So you are thinking about starting your own colony of tame roof rats. Good. We need more people who are willing to do this, and we will help you however we can.
This page is the honest, step by step version of how you would actually do it, starting with rats from our line. It is not a sales pitch. We do not sell anything, and we give our rats away for free to the right homes. It is just the real story of what is involved, with links to everything else on the site that goes deeper.
One warning before you fall in love with the idea: this is a lot of work, and it is not for everyone. If you get to the bottom of this page and still want to do it, you are probably one of the people we have been looking for.
Step 1: Decide if this is really for you
Be honest with yourself first. Roof rats are not Norway rats (the ordinary "fancy" pet rat). They will not just work things out on their own, and a lot of the advice written for Norway rats is simply wrong for them. Keeping and breeding them well is effectively a second full-time job, just a non-paying one.
Before you do anything else, read these:
- The Project tells you what this is and why we started it.
- What It Takes is the plain list of the time, money, space, and skills involved.
- Lessons From Failures is what tends to go wrong, so you can decide with your eyes open.
If those pages excite you instead of scaring you off, keep going.
Step 2: Find out if it is legal where you live
This matters and it is not the same everywhere. In some places keeping and breeding roof rats is perfectly fine. In others it is restricted, needs a permit, or is banned outright, usually because the law treats the species as wildlife or as an invasive animal rather than as the domesticated pet it has become.
Check your own location before you bring any animal home:
- Start at Roof Rat Laws by Country and State and find your place.
- If you cannot find it, How to Find Your Local Roof Rat Laws walks you through getting the official answer for your country, state, and city.
If the law is in your way, do not give up yet. For many places we have written up exactly who to contact and even a template you can adapt, because the rules were often written without domesticated roof rats in mind, and that is worth pointing out politely to the people who can change them.
Step 3: Start with our rats, and here is why
You can start a colony from wild-type roof rats, but I would not recommend it if you have any other choice. Our rats are tame from birth. That is genetic tameness built up over years of selective breeding, not just animals that got used to being handled. They trace back to Roofy, our original tame roof rat, and every rat we place carries that work forward.
If you start from wild-caught or wild-type animals instead, you are beginning the whole domestication process from scratch. It is harder, slower, and riskier. You may end up with fearful or even aggressive rats, and you could hit the same walls we hit over many years before we got it right (for example, some of our friendliest early males turned out to be behaviorally infertile, which is the kind of problem that can quietly sink a project).
So if you can arrange it, we will help you transport some of our free rats from central Florida (the Orlando area) to you. If you cannot, or you would rather not use ours, that is completely fine. We will still try to help you. Just know that you may run into problems beyond our control that make your project harder and more uncertain.
Step 4: Set up before they arrive
Get the home ready first. A few things we have learned the hard way:
- Choose cages with horizontal bars, not vertical ones. Roof rats climb, and they cannot climb smooth vertical bars or sleep comfortably on bare metal shelves. Give them hammocks, ropes, and ladders.
- Plan for separate cages. If you have more than two or three males and some of them do not get along, you will need more cages to keep the peace. People tell me small cages cause fighting, but trust me: determined males will find each other no matter how big the cage is.
- Keep a separate, smaller-spaced cage ready for nursing mothers.
- Sort out food before they arrive. We feed an 18 percent protein lab block as the base and add a varied mix of treats, because rats on lab blocks alone are probably missing micronutrients they would get from a natural diet. Our feeding guide and the Rat Food and Menu Builder walk you through it.
Step 5: Grow a colony that sustains itself
A real colony is not two pet rats, it is a small population that keeps itself going. For that you will need at least two generations of males (usually in separate cages), and enough animals to keep the line healthy. As the only people breeding these rats, we deliberately keep a large population so the line does not become inbred.
A few hard-won basics:
- Do not handle the babies until they are over a month old, then keep the ones that stay calm and accepting of you rather than struggling to flee. That is how you select for real tameness instead of mere habituation.
- Learn to read them. The Breeder’s Eye is how we judge which rats to keep.
- Understand how they get along, because it is not how Norway rats do. Roof Rat Social Life covers introductions and why the usual "they will work it out" advice does not apply.
Step 6: We will help you
You will not be doing this alone. Reach out through our contact page and tell us about yourself and your situation. The rats are free. What we ask in return is that you take it seriously and care for them the way they deserve.
We do this to honor the rats we have loved and to keep their line alive through their descendants. If nobody else ever carries it on, then everything we have built dies with us, and these wonderful animals go back to being nothing but pests in people’s eyes. That is the whole reason this page exists. If you are one of the few who sees what we see, we would be glad to help you begin.
Ready to begin? The breeder application is the first step. It asks about where you are, your setup, and your experience, so we can figure out together whether this is a fit. The rats are free; taking the work seriously is what we ask.
And before you apply, skim the Successor’s Playbook: the short list of operating rules the work actually runs on.