06/10/2025
One thing about purchasing rats from an ethical breeder is the wait times, you can be waiting many months for babies to become available.
This isn’t always the case but it is fairly common practice throughout the world.
It can be disappointing and frustrating to be waiting for babies only to find out that you’ll need to wait until the next round of pairings due to whatever reason, it’s also disheartening for us breeders to know sometimes we’ll need to let people down who have been waiting ever so patiently.
Longer wait times exist because we try our best to plan who will be appropriate to pair and when, we track and gage what’s happening in our lines and even then no plan is 100% because we can only control so much of what happens.
I really dislike mentioning euthanasia but I value transparency so here we are.
Apologies if I upset anyone who reads this.
Sometimes litters are heavy of one s*x, sometimes more babies need to be held back for opportunities to further variety and overall breeding goals, sometimes unfortunately euthanasia is needed due to illness and or temperament, some breeders prefer to treat and hold back as pets and others prefer euthanasia and some do both which is the case for me personally depending on the rat and situation, other times we just need to reassess and change who will be paired and sometimes there’s failed pregnancies too.
As you can see there’s a whole list of reasons (I’m sure there might be some I’ve missed) that can cause things not to go as initially planned.
Reason for saying this now?
Lani & Puffin litters have been a real mixed bag, I repeated Lani x Ace because the first litter was awesome and I held back the majority who have zero issues to date but her second litter I had to euth two girls..one day seemingly fine the next far from it..another girl is currently being treated for a minor RI so she’ll stay along with one of her sisters.
Puffin having a small litter inclusive of only two girls, one as above to the point euthanasia was appropriate the other being treated but it’s looking like euthanasia is on the cards also..all the boys from both..no sign of anything.
It’s sad and frustrating because I’ve had a good run with no early RI and now this so unfortunately girls available are in very small number which means a few people will unfortunately miss out this round.
There are a couple of other pairings I can bring forward slightly sooner but I’m going to sit on this for a week whilst I go over my notes again.
I will be having surgery to correct my broken wrist which has healed wrong in 3 months time so ideally any extra pairing will be done soon so I don’t have any added pressure the months after surgery so it can heal correctly second time around!
I’ll be checking in with everyone on my waitlist shortly 🙏
