Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am getting moved from NC to CA, litteraly coast to coast. I have a small colony of rats and 2 femals rabits.
I think I have a good plan for the rabits, a large dog carier but what can I use for the rats??? I have about 60 rats I need to transport. I will be stopping at hotels for the night and plan to bring them in.. Space is limmited although my truck will be the "animal" truck while my wife's van will be the "people" hauler..
Thanks..
Blue

>>I am getting moved from NC to CA, litteraly coast to coast. I have a small colony of rats and 2 femals rabits.
>>I think I have a good plan for the rabits, a large dog carier but what can I use for the rats??? I have about 60 rats I need to transport. I will be stopping at hotels for the night and plan to bring them in.. Space is limmited although my truck will be the "animal" truck while my wife's van will be the "people" hauler..
>> Thanks..
>>Blue

You have my sympathies. I would NOT want to be anywhere near 60 rats packed for transport. They are gonna stink and stress. Maybe some of the lower height cat carriers? Veges for fluid ....but they will just stink more. Yuck, man.....have fun.
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Sonya

I'm not mean. You're just a sissy.
Happy Bunny

Haha.. Thanks.. I figure it's going to be fairly nasty. I plan to clean boxes every night. I have them in a "normal" tub rack now and a friend told me to stick the entire rack in the trailer (a 6'x12'). I think it might be too hot in there, even if I open the back up at every stop (the van will have a 2 year old in it, so I am still getting a better deal I think but there will be PLENTY of stops....)
My last solution is to hold back some of my power breeder females and a good male (all my males are lazy, won't do anything without Barry White and frozen black berries..) and start over in CA. - All the rats will still make the trip, some will just be cool and comfy, some will be real cold..
On the plus side to this, I did hold back alot of females from last month's litters, so, I have smaller females to transport...
-Blue

Probably easier to just cull all the rats and get more once you are settled in. The stress of traveling will be hard enough on the rats, and I doubt too many hotels will want 60 rats in their rooms over night.

Your best bet is to freeze them all, then ship them to your new home or just sell them and buy new stock once you arrive. Its not easy to keep things frozen in a cooler either.
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PHLdyPayne

Well after the move from hell - this is how it went down.
I culed most of the rats. The begining of June marked a rotation date for most of my female rats so I had a small herd of 12 on hand, all from great producers. I held back one male albino whose mother was a seal point and his mother, for a pet project. I scrubbed out the most solid rack I had, a 6 level and packed the live rats in mouse cages. They all rode in the truck with me and two rabbits and about 60 snakes. They were nervous....
The frozen end, I packed all the frozen in a new cooler that has a 5 day ice life. I used dry ice to keep things solid. This worked for about a week. I schedued all my overnights near a place that had dry ice with the intent to re-ice the cooler every night. This failed on night one as my first stop had run out of dry ice in 1998 and never re-ordered..... The frozen rodents were not lost though! I donated them to a side of the road attraction that had reptiles (South of the Boarder on I-95 at the boarder of South and North Carolina)..
All the live made it and the frozen are in use.. So I am counting this plan as a 80% sucess.. I still had to hit LLL reptile up for 25 rat pups the other day.....
-Blue