friendly disposition kind of evened out the single albino female that was produced from the pairing. I decided to hold her back because of how sweet she turned out to be. So pet store gets my vote. Well, more pet rats.

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Originally Posted by Riv

I dont like the idea of breeding predestined feeders because some people just dont care if they have aggression in their lines. Rats that are aggressive dont make it in pet stores. Their goal is to keep and sell rats that are good with people. My albino female was slightly aggressive, and I think the fathers friendly disposition kind of evened out the single albino female that was produced from the pairing. I decided to hold her back because of how sweet she turned out to be. So pet store gets my vote. Well, more pet rats.

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Norway rats generally have sweet dispositions as a species. There are exceptions of course, but aggressive rats are pretty rare. That's why they're recommended as a beginner children's pet (feeder or not).
And just so you know, most petstore rats are of feeder rat lines....
No professional rat breeder is going to sell their pedigree rats to a petstore. Just a plain top eared black hooded pedigree rat can fetch $25+ alone. A petstore wouldn't be able to afford that when they're selling rats for ~$10.

And no body wants to breed aggressive feeder rats intentionally. That means potential harm coming to the animals that eat live feeders.

I've built my colony from a couple of sources. I got my original breeding group from another local member on here. Another group started as store-bought live feeders that were refused. I put them (2 females) into a tank and after a week, introduced one of the male weaned rats from the original colony. From there, I have built another colony from offspring of the two. I picked up some more females last weekend from the local member I got my first colony from, so I'm mixing up the genetic lines as much as I can...

And as someone else said, most of the "pet" rats you see in stores start out as feeder rats. They'll get a batch of feeders, pick a few cute ones to separate as pets. Those rats will get a lot of handling to get used to hands in the tank, then they're put in displays and sold as pets.

Ive been so nieve...I mean when I think about yeah, yeah of cpurse thwy would be from feeder lines. XDD. My first experience with feeder rats from a friend of my dads, and his lines were terrible. He went the all albino route and all of them were pretty bitey. So when I think feeder rats thats the image that comes to mind. When I got into snakes I went right to frozen thawed and then to breeding my own "pet rats" which I had a associated as nicer. But youre right. They probably mass produce, sell the uglies as feedes and the cute ones as pets. Jeeze. Mind blown @_@

i got my male from petco and my 2 females came from a local breeder.

haha I have two suppliers. One of which I order 25 medium lives from a week. Usually he gives me all males but sometimes he runs out of males and slips a few females in. I keep those females and pair them to males from a different supplier haha. I only have a 1.2 colony right now, cost me $5.00 lol

I make the big orders for a buddy of mine, and I have no intention of breeding 100 mediums a month for him. It's the same supplier I get my mazuri from so it works out for me LOL