Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

The problem with mine was that....well...... he died and then he came back to life. When he came back he was a mean s.o.b. and continuously ate his own tail and ran his head into the glass over and over and over again. It was the oddest thing. The funny part was I had named his Lazarus.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Ooh, sounds like Pet Cemetery!!!! How did he die, and how did he manage to come back to life?

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Well, I was about 14 or so at the time, and I was playing with my Gerbil, Brian on the couch. My boyfriend came over and lunged onto the couch to hug me and ended up killing Brian So we went to the petstore the next day and he bought me an iguana and a 40 gallon terrarium for him. Lazarus was no fun from the start and he was always biting, very bad tempered little guy. But the vets said he was healthy. After about three weeks of owning him I came home and he was lying in the bottom of the tank. He was completely rigid, nothing would bend, and he wasn't breathing. I assumed he was dead and rigor mortis had just set in. So I wrapped him in a towel and put him in a box in the garage since it was too dark to bury him until morning. The next day my grandfather got in his car and saw a "dinosaur" on his windshield!!!

After that we took him to the vet and he was dumbfounded at how he was living with such a low body temp. We had to force feed him for two weeks to keep him alive, but he was mutilating himself and bashing his head on the glass. After a while the vet offered to take Laz since his wife and him were better suited to care for him.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Wow, that's quite a story. It definately wouldn't be easy to care for a cranky iggie.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

While we're drifting from the original topic, a mean, nasty, thrashy, iguana is perfectly normal. Thats how most of them are. Just one of the reasons why they make terrible pets for most people. They also don't understand the concept of glass. Even a perfectly healthy one will bash its face into glass and do damage to itself. Iguana brains are nothing but a nerve with a knot in it, they figure if they can see through it, why can't they walk through it?

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

lol that's hysterical!!! The thing is I think Lazarus may have been mentally ill. I know Iguanas are more standoffish, but I've lived with my uncle who raises lots of iguanas, and even the mean ones are nothing like this. That's the thing though, humans are not the only creatures who can experiance mental illness, and I really do think there was something wrong with him. Most likely he had a truamatizing "childhood", or caused himself physical brain damage at some point.

 

Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Well, your position is no different from many reptile people. How many people here have a pet corn snake, or grey/black/yellow rat snake, or any other kind of snake? Loads. Well, all those species have and do get fed regularly to king cobras and other snake-eaters.

A close friend of mine here has several king cobras, and the only reason he goes to shows any more is to pick up feeder snakes (corns and other rat snakes mostly). Some breeders give us the "eww, hell no you ain't getting any" attitude, and others are "sure, no problem, kings gotta eat too right?".

Everything ultimately becomes food for something else (even if it's just the worms), but you're right, every living thing deserves a good quality of life while it's still living.

You could get a snake that eats rodents. If you just don't feed the rodents you breed yourself, and buy frozen in bulk, it's no different to that chunk of cow sitting on the plate in the fridge that you're going to have for dinner yourself.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

So the frozen rats don't look like rats? Cause honestly, I don't think I could hold it if it had fur or feet or a face.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Well, I guess it's a bit different than Axe's explanation. The beef on the plate bears no resemblance to the cow it used to be, while the frozen rat is still intact. But food is food.

 

RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Yeah, whether it's an whole animal or part of an animal, it's still an animal

 

rats

hey tess it's me John Sinnott from downers grove

 

RE: rats

my two cents worth...as a breeder of snakes and rats. 1. tis my duty to provide the best care possible, 2. tis my duty to allow you to buy AND decide what is to happen to that animal without my making a moral judgement about you, 3. tis my duty to NOT belong to any group, organization, etc that seems to say "my way or the highway"

 

Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Hey, Tess and All~

Are you surprised to see me here, Tess?

Anyhow I had to jump in here as there is some misinformation in the above quote from Tess. I am a rat breeder and president/co-founder of the Northern Illinois Rat Organization as well as a founding member and board member of the RSA (Rat Society of America). The reason the RSA/NIRO agreements are in place NOT to sell to people who will use the rats as food is NOT because the rat community wants nothing to do with herp folks. That coudln't be further from the truth. The reason that agreement is in place is because as a mature, responsible breeder(wehther you breed rats, dogs, horses or anything in between), you personally work your butt off to do everything right. We all know that there is no money involved in responsible breeding. With every breeding we do, we are hoping to better the species by improving health, temperament, and type. We work hard and we suffer many heartaches along the way when we are trying to achieve these goals. Why would we sell our beloved pets to someone who is just going to turn around and feed them to their snake?

It is not bad or wrong that snakes eat rodents. That is nature. That is life. Herp people are not bad because they feed their snakes the diet they were intended to consume. The rat community has no problems with herp owners and I want to make that clear.

If herp people were spending all their time/effort/money tyring to reproduce the best pet snakes they could, I'm sure they woudn't want to sell their babies to someone who would just use them as food.

It's about your goals for breeding, Tess, and WHY you breed. That is why responsible fancy rat breeders (you can breed feeders responsibly, too--just clearing that up), will not sell their babies as food nor will they cull the majority of a litter in order to provide "ethical" food for snakes. If you have a litter of 10 baby rats and you keep 2 and cull 8 by sending them off to a snake friend to feed to their pets, you are culling 80% of your breeding. How are you ever going to be able to track health and temperament if you cull the litter? If you breed because you love rats as the amazing pets they are and you want to share them with others and you want to better the species with every breeding you do, how can you possibly keep an honest record of your successes/failures if you are only working with 20% of your stock? That is why the North American Rat Registry was created. We wanted to have a database--nationwide--where we could all track health, temperament, etc. on all the lines we breed. You can't cull 8 babies and then have the 2 remaining ones live to be 3 and claim that there is no cancer in that line, etc. becuase you will never really know what would have become of the ones that never lived.

I know I'm long-winded here. If anyone has stuck with me to this point, I thank you!

Just wanted to let you all know that the rat community does not think that owning snakes or other reptiles makes you a horrible person. I'm an animal lover and am fascinated by all animals and want all of them to be treated humanely---rat, sanke, dog, etc. I also know that snakes eat certain foods and that is just a simple fact of life. Don't think anyone is going to be able to train their Boa to be a vegan.

If you breed anything in order to better the species or the breed, you will not cull healthy, viable offspring. It will sabatoge your entire breeding program.

If you humanely breed feeders for your reptiles, that is not bad either.

There are two different breeders at work here with 2 different goals in mind. Doing things humanely and responsibly are probably the only 2 goals they share. The reasons they are breeding vastly differ and that is why you can't really have it both ways, Tess--if you really care about the lines you are trying to establish.

Thanks for letting me share. Now...go hug your snakes...or look at them..or feed them or whatever you do with them. lol

Claudia Nix
http://www.niro-usa.org

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Wonderful post, Claudia!

 

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Thanks for chiming in Claudia. I truly appreciate your open mind and your understanding of the reality of keeping snakes. As people who love their pets we all understand exactly where you are coming from.

 

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you see i always thought that the rat community would never really like the snake community but now i realise how wrong i was, i think its good that everyone can see it from each others point of view and get along,
btw great post Claudia!!!!!
it sound like you all know tess.

 

Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

actually i kinda disagree with that rat assosiation about not selling feeders for herps well all animals got to eat just think how many cows are being killed for our food anyway i hope you see my point

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Well, the point she is trying to make is that you either breed for pets, or you breed for food. You can't have both. She already said that feeding rats to snakes is a fact of life, but to a pet rat breeder trying to make the healthiest, best pet rats available, it wouldn't make sense to sell them for food.
I think the point Tess is trying to make, is if a rat or 2 has temperament problems, and you don't want to breed them anyways, why not sell them as food? I really don't think she wanted to take 80% of her litter, and sell them as pinkies, without finding out if there is anything wrong with them....

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

True. It's not so much the idea of just "getting rid of babies", I find that appalling. To be quite honest, I find the idea of giving up ANY of my babies to be eaten as disgusting. But this whole talk is not about trying to convince breeders to sell their babies as food, I'm just trying to get an idea of what would happen. If breeders did make this choice for themselves, would it make any impact on the rat mills which treat their animals badly? Would seeing herpe owners decide that they would rather buy from humane breeders jolt more wholesale companies into humane treatment in order to "win back" their customers?

I'm just trying to keep an open mind about things, and see if this choice would add to something good, or if it wouldn't matter in the long run anyways.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Fancy Rat Breeder looking for Feedback

Personally, I would prefer to know that the rats are healthy, and that is mainly why we breed ourselves. And it is more convenient than having frozen ones shipped. Of course pet quality breeders would have healthier animals, because they care.