11/27/2025
🐀 Important changes coming.
Please read.
As I go into 2026, it'll mark my first year of breeding rats complete. I have learned so so much during this time. Unfortunately, when I started I didn't have any proper guidance or true mentorship, so I wasn't lead on the best path I could have been on, but im getting there.
Today I had the most important lesson to date! An amazing conversation with a very ethical and reputable breeder of over a decade from across the border 🇺🇸.
It's something I'm going to practice and something I wanted to be transparent about and share with you guys.
So I was told NOT to handle any pups in fact to limit how much handling between birth and 3 weeks old. After 3 weeks to still limit the handling, in doing so I will know so much more about the genetic temperament of my rats. If they are shy and skittish, they should go in to experienced pet only homes. If aggressive, they should NOT be up for adoption (common sense). And if with very little handling the pups are curious by you, unbothered with being picked up and especially placed on their backs without hesitation, then these are top notch genetic temperaments! 'Genetic temperaments' are far more important then 'masked temperaments' which can fool you to believe you have well tempered rats until they mature and become hormonal and everything changes, then if bred and adopted out before seeing this aggression later in their growth, you have a whole lot of genetically poor temperaments going around especially of being reproduced by other breeders.
'Masking Temperaments' come with handling from day 1 and excessive handling the entire time. So moving forward, I'm going to follow this advice to barely handle the pups... With this, I will know which ones to keep and breed for the best temperaments I can build onto and which ones are best as pet only. With this, will come price guide adjustments accordinly as well of course.
This also will come with not adopting rats from breeders that have handled from day one or excessively as I wont know if its a 'masked temperament' or not. I'm also sharing this in hopes that other breeders would offer the same with learning this information.
I'm basically going to have to start from scratch with genetic lines as now I have no idea what temperaments are 'masked' from rats I bred myself and handled a ton as pups or from adopting from breeders that have.
Please know that any rats adopted from me this past year is not my lines at all, it's going to take generations of building towards before I can claim or gurantee an amazing temperament line.
I promise to be transparent with all pups I offer for adoption based on my evaluation and their temperament will be included on their I.D cards moving forward once I have new litters born after today.
Adoption prices will be determined based on these factors as well.
I'm also ending solo rat adoption to existing rat homes. I will be enforcing same sex/age range adoptions in 2 or more only. I will be making up an adoption forms agreement as well for certain adoption terms.
If im going to better my rattery, all these changes must take place. It's better for the rats, for me and for you.
Choosing me as a breeder, you'll get full honesty and transparency. You'll also get passion and emotion, I am a reactive person and my love for the animals outweigh everything!
Below I'm going to share an example video this breeder that offered me mentorship sent to me as an example, the kind of temperament to strive for.
