April 16, 2011 Have a Plan
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?
- 1 comment
- Posted under Uncategorized
Permalink #
doveyrat
said
Health, health, health, health, HEALTH! Of the 14 pets to pass through my life in the last three years from 8 different bloodlines, I’ve had exactly one temperament problem that couldn’t be traced to typical adolescent adjustments common to all mammals, and that one doe was suffering from python-related PTSD, completely understandable.
As for health, on the contrary, I recently figured up my total rattie vet bill for that same period: nearly $3000, representing two tumor removals in a male and the rest all emergency cases of extreme respiratory distress occurring under pristinely hygienic living conditions with a good diet of fresh foods and quality block.
Breeding for strong respiratory health simply MUST be the top priority in the fancy, or vet bills and broken hearts will prove a deal-breaker for most pet owners, the people who make breeding responsibly possible through adoptions of the inevitable “out takes” and “factory seconds” in your breeding programs.
It’s a conundrum, I know, because real resistance to mycoplasmosis and pneumonia doesn’t become apparent until the does, at least, are beyond responsible breeding age. But good record keeping ought to make breeding their daughters a logical response to their strength and longevity. I understand that seeking after good confirmation is a more obvious tradtional priority–and frankly, it’s more satisfying and less daunting for the breeder to tackle this goal–but please make breeding for HEALTH the highest priority until this fatal flaw in the domestic rat is brought under control. You in the breeding sector of the fancy have done an exquisite job producing wonderful temperaments. Poor respiratory health, however, is a bigger threat to the popularity and longevity of the fancy than badly set eyes or poorly defined color points!