Ok, firstly I am looking for a breeder of beautifully temperamented
Ratties available to WA with showing/breeding potential. If anyone
has any recommendations please let me know.

As to those people making grand statements about excessive rat
breeding, I have a few points to make as you are clearly
misunderstanding quite a few things.

Breeding any animal should be about improving that breed. Both with
regard to temperament and conformation. You will find that almost all
your dumped rats are from backyard-breeder backgrounds (either from
the 'breeder' themselves or through a pet store) and are dumped by
OWNERS who are un-informed, ill-equipped or just plain lazy.


Part of a breeders/sellers responsibility is to TRY to make sure that
the buyers are making well informed choices. That is what breeding
associations are in place for, to present a set of rules and
regulations to make sure that breed standards are met and to ensure
that the buyers are getting quality animals. Associations provide a
degree of control/regulation of their species.


Now you are trying to tell the people here to 'stop breeding' Do you
honestly think that that will solve the problem? If the public
doesn't have easy access to animals they know are QUALITY, they are
going to settle for backyard-breeding stock, animals that are bred
without ANY knowledge of breeding lines or consideration of
temperament, animals that are bred indiscriminately and probably
constantly, usually without regard to the health of the mother.


The more people there are dedicated to a high quality of breeding,
the more the public will demand quality animals. As a result backyard-
breeders will get less business, no business, no profit, no profit,
no backyard-breeding.

The solution is not to 'stop breeding' but to raise awareness with
events like shows and demonstrations, putting brochures and
information in petstores like the WA Ferret society do. People need
to know that these asscociations exist and that they can actually get
rats from registered breeders.


As a side note I would like to state for the record that I actually
work for a petstore, one that I feel has high standards (before you
ask, no, we dont actually sell rats in our store, mostly due to local
council regulations...apparently rats are considered to be vermin by
our local un-informed council :P) and we are dedicated to providing
information and advice on all types of pets.


We are actually changing managers soon, so I am going to speak to my
new boss about possibly holding a 'rat day' where maybe some of you
breeders can come in and talk to people and bring in some of your
little ones for them to see. I think she would be very interested. I
will post more information on this if she agrees.

Anyway, if you happen to live in Perth, feel free to drop
past 'Morley Pets Paradise' for a chat, my name is Christine.