This article is from the Apr. 2023–Oct. 2025 AFRMA Pitter Patter e-news.

By Nicole Housel

Within the rat and mouse hobbies, there’s a strong and pervasive belief that new breeders should be mentored. The details vary, depending on who you ask. Some people think mentoring should take place for a few months, a year, or even several years, before the new breeder can strike it on their own. Usually no thought is given to how long the person has kept rats or their experiences with other animals, they still require a mentor.

I personally never had a mentor. I kept pet rats for about 10 years before I started breeding rats, all of which had been pet store rats (at that time there were not as many breeders around, and it was very normal to just pop over to the pet store to buy your pet). Some of those rats came to me pregnant, so I did raise a few litters now and again, albeit unplanned and unintentional. Throughout my life I have had multiple animals of different species, and at the time I started breeding rats I worked at a horse breeding stable. Online forums were just starting to become popular, and there was some talk about new breeders having mentors, but it wasn’t as religious as it is today. I didn’t start with a mentor, I struck it on my own, read everything I could get my hands on, and just learned as I went.

But now you may be asking what I think new breeders of today should do? My personal opinion on these matters sometimes go against the popular mainstream. I think all breeders should have a network they work with and with whom they can bounce ideas around. Not necessarily a mentorship, but a cooperative network of working together, where ideas are shared openly, and help provided as needed.

Often what I observe in many mentorships of today is more like a dictatorship. The new breeder isn’t allowed to have any ideas of their own, but are told what to do and how to do it. This is a disservice to the new breeder. I do agree with a certain amount of guidance, but the new breeder also needs to be allowed to share new ideas, and work through the intellectual process as well as the physical one. Breeders will make mistakes, there’s no preventing that, ever. The important part is the breeder knows how to recognize those mistakes and learn from them. This learning process prevents mistakes from being repeated.

I personally am not a mentor, at least not in the traditional sense. I am more than happy to work with new breeders and help them to learn, but I am not going to tell them what to do or how to do it. I don’t think this is what a mentorship should be. Instead, the mentor should be telling the new breeder how and why they do things the way they do them, encourage that new breeder to talk to other breeders, and learn for themselves what will work for their breeding program. What works for one does not work for another, and I can think of innumerable examples of this. I think it is important that breeders actually do things in their own way that works for them. That’s what keeps the hobby interesting and fun, instead of becoming old and stale. If normal care and procedure is a constant struggle, the new breeder will quickly lose interest and become burned out. Some will say this is a sign the person shouldn’t be breeding, but I disagree. It just means the current procedure is not working for that breeder, and perhaps the breeder needs to try something different. This doesn’t mean neglect is OK, but it does mean not everyone has to do everything in the same way.

Partly why I feel this way is because I believe actually doing the work is an important part of learning. Some people are visual learners, some are audio learners, and others are tactile learners. Those tactile learners need to go through the motions and actually do it on their own in order to figure it out. Without that process, they’ll be a beginner even beyond the end of their mentorship and never truly understand what it takes to be a breeder until they are on their own. This again isn’t a sign they shouldn’t be a breeder, it just means they learn differently. I am a tactile learner, and very often I cannot pick things up unless I actually do it. This does mean mistakes will be made, and that’s OK. Part of being a breeder is learning from those mistakes, taking responsibility for them, and learning how to avoid them in the future.

Rather than being a dictatorship, mentoring should be a partnership. New breeders should be free to offer ideas, even if they seem foolish at first, and be able to talk through them. Perhaps that new breeder should even be allowed to try those ideas to see if they work. If they don’t, it can open the door for dialogue on why it didn’t work and what can be done next time to improve it. This is how I would be a mentor if anyone approached me for that reason. I am not comfortable saying my way is the only right way, because I recognize different methods work for different people. Instead, I would rather work within a partnership, where I help the new breeder learn and develop their program. Hopefully we’d be able to continue working together and even share lines well into the future.

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