As with most serious rat owners, I am opposed to rats being sold in, or purchased from, pet shops. I’m often asked why this is, by people online and by those who phone for my rescue services. This page will tell you why.

The main aim of a pet shop is to make money. They are a business, first and foremost.
As such, the animals they have are often not looked after to the standards they should be, the time is not taken to ensure they go to good homes, the staff are often woefully uneducated about that animal's specific requirements and the animals themselves usually come from breeding mills who churn out many animals a year without thought to health, longevity, or the welfare of the animals they're breeding.

Buying a rat from a pet shop is the equivalent of buying a puppy from a puppy farm, with the difference being that the pet shop acts as the middle-man, getting the animals from the mill to you.

For photographs of a rodent mill, please click here. Please be aware that these pictures may be upsetting to some people, but it is the reality of rodent mills. This is where your pet shop bought rat will have started his or her life.

Living conditions: As a pet shop is not intending to house their animals long term, and because large, interesting, cages cost money, rats in pet shops are often kept in enclosures which are too small, on litter that is damaging to their health, and fed on a diet which is not suitable.
There are legal requirements about the amount of space an animal must have, by law, in a pet shop. But unfortunately, these standards are the absolute bare minimum, and not at all anything to aspire to. This means a pet shop can house several rats in a tiny glass aquarium quite legally.
Rats in pet shops are more often than not housed on wood-shavings (again, these are much cheaper than a safe, paper based litter) which are damaging to their respiratory systems and, coupled with the fact that glass tanks provide very poor ventilation and are always housing more rats than is suitable, many pet shop rats have the beginnings of upper respiratory problems before they even go to their new home.

Poor breeding: Because of the need to produce many rats quickly, the conditions these animals are kept in at the rodent mills are often even worse than those at the pet shops. Below is the typical rodent mill cage:

These cages are the same as the ones often used to house rodents in laboratories. In fact, in some of these pictures, the rats in labs seem to have better accommodation.
Below, you will see another genuine rodent mill set up:



Female rats are forced to be continuously pregnant.
As they are usually housed with the males all the time, they can have a 3 week old litter, a new born litter and be pregnant again, all at the same time. The babies she will produce will be undersized, in poor health and usually unhandleable as the first time they ever get picked up properly is when they get to their new homes. Many more babies die before they ever reach the pet shop.
The mother rats die young after a pathetic life where they are no more than breeding machines. They are given no toys, no stimulation, no space to do much else but lay there and produce babies. The rats are fed on sub-par foods, which is even more of a concern when you take into account how much extra nourishment a pregnant/nursing female needs, especially when she is being asked to produce so many babies, continuously.
It should be clear that these are atrocious conditions for any animal to have to live in. However, ask a pet shop where they obtain their animals and they will not tell you it is a place like this. They will usually say 'a local breeder', and try to convince you only a few litters each year are bred and the animals are all fantastically cared for.
Ask if you can meet with these breeders, or see their facilities, and you will be denied.
Do not be fooled by this. Any large chain pet shop will source its animals from a mill, no matter what they tell you; they could not support demand otherwise.

The conditions of the rodent mill aside, the animals they produce are not bred with any considerations in mind. This is why even if your pet shop is a small, local shop that breeds rats itself on the premises, its still not ethical to purchase rats from them.
Unlike a reputable breeder who carefully picks the two healthiest, friendliest rats, from the longest lived genetic lines, with which to breed, the rodent mills simply put a boy and girl together and wait for the babies.
There is no consideration to what they are breeding into the babies, or what health problems the parents might have. Many rodent mill rats are closely inbred, and these are the main reasons rats from pet shops tend to, on average, die younger and suffer more illness than rats from reputable breeders.

The people they sell to: Another problem with pet shops, as if the rodent mills were not enough to turn you off for life, is that they cannot monitor the people they sell their rats to.
A reputable breeder vets all potential homes thoroughly and makes new owners sign a legally binding contract stating they will care for the rat properly, provide it with the correct nutrition, not breed from the animal (in the case of a pet only contract) and most importantly, will return the animal to the breeder if they no longer want it.
Reputable breeders also tend to have waiting lists for rats, sometimes months long, which gives potential new owners the time to consider whether they really want the rat. There is no impulse buying from breeders.
Reputable breeders will keep in contact with the rat's new owner for the duration of the rat's life, keeping records of what, if any, problems occur with that rat.
Pet shops will sell rats to anyone who has the money, do not keep in contact with the owners, do not ask more than a few basic questions at best, and have no real idea where the rat is going to end up.

Although some large chain pet shops now advocate buying rats in pairs, this is certainly not always enforced, and all it takes is for you to say you already have a rat at home and you can walk out with a lone rat.
Although pet shops should not sell animals to anyone under 16 without a parent being present, there are many reported cases where children as young as 13 have been able to walk in and buy a rat, without their parents knowledge. In one of these cases that came to light recently, the children then tried to drown the animal for fun.

Pet shops have no restrictions on whether you can or can't breed their animals, and a good deal of people will buy rats from a pet shop with the aim to breed them and try to make money themselves. This obviously just continues the cycle of more poorly bred, unhealthy rats being brought into the world. The pet shop trade is hugely responsible for the rat over-population problem.
Most rescuers will tell you that 95% of their rats originally came from pet shops. Rats from good breeders virtually never end up in rescue due to the breeder's policy of taking back any rats that end up being unwanted.

Dumbos and top-eared There is a strange phenomenon going on with pet shops, whichstarted with my good friends at Pets At Home as they were one of the first large chains to catch on and begin selling dumbos, that dumbo rats and top eared rats are different species.
They are not.
Both are rattus norvegicus, they are both exactly the same. The only difference is the position of their ears. Its like comparing a Doberman with cropped ears to one without, and saying this makes them a different species or breed.
And yet pet shops commonly tell people that dumbo eared rats and top eared rats cannot live together. This is complete rubbish, as any knowledgeable rat owner will tell you. Saying they cannot live together because of the position of their ears is as ludicrous as saying a white rat and a grey rat can't live together!
The reason pet shops perpetuate this lie is that they, for some reason, charge almost twice as much for dumbo eared rats as they do for top eared. This comes down to the fact that dumbo rats, to most of the general public, are still considered a 'novelty' and people will pay through the nose for them.
Pet shops know this, so they charge twice as much. Telling people that dumbos can't live with top eared ensures that someone buys two dumbos and spends more money. The same applies to hairless, which are also sold at sometimes three times the price of a regular rat.
This is yet another example of how pet shops don't care about anything but making as much money as possible.

Good breeders do not supply pet shops Sometimes people say to me 'but my pet shop gets its rats from a local breeder, not a mill! They told me the breeder is really good!'.
Do not be fooled by this.
NO reputable breeder will ever sell their rats to a pet shop.
If a breeder is selling their babies to a pet shop, they are not reputable. There are no two ways about this, no exceptions.
There are many reasons why good breeders do not supply pet shops.
1. Good breeders keep tabs on their rats and where they end up. They keep in touch with the new owners regularly and get updates on how the rats are doing. They also like to know when the rat dies so they can know longevity of their breeding lines. Good breeders put their heart and soul into the breeding lines. They've often spent years tailoring and perfecting the lines and are, as such, very protective of them and where they end up.
They would not supply their rats to a pet shop as they cannot personally vet the homes or see where their rats are going to go.
Good breeders are personally involved with every single rat they breed. This is simply not possible when you're passing your babies off to a shop to be sold to anyone who walks in.

2. Good breeders are well aware of the huge impact that pet shops have on rescues, and the way the animals are sold like products off a shelf. No good, reputable breeder would support the very idea of buying a life from a shop! They have far more respect for rats than that.

3. In the same way top class dog breeders would not supply their puppies to a pet shop, top rat breeders don't either. The only 'breeders' who sell rats to pet shops are disreputable 'back yard breeders' who don't care much for their animals.

Conclusion: As you can see, pet shops are not about rat welfare as priority, they're about making profit. If they can cut corners, most will.
If they can squeeze a little extra cash out of an animal by selling it as something 'special', they will.
And each time you purchase a rat from these people, your money goes back into the pocket of the rodent mill owner. By buying rats from pet shops, you are supporting and condoning the conditions the rats in the mills live in.
For each rat the shop sells, it frees up the space for one more baby from the mill to come in and take its place. With so many rats sitting in shelters, being abandoned, desperately needing homes, we simply cannot support an industry that is simply adding to over-population in a huge scale.

The vast majority of rats you will find in rescue shelters are originally from pet shops. Due to the fact that just anyone can go in and buy one, on a whim, without fear of anyone 'checking up on them', it is easy for people to get hold of a rat, get bored, and dump it shortly after.
Almost all my rescue rats were originally from pet shops, and most of them were from Pets At Home specifically.
And for those I do not know the background of, its most likely they too were pet shop rats.

An interesting thing to ponder is this: the varieties of rats of I get turn up in my rescue directly relate to the varieties of rats currently being bred in pet shops, and Pets At Home specifically.
When I first began, dumbos were not seen in pet shops, so I never had any dumbo rescues brought to me. Pets At Home began selling them a few years ago, and now I have many dumbo rescues, and have, at one point, had more dumbos than top-ears! So much for them being 'rare'!
Roan rats were not at all common here a few years back. I actually really wanted one many years ago and was prepared to drive halfway across the country to get one from a reputable breeder.
Then the pet shops began breeding them. I currently have more roan rescue rats than any other variety, and roans are the variety most commonly bred by Pets At Home at the moment.
Coincidence? I think not.

Certainly no rats from reputable breeders have ever ended up at my rescue.
This is, again, due to the fact that good breeders will ensure people really want the animal before they let them have it, they ask to have the animal returned to them if it is not wanted; there is simply no reason for an animal from a breeder to end up homeless. It always has somewhere it can go.

Would a pet shop happily take back your rats a year later when your kids have gotten bored? Of course not, because the re-sell profit on adult rats is nil.

What we can do?: So how can you make a stand against this horrible trade? Easy.
Do not give pet shops your money.
This applies not only to buying animals, but try not to buy anything at a store that sells animals, if you can help it. Get your accessories from pet shops which don't sell animals, or from online stores.
Even if you're not buying a rat from them, you are still supporting them if you go in and buy £20 worth of toys and food!
Just as it used to be commonplace to see puppies and kittens in pet shops, but is now a real rarity, so too will it become for rats and other animals if people make it known that they do not want these animals sold like objects.
If you buy a rat from a pet shop because you feel sorry for it, you are ultimately just funding the continuation of this barbaric treatment. The best way to get the pet shops to sit up and realise there is no point in selling animals is to stop paying them for animals.

The only answer to the issue is to boycott shops that sell live animals. Things are slowly changing, with some stores stopping selling certain species due to lack of demand, and if enough people stop buying rats, rats will not be sold.
Yes, it is difficult to walk away from the rats in the shop, and even the best of us have slipped up now and then and bought a rat from a pet shop when we knew better. It can be hard for a rat lover to turn a blind eye to a rat in need. But for each one you buy, another will be demanded from the rat mill to take it's place.