Farmhouse Rats - About Me

Hello, my name is Kate, I'm happy to welcome you to my site. I have been a pet rat owner since 1998, and I adopted my first pedigreed pet rats in 2008. Meeting these rats was what inspired me to become a breeder myself. The choice to breed rats was one I made with great consideration and thought. I have committed myself to doing everything I can to improve peoples' perceptions of rats. I plan to always share my life with rats, and do my best to advance the species through selective breeding.

While I am fairly new to the world of rat breeding, I have a background in livestock breeding. I maintained and showed a herd of American Alpine dairy goats for over 10 years. Breeding goats has taught me the importance of proper nutrition, good husbandry, and careful selection in a breeding program. It has exposed me to the hard work, dedication, and emotional stress that comes with breeding any type of animal.

I breed rats in order to better the species as a whole. While, of course, I love rats that is NOT the reason I breed. My goal is to create my own line of healthy, social, and long-lived pets. It is my personal mission to educate others and spread the joy of rat ownership. While my breeding goals are the most important focus for me, I also highly value my pet placed animals and pet adopters. Breeding great pets for others is a highly rewarding and integral part of my breeding program.

I think of my breeding program as an unending learning process. I can always try harder to breed better and to learn more. I constantly strive towards increasing my knowledge and experience and use them to make improvements in my breeding program as well as in my rats' quality of life. I personally feel my rats deserve the best, and I provide them with that. Housing, feeding, and caring for my rats is expensive and emotionally and physically taxing. Creating life is a huge responsibility and should never be taken lightly. In bringing these beautiful creatures into the world, I'm dedicated to, and ultimately responsible for, every single one of them.

My Goals

I breed rats to be the best possible human companions. My foremost goals, therefore, are healthy, well tempered rats. I believe these two traits are the most important of all when breeding an animal intended as a pet. I will only breed from animals who are healthy and who have outstanding, friendly, stable temperaments. I will also consider the health and temperament of the animals relatives before breeding it. I would consider ending a breeding line if significant problems in these areas occurred.

I do believe in breeding for the "whole rat." Proper type and markings are also important goals of my breeding program. I hope to improve upon type and markings of my rats over the upcoming generations, with the goal of having show quality babies being born in all of my litters. I do not believe in breeding "just for pets" and ignoring the issues of color, type and markings in breeding plans. I am breeding towards perfect self marked rats in my Siamese line, with dark, rich points and shading. While it may be a long process, we will work to breed show quality Downunder markings in our mostly separate Downunder line.

My Goals, Defined

Healthy, Hardy, Robust	Rats should live in a state of physical, mental, and social well being. Their lives should ideally be free from illness and infirmity. My rat colony will undergo annual serology testing through RADIL to ensure that it is healthy and not harboring disease.
Friendly, Stable Temperaments	Rats should be friendly, not fearful, adaptable, flexible and forgiving. Rats should never, ever bite. Rats should also be easy to handle, trusting, curious, alert and tolerant. Rats must also co-exist peacefully with their cagemates.
Long Lived	The average lifespan for a fancy rat is 2-3 years. We hope to breed rats who live 3 years and longer. This is a long term goal. I hope to achieve it by registering all FHR babies and tracking the lifespan of every single rat bred or produced here.
Proper Type	Type is another word for the conformation of an animal. Proper conformation not only makes an animal more attractive, but also contributes to good health. We are breeding our rats to meet the United Rat Standard.
Correct Markings	"Markings" refer to the pattern (or lack thereof) of colors existing on the rats coat. We hope to breed perfect Self (no white) rats in our Siamese line and to eventually breed show quality Downunder markings in our Downunder line.
Consistency	Consistency means "Constantly adhering to the same principle, form or course." What this means in terms or my rat breeding, is that every rat produced here should conform to the standards and goals listed above. Instead of having litters where there are some shyer rats, and some more outgoing, I would like to produce litters where all the babies have similar personalities, where NONE are shy or pushy. I would like to produce rats which ALL have wonderful, calm, stable personalities, long healthy lives, correct type and proper markings.