Quote Originally Posted by wolfy-hound View Post
Shipping live rats is like shipping a puppy. Special container, airfare, health certificate, etc. It's a royal pain unless you're getting a large group of some sort of gene you just really must have and can't find otherwise.

I get all sorts of different fancy rats for feeder prices. I would NOT recommend you expect to get $20+ for a pet rat. I sell the occasional pet rat, usually for $10 at most. But I enjoy my breeders a lot and love to see all the genetics. I have hairless(got the original het hairless by accident in a colony buy), dumbos, blues, blaze-faced, all sorts of colors and possibly black selfs coming. I actually am not certain I have a single regular albino breeder left in the colony now. My snakes eat whatever color I give them, although I do tend to give dark hooded feeders to snakes in shed, hoping the snake can see them better with the contrast.

Most of the "breeders" I've found are ridiculously anal about selling their rats to anyone who might even consider ever breeding a rat. If you have found a good one who doesn't mind you breeding, especially for feeders, than I'd definitely build a good relationship with her. I personally wouldn't spend $30 for a single rat, unless it was a very rare, very desirable trait. Blue dumbos are fairly common, at least around here.

Also, the most healthy, robust, glossy friendly rats I've ever seen were from Rodents on the Road, who essentially breed and sell feeders. I used to buy all my feeders live directly from one of the breeding facilities. They were calm and fat healthy animals. I've seen some "high quality breeders" with show rats that didn't have such healthy looking animals.
Well this lady is literally the only person in a 30 mile radius (at least), that sells fancy rats, especially the blue dumbos. There's another lady who put an ad on Craigslist with some baby tan albino looking weanlings for sale. I contacted her and she said she was going to breed a blue to one of those litter mates because they had the blue gene as well. He said she would contact me when he's ready to sell them. If she sells them to me, I'll be getting 2 females for 30. That, I can manage but this is the reason why I convinced myself to house and breed rats in my house. There has got to be so many people around my area that go to petsmart or Petco and blow 4 bucks a rat...FROZEN! They are the only two pet stores in my suburb so I know there isnt a lot of diversity already. I'll be selling to a fresh market in desperate need of snake food and/or healthy pets. Every feeder will be treated as a pet no matter what their future entails. I believe that even tho their lives could be pretty short, they should be comfortable during the time they have.

Thanks,
SC