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Rat shortage?

Lucille

Lucille

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The company I use to order rats is backordered. I looked on the internet and another large national company is out of stock also.
I have requested a quote from another Texas company to cover until my fave company gets stock but is the rodent biz cyclical, just curious.....?
 
The guy I order from wasn't sure if he could fill my whole rat order this time either (he did end up having enough), but when I looked at a couple of other sites, I found the same thing....sold out of certain sized rats until...."

My mice seem to have just come out of a "dry spell" though, seemed like we were awful short on babies for awhile, but we suddenly have lots of them....I blamed it on the screwy Iowa weather, lol. They are in A/C, but it still gets warmer and more humid in there this time of year....
 
Maybe of a demographic area but not

country wide . There was that guy was always advertising in reptile magazines of ongoing year to year rat shortage and even mice that had no bearing of the true truth. Not saying he was false advertising to get sales but...........have any you tried the Alpine Texas guy ? Have you all tried the guy in Topeka Kansas Kelly ? I don't know if they if they have a back log of orders to fill but the are very reasonable on prices and shipping and they do what they say as far as the shipping getting to you while still frozen. We are talking frozen, right ?
 
Supply problems do happen at certain times of the year. When there are a mass of new hatchlings (spring and early summer) it seems like there is a shortage of pinks, fuzzies, etc. Of course, with the weather warming up it is also causing those rodents to warm up & they don't produce as much (or as often it seems). I keep a small group of mice and rats in a storage room in my garage and they haven't done much this summer, hopefully they'll kick it up a notch this fall & winter!
 
old guy said:
country wide . There was that guy was always advertising in reptile magazines of ongoing year to year rat shortage and even mice that had no bearing of the true truth. Not saying he was false advertising to get sales but...........have any you tried the Alpine Texas guy ? Have you all tried the guy in Topeka Kansas Kelly ? I don't know if they if they have a back log of orders to fill but the are very reasonable on prices and shipping and they do what they say as far as the shipping getting to you while still frozen. We are talking frozen, right ?
Click to expand...

Frozen, yes. I have emailed someone here in Houston and another company elsewhere in Texas.
My fave vendor is absolutely top quality and so I believe them when they say they are backordered.

A long shot, but do you suppose that some of the big vendors might have taken a mess o rats to Daytona as advertising and left themselves short at home?
 
A long shot, but do you suppose that some of the big vendors might have taken a mess o rats to Daytona as advertising and left themselves short at home?
Click to expand...

That might be one of the reasons for being backordered. A lot of the vendors are going to be bringing a bunch of stock to sell at Daytona. Plus it may be that production is down. Locally, rats are getting a bit tough to find lately. Large and Jumbo are readily available but the smaller sizes are out in a few places.
 
I tried to place an order from Rodentpro early this week, rat pups on up to mediums or so were all listed as backordered until the 19th (this past Friday). On Friday at 8am EST I logged on and they were available, must have been a short term shortage (well unless they were backordered since well before then but I didn't look into buying until a week ago). Definitely doesn't seem like it was a ploy to jack up prices since they were listed at the regular price I paid last time around.
 
No shortage here in Arizona

I breed my own, and had about 1000 pinkies this month, and the temp outside was 110+ for the last 3 months, and my rat building stayed around 85-88 degrees, but they were still producing...I'm glad i don't buy them anymore, i hate paying those ridiculous shipping prices.. My two cents worth. Mike Leonard..
 
I got my order in from my regular supplier, Big Cheese Rodents, I think it helps to find a high quality company and stick with them, because then they take care of you first as soon as they can. I've learned my lesson though and next time I won't wait until I have no rodents left before ordering a new shipment.

I have thought from time to time about raising rodents but I have a tiny home and don't want to dedicate any of my living space toward doing that. And in order to have an out building, I would incur a fair AC cost as Texas is hotter than **** in the summer.

Besides too my life is very full at the moment and purchasing rodents is one of those necessary conveniences, for me the ease of just defrosting what the snakes need is a luxury worth paying for.
 
That's who I order from too, Lucille. When he said he wasn't sure if he could fill my whole rat order, I looked around a couple other places (which happened to be short on rats too), but he called me to let me know he'd be shipping the full order out....which I thought was super.

We mostly raise our own mice.....my son keeps a colony, and enjoys having them. Rats, however, I find too big and stinky to raise. LOL.
 
Cathy...

You're just the opposite of me. I have one pair of Dumbos (snake food that was "too cute" to bash:) ) that I raise for the pinkies and I really don't mind them. Mice on the other hand were so stinky and smelly to me I fed them all off! Plus the rats don't pee and poop on things like their water bottle and their food dishes.

It is so disgusting to go grab a watter bottle and realize it covered in urine! I change them every other day, so I really don't know what their deal was! Perhaps water and food taste better with urine and feces in them? Blah!
 
Well, I must have had retarded rats then...because they were the messiest, nastiest critters I've ever seen. They pooped and peed on everything, and of course, because of their size, the amount of waste increases proportionally.

I dunno, the mice can be smelly when my son doesn't get them cleaned as he should...but those rats always stunk. And they would BITE ya every time you tried to get in there.
 
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Yeah I noticed RodentPro.com was out of stock on almost every size rat they had yesterday. They are stocked back up now - I'm going to order a bunch as soon as my new chest freezer gets in.

Unfortunately, I have to wait 17-19 days for that. :(
 
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