the current bongo fury babies! :D

all dumbo in various colours - black and ruby eyed siamese, russian blue and black. they are gorgeous! Most have homes lined up, but summer is always hard for finding good homes for rats we also have two rescue boys who have been looking for a home for weeks If anyone is thinking of rats as a pet, then please, drop me a line, you can have a look at our website and see what they're like as pets first of course!

anyway - babies!!!
here you go!

they are so soft and sweet and laid back too! You can do anything with them!







R. E. Siamese and B. E Siamese:


Russian Blue:


Black:




xx

Oh, aren't they just gorgeous, Laura?
Wonderful photos - thanks for sharing

They're sooo sweet, I'm amazed you can handle them so young!
Becky

oh yes! We handle them from birth - so they become very used to human handling! This enables us to make them squishy and laid back and friendly as adults they are growing so fast too! these pics were taken just now:



The Black Eyed Siamese babies:



The Black babies:



The Ruby Eyed Siamese babies:



The Russian Blue babies:



xx

I thought the mothers may object and abandon (or worse eat) the babies? Rabbits are really bad for doing that if you disturb them too young!
Becky

nope you can usually guage the situation. if the doe has a stressful birth, we tend not to bother the babies until they are a day or so old. Rats are fantastically intelligent and mothers know their own babies even if you do touch them - also, they have a close bond with me, so they don't really mind me touching them

xx

NOT meant as a critisism, but you said what somebody I know said, in "its difficult to find homes for Rats" he doesnt breed from June to October because of this. Can I ask (given you have bred a lot of litters already) why you want more? Seriously interested, as personally, I wouldnt breed if I knew Id have problems finding homes.
Dawn.

we are working on furthering our lines dawn I understand your concerns - by difficult btw i meant that it takes a little longer in the summer - as it happens these babies are pretyt much all lined up now, transport pending I have waiting lists as a general rule, the issue here was that I had more siamese in the ltiter than was expected

We breed to help further the fancy - we are currently the only breeder in the country working on Russian Silver and Russian Silver agouti, to our knowledge anyway, and as a result, we need to truck on. A doe has a very short breeding window - between 6 and 10 months realistically, thus in order to improve lines and make progress in health, type and temperament, you do need to breed a lot of litters - on average, i would say most breeders, ourselves included breed about 5-10 litters a year. some have a few less, some have more, it all depends on your goals, and how many lines you have going. Also, newer breeders have generally more litters at the start as they are founding their own lines. This often settles down when they have an established line to work on.

Most of our waiting list is for top eared rats, and i do get people who contact me many months in advance, and who wait a very long time for babies This litter being dumbo, and with varieties i don't normally breed (siamese) are marginalyl harder to home, but not *hard* to home.

Rescues on the other hand are always hard to home especially the pink eyed ones However, naturally, any that don't find homes stay here for life

hope that answers a few of your questions

xx

laura i know how hard you work at your breeding programme
I myself am the very proud mummy of 4 bongo furry rats,, soon to be 6 as 2 of these little cuteys are mine,, and I can vouch for the fact that laura is an excellent breeder and is working hard to establish happy, healthy lines of fancy rats

Its not easy starting out and unfortuneately there will sometimes be people on your waiting list that drop out and it leaves you in a bit of a predicament but any rats not homed to pet owners are often homed to other breeders or stay with their breeder forever to live out their lives

chin up laura x x x *hugs* x x

Sounds perfectly acceptable to me, best of luck with them. :smt001
Dawn.