rats

[Ballchris]

Im thinking of getting into breeding my own food source, Im at 4 snakes and food gets expensive, not that i dont care to buy my snakes there food, just figured it would be more cost effective to breed my own, and Iv also read that rats are higher in protein than mice and would like to switch all my snakes over to rats my 2 giants already eat rats.
so any advise would be much appreciated.

[Albert Clark]

BC, are you feeding live or f/t ? I think f/t is cheaper than breeding your own livestock?

[Ballchris]

BC, are you feeding live or f/t ? I think f/t is cheaper than breeding your own livestock?

I do not feed live I like to feed fresh kill, I feel it has a slight advantage over F/t.

[bigsnakegirl785]

BC, are you feeding live or f/t ? I think f/t is cheaper than breeding your own livestock?

Depends. I raised enough rats to support 4 snakes for $100/yr if you include bedding in the cost. I'd just have to add one or two more female to make 1 male to 3-4 females and I'd have enough for all 6 of my snakes for no added cost. So instead of $150 for what I currently need, it's only $100. Not much of a difference right now, but once my retic and my BRB are adults you could probably add a couple hundred dollars to that at least. If I keep my retic on 2-3 jumbo rats instead of jumping to rabbits. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much raising rabbits would cost as I've never raised them myself.

I'm sure the savings increase as your collection gets larger and larger, too.

[Jrich]

An alternative to raising your own is ordering f/t in bulk from a supplier. I got about a years supply for my 7 snakes for a grand total of $90. However I have a few babies in my collection so I will probably have to order larger prey when I run out but in the long run it really saved me some money and time. It's a lot more convenient than running back and forth to the store and I would say more convenient than raising your own stock but I don't know that since I've never tried it myself.