A question about feeders

[theapexgerman]

Lol I kind thought they smell bad every time I go over to my breeders place he has in a shed to you can smell them bad I nearly gag every time I go in there and he uses lysol to keep the smell the down but that only helps a little

[Psyche]

this may or may not be an odd question but do they ever like... idk eat each other? i ask because when i was little i had 3 mice and they all killed each other o.o my mom had told me at the time it was a territorial thing

[theapexgerman]

Rodents will eat just bout anything lol so I would say if they was hungry enough they would eat each other atleast I would think so

[Psyche]

D: i hope mine didnt do it for food.. i was really young at the time and as far as i remember i kept them fed.. poor things

[theapexgerman]

I'm not for sure tho just takeing a guess but would make since cause they eat just bout anything lol

[Psyche]

it may have been what happened. ive vowed to never own mice as pets again though because of it haha it was pretty gross x.x

[theapexgerman]

My mother keeps a few gerbels as pet I always tease her and say I think I may bring over my sanke for a little snack she says if I ever do ill be sorry I always wanted to test her on that

[Psyche]

lol so mean! i dont think ive ever seen a gerbel o.o

[theapexgerman]

Reminds me of a big mouse but doesn't stink as bad and pretty good pets as I here

[Psyche]

i always picture something like a hamster when i hear gerbel lol

[KORBIN5895]

Yes mice will eat each other. Mice also tend to eat their young.

[Jenn_06]

i breed rats and the only time i seen them eat each other is when a sick rat dies and i did not get it out of the tub on time all that will be left is fur, but i like breeding them, i just got a litter last night from a first time mom.

The smell is not that bad if you clean them, i have my rat rack in my snake room and i clean out the tubs once a week, and you cant really tell i have rats in there.

[jarich]

Mice are horrible vile little creatures, but rats are very social and intelligent. If you breed, definitely go for the rats. Mice smell incredibly bad, will kill each others babies and are dirty. Rats dont smell nearly as bad, are very clean, and will actually take care of each others offspring. Controlling their breeding is easy, just keep the male away from the females when you have what you need. Feeding them is pretty cheap and simple. The only problem is that they are such cool animals that you might find yourself getting attached to them. I had one female that I kept for a long time and felt really bad when I had to feed her.

[theapexgerman]

Wow I thought it was the other way around mice smarter than a rat but having a girlfriend well never allowed me to have a mice/rat breeding she would kill me in fact

[exwizard]

Wow how did I miss this thread?! Where do I start? First off, we got into breeding to make sure we had enough to feed our snakes without depending on other peoples supply. The idea was to have enough for them and sell off the excess. Over a period of time, however, we built up a clientele and our names/numbers are still getting passed around. Word of mouth is an awesome thing. Right now our supply is being outstripped by the high demand so thats always a challenge.

We keep several 50 lb bags of rat chow we get from Kent Feed. That only costs us less than $13.00 per bag and we generally go through a bag per week for the North Colony (which consists of over 200 rats and over 100 mice. The South Colony has over 140 rats and it goes through about half of what we do. The cool thing about this rat chow is that you can spread it along to top of the tubs and it doesnt go bad so theres no waste.

Rats are better to breed and raise than mice are just because they are more social and less cannibalistic than mice. With our mice, we have to keep 10 breeding groups as separate colonies to prevent fighting while our female rats get rotated in and out of the 8 breeding tubs depending on pregnancy status so they know early on that they are all part of a larger colony.

If you keep multiple snakes, you might want to consider breeding rats and/or mice to make sure your snakes are well fed. Otherwise you are subject to other breeders shortages and they do happen a lot.

Also the smell can be controlled by regular weekly or twice a week tub or tank cleaning plus the use of a product called Kennel Fresh which actually cuts ammonia in half.