So Licky Rattery

• Our first goal is to produce happy and healthy pet rats for our own family as well as other families in Kansas and Missouri.
• We also want to help establish and maintain a strong rat-loving community in the mid-west.  This includes on-line communication as well as public education and events.
• We will strive to breed rats to the high standards established by previous breeders and rat clubs around the country.  This includes showing our rats in various rat shows so that we can compare them to the standards set before us.
• We strive for openness and honesty in the rat community.  We have found many people in the rat breeding world to be secretive and reclusive.  Our goal is to overcome that stigma by reporting everything on our website so that the public can view it and make an educated decision about us and what we are doing.

• We will never breed a rat that doesn't already have a home waiting for it unless we have room in our home to call it our own.
• We will never cull a litter (kill) for any reason. (We do practice euthanasia when illness/deformity takes away quality of life).  If for any reason we euthanize a rat, we will list it in either the rat's history and/or the litter's history.  We feel that any reason you euthanize or cull a rat is reflective on the breeding line and this should be made public.  We do not respect other ratteries decision to cull a rat and not divulge this information to the rat community.  A rattery should be open about the problems in their lines.  If they cull privately, they are covering these problems up.
• We will not breed rats that we know carry a genetic illness that we cannot breed away from or who's offspring will not be as healthy as possible.
• We will not allow families or individuals that we do not trust to take home our rats.  We will never give a rat to a home that practices live feeding of any animals (with the exception of insects and shrimp).
• We will view all rats in our home as members of our own family.
• The health of our rats will come before any concern for color or good looks.
• We will register all of our rats and try to track their life and health with their new owners as much as possible.  We will report any stillbirths or aborted litters on our website.
• We will always practice quarantine before and after shows, after a vet visit, and with new arrivals.
• We will never knowingly come into contact with other ratteries if we could possibly spread disease from our own rattery.
• Our rats will receive any and all medication and veterinary care that is required.
• We will research and fight all known rat ailments to the best of our ability.

So Licky Rattery is run by Cameron and Tiffany Robbins of Kansas City, Kansas.  We were both raised in small towns with small town ethics and love for animals.  Our only animals right now are our rats.  We consider them to be our family since we do not have children.  We coddle and love each and every rat from the day they enter our home until the day they leave our home.  Our rats are precious to us here at the So Licky Rattery.  They are kept in spacious cages and never crowded.  Their cages are in the living space of our home and not in a garage or basement.  They get handled every day and make wonderful pets.

Even though we adopt out some of our precious babies to good homes, we still consider them to be part of our family.  We also consider the adopter to be part of our family.  We want our adopters to keep us informed of our baby’s health and how they are adjusting.  We will also always be available for questions and assistance to any of our adopters – Please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail us for help.

We no longer do rescues (except in special circumstances) because we have found that rescuing animals usually promotes animals needing rescued.  For example, if you buy a rat from a snake food bin, the snake food breeder just breeds more for snake food.

We've been keeping rats since January 2003.  Our first rat was purchased as an engagement present.  Over several years we had rats of all sorts.  The intelligent, the athletic, the pathetically sweet, and even the rare cold aloof.  We've had our health ups and downs – our wonderful stories and our tragic.  Through it all, our rats became our best friends and our family.

In the fall of 2007, we bought our first house.  We’d been trying to find a good source to get our pet rats from and we were coming up empty.  There was no where for us to get our kids except from irreputable and cruel pet stores (we aren’t condemning all pet stores – just the ones we had access to).  So we began looking into breeding our own rats since we had the room in our new house. Its been a slow and on-going journey.

If you ever have any questions, comments, or concerns about us or our rattery, please don’t hesitate to communicate them to us.  We are very open minded and want to establish our rattery in the best possible light that we can.  We want our adopters to be proud of their rats and where they come from.

Cameron has the most important job here at So Licky Rattery.  He is the rats’ primary care giver.  He gives them tons of individual attention as well as walks around the neighborhood and drives to taco bell.   He also loves creating songs for the rats.  They love when he sings them their songs with their names in it. The rattery wasn’t his idea, but it wouldn’t be possible without him.  He always has the rats best interest in mind and he only sees personality – never looks.  He does the training and playing with the rats.  Cameron is also the cage builder.  He’s always thinking of ingenious new cages and how we can improve on the ones that we have.  He’s very handy.  The rats all love him dearly (even some of the more difficult rescue rats have taken right to him).  Nothing makes our kids happier then when Cameron walks into the room.

I do the paperwork, website, and breeding work that is involved in running a rattery.  Everything that is done on-line for our rattery is done by me; from registration to web master to e-mail correspondence to research.  I spend literally hours every day helping to establish our rattery and make it better.  I keep all files, do all adoption paperwork, and take the photographs.  When it comes to the rats themselves, I’m the coddler.  We all snuggle on the couch each evening and get lots of scrittches and kisses.  I’m the one who makes our breeding contacts and plans any rat shows and trips that we go to.