Sunny Birch Rattery

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United States
Gaithersburg, MD
Sunny Birch Rattery

Our focus is on breeding great pets with friendly temperaments and to show others what wonderful pets rats are.
(12)

Despite being the rodent with the most negative stigma, they are easily the most social, smart, and loving small pet one can own.

12/30/2023

Posted for a client, please comment or message if you’re interested!

I am looking to temporarily foster a male rat (preferably 1.5 years of age or younger) for my solo boy (1yr9months) after we unexpectedly had to put his brother down yesterday. We live in the Northern Virginia/DC area. After owning rats for years, we had decided these two boys would be our last. Our surviving baby is very deeply bonded to us, and so we would like for him to live out his golden years with us if possible, but he desperately needs a buddy. He has been successfully introduced to two different generations of rats in the past and has always been a sweet and affectionate rat with both humans and other rats we've owned. We'd love to give him a male companion for whatever time he has left, at which point we would surrender the fostered rat to the original owners. Thank you very much in advance for any help from this lovely community!

07/25/2023

Look at this perfect tuck from a baby in Harrison’s litter produced by Jellybean Rattery.

So excited to see our lines are still being improved on and producing such well tempered little babies.

07/16/2023

Harrison was our last hold back from our final litter and went to a wonderful former client and now rattery Jellybean Rattery.

Look at these beautiful babies he produced! So excited to see what Jellybean Rattery will do with these lines.

07/06/2023

New rattery in MD!

Hey everyone, if you’re looking to support another breeder now that I’ve stopped, please check out Kaitlyn and her rattery.

She’s connected with the other Md breeders and has eagerly been learning and preparing her new rattery. Her ethics are excellent and I’m excited to see her journey progress!

07/02/2023

Hi everyone! Sorry for being MIA.

As I focus on my new house, I’ve decided to stop breeding. Luckily, my lines are still going strong thanks to a breeder in Ohio: Jellybean Rattery. She actually recently had three litters from rats she got from me a few months ago!

I will still be active, although I will not be breeding. PLEASE if you need to rehome rats you got from me, message me! Even though I’m not actively breeding, what was agreed upon in our contract on the application still stands. All rehoming must go through me, please don’t let me find posts rehoming MY RATS on local pages. I have tried to be a supportive breeder throughout all stages of the breeding/ownership process so I would appreciate continued respect in exchange.

I will also be a mod on some local rat groups so I’m happy to provide any knowledge and advice about rat care moving forward.

Thank you everyone for your support these last few years, hopefully I’ll have more new updates in the future 🙂

06/05/2023

PENDING

RATS DUMPED IN PARK NEED HOME

Hi all, a friend of a friend found these rats in Philly and wants to see if she can find them a home before taking to a shelter. All of this is info I’ve picked up from looking at the pics, as the current caretaker isn’t too familiar with rats.

Looks like three females: a Siamese, Russian blue, and black Berkshire. All seem to be fine with being handled judging by the pics. They look small to me, so I’m wondering if they’re young or dwarf. (Most likely young rather than dwarf)

They are currently located in Philly, PA. Please shoot me a message if you’d like me to connect you to the right people! Let’s find these cuties a home!!

Note: I will update this post when they find a home. Unhelpful comments will be deleted, this post is for the purpose of finding a loving home for these babies, not to evaluate whether I correctly IDed them.

01/31/2023

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your patience these last few months.

For the moment, I’m taking a breeding pause. I may have a few litters in the future in order to keep my lines going, but until normal operation picks up it will be slow. If you’re a previous client, I encourage you to join my page ‘Friends of Sunny Birch Rattery’ so you have first access to breeding updates.

Although I will not be breeding as much, I still encourage my clients to find and support ETHICAL, HONEST breeders. Yes, this often means you will have to wait. Two breeders I currently recommend are:

Becca May with Fur Friends Rattery
Amber Lutz with Royal Rodents

Unfortunately, I do not recommend any of the other MD breeders at this time.

If you have any questions about what is considered ethical and/or how to screen breeders please shoot me a message.

Although I have responded to messages on my personal dms as well as phone, I ask that for now you please only try to reach me through my business page or email.

Thank you very much for your continued support!!

12/10/2022

Hi everyone.

This is not official, but I am considering closing my rattery permenantly.

While I took some time off to think about things, I was bombarded with several upsetting and anxiety inducing messages. Although I appreciate my wonderful clients keeping me in the loop and updated, I think I’m reaching my emotional limit. Raising animals with such short life spans is very challenging, and while I must deal with the passing of members of my beloved mischief, I also feel each and every loss that my clients go through. Please don’t feel guilty for keeping me updated about your SBR ratties, I love hearing them! Just sometimes the frequency of bad news regarding short-lived animals can be overwhelming.

Thank you for patience while I figure things out. The past three years with all my wonderful clients and furbabies has been amazing, and I hate to let things go after a few difficult months. I’m hoping for some some improved clarity over the next couple of weeks and am looking forward to hopefully reconnecting with you all.

11/12/2022

Update: thank you everyone for your concern, I’m absolutely fine!! ❤️❤️

Hi everyone.

We are very much in business but will be away from social media for a bit. I have a lot of stressful/scary/exciting things going on in my life right now, and unfortunately have been receiving a lot of triggering messages from clients.

Please know that I want you and your rats to be happy, and hearing otherwise truly breaks my heart. I will be back to support you and give needed advice shortly, but for now, I need to look out for myself.

If you have inquired about adoption recently I will respond within the week, I apologize for the delay. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

11/12/2022

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/11/rat-instictively-move-time-music-ability-previously-thought-uniquely-human-study?fbclid=IwAR1yaKQtFUjTjX0dkWy0V7hrbl9RDbG54A7q5PiINcLtopi646Nk2FuvfEs

Study finds rats instinctively move in time to music – an ability previously thought to be uniquely human

11/11/2022

Little hippos ❤️

11/08/2022

11/08/2022

11/06/2022

One girl and SEVEN boys!!

11/06/2022

Babies getting some pigment!

11/03/2022

Milk belly checks! Look at all that milk!

11/03/2022

This afternoon six boys and 5 girls were born to Gidget!

This will hopefully be the first litter with Downunder I can offer to my clients, so keep your eyes peeled to see how these babies develop!

11/02/2022

Congratulations to Jellybean Rattery in Ohio for their newest addition!

Jellybean has been a longtime supporter of SBR and has been working on, and improving on, a lot of lines we’ve started. We’re super excited to share our Harley line with them and see what they produce :)

10/31/2022

Apologies if anyone has been having trouble getting in contact with my page recently. My app has been laggy lately and some of my messages were sent to spam. Currently working on trying to recover them!

10/28/2022

Where’s all my blazed rat lovers at?!

Even though these babies look very similar, they come in different coat types and ear placements!

These babies turn are ready to go home as early as tomorrow so please shoot me a message if you’d like to learn more about my rattery and these sweet girls.

10/26/2022

Selections start tomorrow for this group of gals that will be ready to go home as early as next Tuesday.

If you’ve considering bringing home some more girls to add to your mischief please send me a message so we can chat!

Please note that none of these can be reserved individually. Selections are conducted in a randomized ‘draft’ format so as a result, I cannot always accommodate those that are very picky and only desiring certain traits.

10/10/2022

Apologies to everyone who has tried to submit an application these past several weeks and haven't been able to get through. Hopefully this new link works:

Address

MD-117
Gaithersburg, MD
20877

Website

https://www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/Ja47e1epbeo

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Videos

Look at this perfect tuck from a baby in Harrison’s litter produced by Jellybean Rattery. So excited to see our lines are still being improved on and producing such well tempered little babies.

Milk belly checks! Look at all that milk!

Orla’s litter is growing hair and looking adorable! Don’t even have their eyes open and already cleaning their little faces

Izzy’s litter.

Frost’s babies will be opening their eyes soon!

Still a little disappointed how much smaller the Harley’s are from their standard haired siblings, but hoping they catch up 🤞

Tiny’s litter is is getting big!!!

Unfortunately several of Orla’s babies passed away, looks like it was mostly the Harley’s which tend to be vulnerable at a young age. Will take a gender count tomorrow and let waitlist members know asap.

Risotto’s litter starting to open their eyes

Such an adorable baby ❤️

Update on Frost’s litter

This may be the cutest video I’ve taken all year. One of the babies from the snowflake litter has been looking a little runty lately, so I’ve been giving him some meds and a little milk to see if I can turn it around (hence why he’s all wet.)

Peepers starting to open! Sorry for the out of focus video.

Trying some ENS (early neurological stimulation) on the Snowflake litter in hopes that some babies will grow up to be decent pets. Early Neurological Stimulation involves applying gentle stressors to a very young animal for short periods of time and is thought to improve their stress responses later in life. Studies also show that rats that are ‘licked’ a lot by their mom during infancy are also better adapted. The paintbrush method mimics this action. I actually tried the paintbrush technique with the last Marten litter I rehomed, and according to their new owners, it really seemed to help their temperament! Here’s a short video of the daily exercises I’ve been doing with Ivy’s litter: ‘licking’, holding in different/unnatural positions for 3-5 seconds each, and tickling the bottom of their feet.