How 2B the best rodent supplier?

[rwg]

What I want:

- All sizes always available frozen in reasonable quantities (hundreds if not thousands).

- Competitive prices

- Humanely killed

- Fed proper diet, with fresh food leading up to their demise to provide gut loading

- vacuum packed and frozen

- sold by regional distributors to reduce shipping costs.

Forget about all the radiation and preservatives. Just deliver quantity and quality consistently, and economically, and you'll build a good business.

Roy

[Linds]

Originally posted by rwg
Forget about all the radiation and preservatives. Just deliver quantity and quality consistently, and economically, and you'll build a good business.

Agreed 100%!

[BoidKeeper]

Same here. Raise up good clean quality rodents, gas em and freeze em. No need to complicate things and make more work then what is needed.
Linds I also agree 100% with everything you said in your first post.
Cheers,
Trevor

[Ann Vole]

Thanks for the advice on "Keep It Simple"!

"All sizes always available frozen in reasonable quantities (hundreds if not thousands)." Definatly good inventory control with distributors and a large backup supply and equipment to weight and process as each size is needed.

"Humanely killed"
Ther main reason for getting in this business was all my ideas on improving the life of the animals including the moments before death and I think I have the absolutely best kill methods ever devised

"Fed proper diet, with fresh food leading up to their demise to provide gut loading"
I will have to do some research on the best content but I will keep "fresh food" in mind (do you mean something like say, green leafy vegitables?)

[Mark]

Ther main reason for getting in this business was all my ideas on improving the life of the animals including the moments before death and I think I have the absolutely best kill methods ever devised

What method are you thinking of?

[Linds]

Originally posted by Ann Vole
I will have to do some research on the best content but I will keep "fresh food" in mind (do you mean something like say, green leafy vegitables?)

I only have around 250 feeders + 3 pets and I find it difficult to provide the feeders with a consistent variety of fresh foods for several reasons, the most part being it is a little time consuming (I already spend ten times more time on the feeders than I do the 50+ animals eating them) as well as 'messy' since I usually try to keep wire mesh hoppers filled, which generally only works for solid, slow perishing foods. I feed them horse chunks supplemented with chicken scraps (bones, cartilage, meat) and black oil sunflower seeds. My pets on the other hand get fresh food on a daily basis including horse chunks, nuts, seeds, fresh/frozen veggies and greens, fresh/frozen/dried fruits, oatmeal/grain preparations, breads, pastas, eggs, meats, bones/cartilage, cheese, yogurt, etc.

That aside, I find breeding females need around 18%-20% protein and 8% fat in their diets to keep up with the demands being placed on them. Males don't require as much, but all mine do fine regardless (they are never seperated from the females).

[bistrobob85]

Don't go into saucages, thoses things remind me of the concept of just eating vitamin pills for dinner... Snakes live on instincts, there is no need to make things complicated. A healthy rodent which eats good food will be the best thing to feed a snake. Why would you want to take the teeth or tail off a dead rat? To make shoestrings? Get a good strain, from a good breeder or perhaps a lab... find a way to clean a lot of cages quick and disinfected within no time, that should do the job.

[dave68]

We used to buy a 25lb bag of hen scratch, 25 lb of guinea pig pellets and a 10-15 lb bag of gourmet rodent/hamster food, good sized bag of nutri blocks, mix well and serve. Worked successfully for years. We were able to keep outdoors and in winter would throw a handful of high quality organic dog kibble only for the added fat content. Rats would still be producing like mad in the dead of winter but not the mice.
Anyways, good luck on your venture, and if you go with our mix method use big lidded garbage cans (on wheels) works great. Have fun, wear a mask, Allison

[rwg]

There are mixed opinions on the value of gut-loading rodents. I'm not suggesting that a rodent farm constantly feed fresh food, but if they ate fresh veggies for some number of feedings before being killed, I would consider that a plus as far as gut loading goes.

[RepTylE]

Quality, quantity and price. You can give the rats blue punk hair by dying it with food colouring for all I care when I buy rats but if you want me to be a repeat customer you got to provide the three items in the first sentence. There is not substitute for quality and price. People with more than a couple snakes can't afford store prices so buying from a breeder is a necessity and when they need feeders...they NEED them!
I doubt that the larger suppliers get big by giving lousy service.

Myself, I would be thinking about the basics of marketing.