Why do they hate us?

Me too, I worked in a lab with over 200 mice and 50 or 60 rats at a time and I never noticed a bad odor. Our monkeys on the other hand were very hard to keep clean and they did smell. Occasionally our rabbits would smell (they liked to roll in their poop). Our cats were well kept and we cleaned their cages daily. The only truly smelly animals we had were the sheep and they were kept in an open pen.

My rats smell like Bar B Q chicken and other various food items. If your rats smell offensive, there's something wrong with the diet or they have internal problems. They shouldn't smell.

Also it could be improper housing, overcrowding, lack of ventilation either in the rat enclosures or the room itself, not cleaning often enough, etc. Really there's a lot of reasons, most of them are things you can deal with by having a look at how you keep the rats. Unless you're dealing in extremely high numbers of rodents, you shouldn't have a problem with strong odors.

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Originally Posted by tigerlily

Rat breeders do so for the purposes of their animals becoming pets. How would you like your pet dog fed to the local gator farm?

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Well of course I wouldnt like it. Dogs are extremely intelligent, and have the title as mans best friend for that very reason.
Not saying rats aren't intelligent. For a small animal, they are very smart. But rats will never be "Mans best friend" the way dogs are.
I was just saying that I feel they are a little too exclusive when it comes to who should have the right to breed rats.

I'm sure there are some very exclusive rat breeders, but we're not buying $20 rats to feed to our snakes. Plus, if you think rat breeders are bad, dog breeders are way worse.

I think the best solution is to not let it get to you. There isn't anything you or I can say to change their way of thinking, and we're still going to feed our snakes. So I would just avoid the conflict. It's easier that way. :)

It's really their right to feel that way, and their right to sell their rats to whoever they please. If you don't fit into a catagory that they like, then don't try to deal with them.
I've heard of people getting all angry over them being turned down by rat RESCUES when they wanted to "adopt" a rodent for snake food, then they want to know why the people got all bent out of shape. People like that spoil the possibility for any civil relationship between us and them.
I know I see rats from some nice rattery places I'd love to have, but I know they won't sell to me. I take great care of my rodents, better than some folks take of their dogs even. But I've given up on attempting to explain that while I do feed rodents to my snakes, it doesn't mean that I'll feed THAT rodent( a valuable breeder rat!) to a snake.
I'm sure that if you hatched out some baby ball pythons and a cobra keeper contacted you about buying your clutch of precious babies to use them to feed his snake, you'd get upset too. It's all in what you love. They love rats, we love snakes. Some of us love rats AND snakes. LOL.
And for the other, I had 11 bins of rats in a small room, no smell unless I let them get dirty(more than a week and a half without cleaning the bins). Now it's down to 5 bins, and there's no smell, unless I let the bins go for two weeks(illness meant I could NOT clean bins for nearly three! ICK!). Clean healthy rodents should not smell really.

Great post Wolfy!

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Hmmm that's rather odd. I have a decent sized group of breeders and feeders and can't recall them stinking at all. In fact I'd say a group of 60 or 70 of them produce less odor than one nasty cat litter box on average. Perhaps you need to have a look at how you are keeping your colony is they are creating that much bad odor.

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Well there are 4 per tub and I made the DIY from GA. I clean at least once per week. They eat Becky's food mix and always have clean water. They are in my room. I don't know why, but they stink.:confused:

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Originally Posted by mmchoppers

I hate rats and am glad I feed them off.

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your not the lady that said she wanted to shoot me right?






:banned1: :banned1: :banned1:

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Originally Posted by reediculous

your not the lady that said she wanted to shoot me right?

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LMAO, thats funny