Bao Varakhii Rattery

Oh wait… no. It’s not a secret.

I started breeding rats in 1994. In that time, lots and lots has changed about the rat-fancy and the world. We know a lot more now than we did then! The internet is actually open and accessible and full of information now, instead of being enclaved and restricted to majordomo lists and BBS message boards. New medical and nutritional information is available. There’s actually pedigreed rats widely available now. More and more ratteries are keeping open health information on their websites and updating NARR.

That means that as those times were changing, I did a lot of things I wouldn’t do now. I’m not ashamed of them. Some of them were just the way we did things back then. Some of them, I didn’t have the information to know better. Some of them illustrated to me why I never want to do it again. That’s what all those years of experience mean.

When I recovered my rattery after my divorce and re-started it with quality pedigreed rats, the fact that I, for many years, bred with petstore rats was never a secret. It’s not a secret now. Look to any rattery that started in 2000 or earlier, and you will find that 99% of them did. Does that mean it’s still okay to do? I don’t support the practice, no. Just because we used to keep slaves and prevent women from voting and rub cocaine on baby’s gums to soothe their teething pains doesn’t mean we should do that now, either.

The information is on my page if you want to look at it. You can see my past litters. You can see my Bridge pages.  You can go back in this blog! You can see the mistakes I’ve made and the places I’ve pushed through and the places I’ve given up. They’re not secrets either.

I’ve mentored TWO ratteries. The FarStar Rattery and So Licky Rattery. Anyone else who says I’m mentoring them isn’t telling the truth. I’ve been more than happy to act as a sounding board for my other breeder friends when they’re contemplating this or that – as they have acted to me – but as for actual mentoring, so far it is just FarStar and So Licky. No one else.

I’ve never culled, I’ve never bred feeders, and I’ve never re-homed retired breeders. I don’t euthanize healthy “hayburners” I’ve decided not to use in my breeding program. I don’t keep my rats outdoors. My rattery isn’t a secret, and my rats are happy and healthy – ask my vet! Her contact information is available on my site!

Do you have a question? Feel free to ask! I’ll be more than glad to answer!

Okay, so we all know there are a lot of ratteries out there doing their thing, breeding rats, getting results. Some of them are successful, some less so, but one of the things that I find most helpful in establishing actual bloodlines and reaching goals is to have a plan – and stick to it!

Of course, that sounds easy, and if you look at my recent blog history, you can see several detours and sidesteps I’ve had to make in my recent breeding plans. You might say, well, I’m clearly not sticking to MY plans! But the plans should always have room to maneuver for reasons of health, temperament, or the like. But the plans themselves should stay as close to your original as possible.

Why bother to have plans, you might ask? Because plans are the easiest – maybe the only – way to make sure you’re not overbreeding.

There was a period in my breeding program where I had no plan. When I had healthy females that I thought were high quality and who might produce what I wanted, if I noticed they were in heat and I had space for the litter, they got bred. I don’t even know if it was a “breeding program,” at that point, so much as just producing rats. They were good rats, all of them were fine pets and enriched the lives of their adopters, but they didn’t really move my goals forward very much compared to how many of them I was producing.

You should always have a goal in mind as you breed – and since health and temperament are a given, not goals – those will tend to be in color, conformation, and longevity. Sit down with your breeding population and ask yourself who the real stars are. Figure out who they need to be bred to in order to actually move your plans forward. Don’t do breedings because you just feel like you need more baby rats, do them for very specific reasons and with very specific goals in mind.

For every breeding you do that doesn’t move your goals forward, re-evaluate. Figure out what you can do in order to salvage it. Stay as close to your original plans as you can, but don’t be afraid to detour a bit – as long as you know where the detour is going and how to get back to the main road again. And any time you see a breeding in your plans that is “just because” and you can’t really think of a specific reason you want those babies, you just do… reevaluate. Do you really need that breeding?