Humane rat distributor?

[Bogertophis]

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I should add in that most of my best pet rats were 'feeder' stock. I've also had some terrible tempered fancy rats.... but that's fairly rare for rats in general...



@Bogertophis I bred a couple silky coat mice YEARS ago. I ended up giving up on the project because the females were being terrible mothers and I didn't want to continue breeding mice with that kind of trait. Those coats are beautiful, but man can they get tangled up in bedding or dirty quick.

As far as temperaments, I've seen horrible ones in pet-store hamsters (not mine) as well as some "fancy" pet-store rats: this can happen when large commercial breeders pay no attention to avoid excessive inbreeding, & only breed for appearance. Just like happens with "purebred" dog breeds, inbreeding keeps both the "good" traits (those wanted for appearance) as well as unintended poor temperaments, & not every seller cares enough to avoid this- all they want is to make that immediate sale of a "warm body" regardless.

Silky & satin mice: I can remember similar issues- including the long-haired mice just being "impractical" for sanitation reasons. Not many people keep "show" mice in this country, so I was happy to quit producing them too; they were just a pretty novelty & I much prefer my strong healthy breeders with less "fancy" coats. (All my mice are still "fancy" coat colors, but not fancy textures.)

[TofuTofuTofu]

I really like Perfect Prey.com - their f/t rats are always clean and don't show signs of over population like barbering (over grooming from stress that causes hair loss or skin sores) or having urine / feces on their feet and tails, and no signs ff URI like crusty noses or eyes.
They are a little more pricey than some of the online feeder providers but I've been very happy with the quality - also their "size breakdown" is a little more varied than sm/ med/ large which gives more options in my opinion

Back when I first bought from them I emailed to find out how the rats were processed and they use the carbon dioxide method, which leaves no chemical residue for your snake and is one of the faster ways to dispatch mass rodents with as little stress as possible.

I'm sure for the rats its not a completely stress free method, but its better than the way most of our own food (chickens / pigs /etc) are dealt with.

Yeah I second PerfectPrey. They seem to be the most humane option from what I have researched (I am vegan and looked into this a lot before we got a snake, lol). Their site explains how they raise and "dispatch" them and the mice we have gotten from them look great. I think it's important to support more humane business practices when you have a pet that must eat other animals. Paying for shipping can be as much as the product itself, but because buying snake food is such an infrequent expense (for us anyway, and for people who only have a few snakes), it doesn't bother me.

[kalismami]

Yeah I second PerfectPrey. They seem to be the most humane option from what I have researched (I am vegan and looked into this a lot before we got a snake, lol). Their site explains how they raise and "dispatch" them and the mice we have gotten from them look great. I think it's important to support more humane business practices when you have a pet that must eat other animals. Paying for shipping can be as much as the product itself, but because buying snake food is such an infrequent expense (for us anyway, and for people who only have a few snakes), it doesn't bother me.

thanks so much—to everyone! Perfectprey sounds like my best option. And I don’t eat animal products either, because as others mentioned the animals are treated terribly…I don’t want to buy into that kind of business, so I don’t mind it being more expensive. especially since I only have one girl to feed.

[kalismami]

No, i didn’t buy a fancy rat, I got a feeder. I just mentioned the fancy rats because while I was trying to find a home for this rat I looked into whether or not feeder rats could make good pets and learned they are not super different from the rats being sold as pets. Also, the pet stores never take back my rats if my snake refuses them, which is why I ended up in this position to begin with