Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What's with calling them PEWs and not just albinos? Pink Eyed White sounds like a breeder's marketing ploy to make it sound better than it actually is(that's not to be taken that abinos aren't cool!)

A lot of breeding terms are used to describe the genes. There are also black eyed whites, so pink eyed white or black eyed white would each have different genes. I think that's what it is anyway. I like the term PEW better than albino since watching an episode of Deep Space Nine where Dax went with her former host's Klingon friends to kill an albino Klingon who killed one of the friend's son a long time ago. So now whenever I hear the word "albino" I think of that Klingon. And PEW rats are so much more pleasant to look at! I saw a PEW rex the other day. I wanted him. But I am learning my lesson time and time again that good breeders are the only ones I need to be getting pets from. I lost my wonderful little black and white mouse yesterday. It seems to have been some genetic problem, possibly a sudden heart attack. I've had three other pet store mice die from various things since Christmas, one rat who originally came from a pet store die suddenly at less than 2 years old, and my first three rats, all from pet stores, died within two weeks. This all happened despite excellent care and vet care when needed. My rats and mice from private breeders are all still going strong. I'm in quite a bad mood today since losing my Vivaldi. He was such a little sweetheart.

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Kadee Sedtal

home of old lady Lucy (boxer/lab/garbage disposal), pretty girl Fancy (beagle), Crusher (yorkie), the rats-Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Pachebel, Fillmore, and Franz, the mice- Vivaldi, Schubert, Bartok, Johann, Giordi LaForge, Dorothy, Glenda, Em, and Rosa, and the wonderful winter white dwarf hamster- Feather
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I spent a dollar, because then, yahoo! I'd have all my money back." -Jack Handey

Awww. I love Vivaldi's markings - he was gorgeous. I'm sorry

Where do you find breeders? I have tried to find some but must be looking in all the wrong places.

Kadee
Awww those furbabies in the pics are so pretty!

I can't find breeders where I live either.. not good ones.
Do a google search for rat breeders.. a bunch of lists will come up. You may find someone near you that way.
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PHRatz

Google "RMCA" and "AFRMA". One of them has a breeder listing. If they're on there, they're supposed to follow the code of ethics, which is something I think is important in a breeder. They have to breed to improve. If you can't find any breeders near you, look around for other pet stores. We just found one a couple of weeks ago that we'd never seen before, and they bred their own rodents. They had this absolutely beautiful blue rex dumbo boy, and they had some little blue campbells dwarf hamsters who all wanted to climb into my hand and be held when I put my hand in the cage, they had super sweet little bunnies and birds in huge cages, some were even loose in the store! So was one of the rabbits. I'm so glad to have found that place!! It's about 45 minutes away so look around in other towns nearby too.
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Kadee Sedtal

home of old lady Lucy (boxer/lab/garbage disposal), pretty girl Fancy (beagle), Crusher (yorkie), the rats-Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Pachebel, Fillmore, and Franz, the mice- Vivaldi, Schubert, Bartok, Johann, Giordi LaForge, Dorothy, Glenda, Em, and Rosa, and the wonderful winter white dwarf hamster- Feather
"I wish I had a dollar for every time I spent a dollar, because then, yahoo! I'd have all my money back." -Jack Handey

I donno if you want more info, but Pink-Eyed white is usually the correct term for any white rat with pink eyes. To be called albino it would have to genetically be an albino animal, devoid of any pigment, which looks like a PEW but a real albino is sort of uncommon. I think most feeder rats from straight feeder breeders or Petco/Petsmart rats are albinos because they come from commercial breeding facilities, which is mainly black hooded and albino and that's all they can produce.
If you knew the pedigree of the rat it would be easy to figure out if it was really albino or just a PEW. A PEW is usually a rat that has so many reccessive genes going on it comes out white with pink eyes, so it could have underlying genes. That explains why a lot of the time an "albino" or PEW rat will produce other colors, than just black and white babies (depending on the other parents genes, too).

A good place to find breeders is www.ratster.com I didn't see that listed, but maybe you all know of it.