Last week marked the start of something special, a group of 77 rats were picked up from the University of Auckland and were taken to the HUHA Sanctuary in Wellington where they will be desexed and prepped for their new homes.

This exciting opportunity marks the start of an official collaboration where rats will be regularly rehomed from the University by NZAVS and HUHA.

This means that moving forward, countless lives will be saved – these animals won’t get euthanised and will instead go on to live happy lives in their forever homes!

Some of these animals were bred to be used but never were and others were used to teach people how to handle rats appropriately.

When animals are bred to be used in science, there are often many left over who are never used. In 2019 alone, 136 679 animals that were bred for research, testing or teaching purposes but not used were killed in NZ. The University of Auckland is working to do their part to decrease this number and rehome as many animals as possible!

A massive thank you to The University of Auckland for working with us on this project – we know many of their staff are thrilled to see these animals go off to be adopted into loving homes.

We’ve been working behind the scenes with many different institutes that use animals for science, and this is just one of the many positive outcomes from our collaborative approach.

This is all part of our #Outofthelabs campaign which we proudly run with HUHA, NZ’s leading no-kill animal shelter. We deal with finding the animals who need rehoming and all the background work. Then HUHA deal with the vetting of human companions and vet treatment/rehabilitation (where needed)- all the hands-on work. So together, we are the perfect team.

Interested in adopting? Sign up to our waitlist here.