Pretoria Rattery

13/08/2024

At Littlefoot and Pretoria ratteries, we are taking the responsibility of breeding quality companion animals very seriously. As part of a small group of breeders who still continue to raise pet rats in a home environment, we are committed to providing them with a quality diet, care and husbandry so they are as healthy and as socialized as possible at the time they go to their new pet homes. We also keep records to improve on health, temperament and longevity.

We do however expect potential pet owners to demonstrate the same level of commitment. This includes not returning rats after a few months due to loss of interest. Rats "not getting the attention they deserve" is not a valid excuse. Relative to other pets, rats don't live as long and it is fairly easy to supply them with an enriched environment at times you are too busy to give them personal attention.

Honouring reservations is also becoming a huge problem. People are cancelling on the day of collection, after we had to keep them for an additional period of time or they simply stop to respond while final arrangements are made.
Such cancellations affect other potential adopters and are particularly challenging given the limited number of rats we have available each year.

Please do not reserve rats on our sales group if you are not committed to follow through on reservations, if you do not plan to let them live out their lives with you or if you do not intend to give them the best quality life possible.

10/06/2024

ALL PUPS HOMED.
Join the whatsapp group in the pinned post if you want to receive updates on available pups.

09/06/2024

When you have the prettiest teeth, the best balance or the cutest belly spot, and you simply have to show it off...

01/06/2024

My rats chewing something they shouldn't and waiting for me to react...

The life adventure of beavers: They cut down trees and build dams, where they build their nests and live their lives.

29/05/2024

Reading a discussion on a pet rat group about how to limit smells with rat cages, I saw all the advice I used to follow which just wasted time and money.
Cleaning daily is always the no 1 tip, but it is the equivalent of using a bucket to keep a leaking ship afloat. You just end up scrubbing cages where you could have spend valuable time with your rats.
Air purifiers are not the solution either.

Sadly it took me decades to figure out the best setup as I was influenced by poor advice I followed in the rat community.

So this is the best advice I can give:
○Litter box train your rats. This is life changing for any rat owner!
○Use absorbent litter like wooden pellets or kiln dried shavings in the litter boxes. Pine inhibits the formation of ammonia keeping your rats healthier.
○Use F10 or something similar to clean the bars and levels as it kills bacteria causing the odor.
○Remove all fleece, especially the level covers. It smells even when changed daily.
👇
○As soon as you can, convert to a naturalistic/ bioactive setup. No I don't use CUC anymore, but the deep coco peat base and wooden pellets in litter boxes means I currently have 10 adult rats living in my living room with zero smell and I clean once a week.
With 3 rats on fleece I cleaned daily and couldn't stand the smell. Wasted money on air purifiers while it was as easy as starting with removing the fleece.

This setup also increases humidity around your rats which limits allergies and sneezing in rats. So, since I converted to bioactive in 2020, I haven't had one rat back at the vet for a respiratory issue! And I ALWAYS had rats on meds and nebulizers.
We didn't know it at the time, but we killed our own rats with fleece while blaming mycoplasma and "poor genetics".

24/03/2024

22/03/2024

Early morning flight with our favorite pet travel agency.

04/03/2024

We are celebrating the 10th year of mixing our own rattery grain mix!

The recipe underwent it's last major "face-lift" at the end of 2019 when we finally replaced all the processed ingredients with natural, unprocessed alternatives.

The FREE recipes have always been available online for personal use.
Just note that this mix must be fed in combination with a daily fresh diet of vegetables, fruit and herbs with added protein like egg, fish, chicken or yoghurt a few times a week.

01/03/2024

26/02/2024

My FAVORITE coat type!!
Standard coat rats must have a dense, shiny coat with hair lying flat. It should have no rusting.
It is easy to determine the rats condition (health and diet) by looking at the coat.

19/02/2024

Happy birthday Willie Mostert from Rat Angels - Rat and Rodent Rescue
Hope you are spoiled rotten!

"Happy Birthday" played by eight very talented and musical mice! ...well, seven talented mice and one not quite so musical mouse!- - -See my new animation ab...

16/02/2024

Coat Types
REX

WHAT IS A REX RAT?
Rex rats have hair that is curly. They can be any colour or marking and the density and extent of their curl can vary from barely noticeable to tightly curled. Their whiskers are also curly.

ORIGIN OF THE REX RAT
Rex rats were first bred in England by geneticist Roy Robinson. The variety was standardised by the NFRS in the same year.[1]
Three Rex rats were exported to the USA in 1983 where several breeders, including Geri Hauser and Karin Robbins from AFRMA, worked with the variety.[1]
In 2005, fancy rats were exported from the USA to South Africa. One of the rats was a Rex rat called Teddy.[2] Unfortunately, Teddy was infertile and Rex could never be bred in RSA.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT TEDDY
Teddy was an Australian beige (Red eyed dilute) hooded downunder tailless Rex.
He was born July 2005 at Bonnies Friendly Furries in the USA. We did not receive a pedigree for Teddy but we know he was closely related to Loki and Minky, all from the downunder and tailless lines which had fertility issues. Sadly, the entire line was lost soon after the import.

GENETICS AND BREEDING
Rex is a dominant gene where you only need one parent and copy of the gene to produce more Rex. When the gene doubles up, the rat may have a patchy or even hairless appearance. (Drex or Double Rex).
Most Rex pups start out with a curly sheep-like coat but most unfortunately lose their curl once they change into their adult coat at 6-7 weeks.
Sometimes the curl improves after 7 months of age.
There are 5 different genes causing curly or wavy coats. The code for the dominant Rex gene is Cu-1 with
Cu-1/Cu-1 rats producing double Rex (hairless / patchy) coats, Cu-1/cu-1 producing Rex and cu-1/cu-1 rats will have a standard coat.

HEALTH PROBLEMS
Rex rats have no known health issues but curly eyelashes may irritate the eyes.

[1] AFRMA Rex Rats https://www.afrma.org/rexrat.htm
[2] Interview (2014) with Annalie Prinsloo, the geneticist who wrote the RSA pet rat breeding standards and who worked on developing the first fancy rat lines after the 2005/6 import.

Photo credit: Annalie Prinsloo from Aurora rattery. (2006)

07/02/2024

23/12/2023

I use mainly quail and pekin eggs as a protein source for my rats. I have had many inquiries about the availability of quail eggs or hens, but I only keep a few birds to supply myself and my animals of eggs.
I may have a few extra birds or eggs available from time to time, but rather contact some of my friends who do breed and sell birds and/or eggs on a more regular basis.
Follow the link below:

Some of my friends breed and sell poultry. Below are links to their pages.
It is possible for most of them to courier animals and/or eggs to other provinces.

Pipsqueek pet chickens in Cape Town breeding pet chickens. Mainly Wyandotte, Silkies and quail.

Lamington View Hatchery in Underberg, KZN focus on meat and egg producers for a self-sufficient lifestyle. She breeds various chickens and quail.

Hooggenoeg Rabbitry is in Centurion and breeds Silkies (and amazing rabbits).

Running Ducks in Pretoria GP has awesome show quality runner ducks.

The African Micro Farm in Centurion GP for quail and edible / fertilized quail eggs.

🥚 🥚 🥚

I got my quail and pekins from Pipsqueek pet chickens as well as the following breeders. Definitely support them for high quality poultry.

Quailish in Pretoria North for jumbo and other Coturnix quail. Good prices, good quality!

Vere met kleure - Bantam Pekins / Pheasants / Guinea Fowls for the absolute prettiest Pekin bantam. Show and pet quality available.

21/12/2023

Two herbs I use in my rattery as well
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=880121600485547&id=100054631440892&mibextid=Nif5oz

18/12/2023

08/12/2023

Many changes have taken place at Pretoria and Littlefoot rattery this year.
We have been co-breeding for the past few years but have now worked towards completely merging our lines and breeding programs.

When breeding multiple varieties and keeping bucks and does from each breeding cycle, breeders sometimes end up with far too many rats. Rehoming and euthanizing of ex-breeders are not an option for us and we really want to keep our numbers down so our rats too can be spoiled pets instead of ‘breeding stock’.

We decided to keep compatible varieties which could be bred in a single line. On top of that, each rattery only keeps one gender so we may have less rats, less cages or at least more free roam time where all our rats can be taken out at the same time. So, from the start of this year, all females went to Littlefoot rattery and the males, to Pretoria rattery.
We meet up every 6 to 8 months to evaluate, discuss and choose our next generation to breed. We still have breeding cages at each rattery where we share the responsibility of raising pups.

WHAT ARE WE CURRENTLY BREEDING?
We have combined several unrelated lines, followed by inbreeding to test the line and to cement in certain traits. We are now ready to maintain the line by using spiral breeding.
Our line produces Agouti, Black, Russian blue, UK Mink and Pearl. Markings include variegated, recessive blazed, Essex and Berkshire. We aim to breed only standard coat in Dumbo and Standard ear. Our main focus for the selection of breeding stock is temperament and health so specific varieties cannot be guaranteed in a litter, but we constantly have the above coming out in our litters.

METHOD OF BREEDING
In 2024 we are switching over to spiral breeding where we will breed three litters simultaneously. Ideally, a rat will only be bred once with their offspring replacing them in the next generation.
Our first breeding cycle will take place between February and March 2024 and the 2nd breeding cycle about 8 months later. Only the Essex litter will still be bred separately. We plan on only breeding one Essex litter per year until we can merge this variety with our main line, or hand it over to another breeder.

Below is more information about breeding methods and specifically SPIRAL BREEDING which we will be using at our ratteries from now on.

• CROSSBREEDING – This is where unrelated rats are bred at the start of a new line or to introduce new genetics to an existing line. Continuous crossbreeding may add genetic health and temperament issues to the line and may lead to a lack of progression and unpredictable outcomes.
• INBREEDING – This is the breeding of closely related rats like siblings, father and daughter or mother and son. This is to test a line for possible health and temperament issues after crossbreeding, or to breed in order to express a recessive trait. Continuous inbreeding may lead to genetic depression or amplifying of faults in the line if selection is done poorly.
• LINEBREEDING – This is where further related rats are bred like cousins or an uncle and niece. Linebreeding may be done continuously to maintain a line, but may still lead to genetic depression with a genetic flaw or infertility surfacing a few generations later.
• SPIRAL BREEDING – This is a breeding method more often used by poultry farmers and a fairly new concept in pet rodent breeding. The rats are bred in a controlled method in a spiral or helical pattern. A minimum of three breeding groups are established. Females always remain in their breeding group and are replaced by their daughters. Males are moved to the next breeding group between each breeding cycle.

The advantages of spiral breeding include the following:
• This method increases genetic diversity without adding new rats to the line and risk adding new health or temperament issues.
• It decreases the chance for genetic depression by promoting genetic mixing in a more sophisticated manner.
• Breeders can focus on developing a line with more specific and desirable traits, ultimately improving the quality of rats.

Unfortunately, we will not have total control over specific markings and colours as we will prioritise breeding rats with better temperament.
We will only have a limited number of rats available to the public due to breeding only three litters every 8 months.
Breeding later allows our rats to be fully grown before breeding and gives us more time to properly evaluate them for health and temperament prior to breeding. In our experience, older females are usually better moms and the quality of pups are much better than females bred at 4 months or when bred multiple times.

We won’t be keeping a waiting list and available rats will be advertised on the WhatsApp group and sold to the first approved* adopter.
The 2024 SARBU price list is attached to this post. Our rats are sold in same gender pairs (R400) or trios (R500). We do not ask more for a specific variety as the price should be linked to the health and temperament of the animal and the variety simply be the personal preference of the breeder and adopter. The price includes a pedigree, parasite treatment, care guide and a sample of food.

We will post updates on our selected breeder rats for 2024 in the new year. Have a blessed Christmas with family, friends and the furkids!

24/10/2023

I am reviving the old Whimsical Cavies page as a new platform to create awareness about RVHD in RSA and the general care of rabbits.

Feel free to join if you are a rabbit owner:
https://www.facebook.com/WhimsicalRabbits?mibextid=ZbWKwL

18/10/2023

Not rat related, but this is pretty serious.
VHD is spreading like wildfire through South Africa at the moment, with most infected colonies having a 100% mortality.
Rabbits are dying by the thousands with new cases reported daily.
If you are a rabbit rescue or breeder, lock down for the next few months to slow down the spread of the virus.
Don't support pet stores selling rabbits or pet courier companies still transporting rabbits.
Definitely DONT support classifieds ads.

Vaccinating a few pet rabbits is not going to make a difference while people are still sending rabbits all over RSA on a daily basis.

Our wild populations of rabbits and hares are also dying off. What we lose, we will never get back again.

All of these species faces extinction with the rapid spread of RHDV and Nature Conservation and our government is not forthcoming in supporting the stop of RHD or even proper information spreading.

13/10/2023

Safe flight ratties.
Thank you BidAir Cargo PetLounge

LittleFoot Rattery Cape Town Rattery

13/10/2023

Follow this link:
https://ronelrat.wixsite.com/ptarattery/sales

UPDATE: All pups homed.

09/10/2023

Join the broadcast group for available rats:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/KlSR2XnoFqU9WKTIZhs5aV
Unfortunately waiting lists doesn't work if you only have a very limited amount of pups available per year.
You need a suitable setup before reserving pups. Contact Rat Angels - Rat and Rodent Rescue or Pet Mania if you need cages or accessories.
Pet rats are only placed in same gender pairs. No single rats.

13/09/2023

Caryn Ferriére

06/09/2023

‘We need more quality breeders. We don’t need breeders that are just going to breed anything to anything. Everyone can make more Crème d’Argents. Everybody can up the number of the breed but not everybody can improve the quality of them.’
- Tiffany, Teal Stone Homestead