Quote Originally Posted by satomi325 View Post
Petstores over charge for rats of equal or lesser quality than ones from other private feeder breeders. Most pet store rats are from feeder lines anyway, so why not get one from some one who has a lower asking price and more variety to choose from. Not to mention, many private breeders have records and know what genetics their rats carry and have special coat colors/patterns/dumbo ears/rex coats/etc etc.

In my experience, most pet stores (especially Petco/Petsmart) mostly have black and white hooded or albino stuff. Maybe the occasional beige or siamese. But overall, not much variety.





Rats on kiln dried pine is fine. Raw pine is toxic, but most animal bedding is kiln dried.
The majority of people here put their rats on pine with no ill effect, myself included.

In general, show breeders will probably have the 'cleanest' rats. Small scale and private feeder breeders will have nice clean colonies in general as well. Large scale and commercial feeder breeders who need to mass produce are probably one of the worst operations in regards to rat breeding.Their rats do not live as long or healthy as a other small scale/private breeders. And most big boxstore petstore rats come from these commercial/large scale feeder breeders.

So what you see in Petco/Petsmart come from feeder stock and bloodlines.
Private petstores usually get their rats from local back yard breeders or small scale feeder breeders who breed for the more 'fancy' colors/coats.
I had no idea there were such things as "show rats." That's pretty interesting. I suppose I was lucky with mine. I had a small shop nearby, and they had a pretty extensive range in terms of color, sex, etc.

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