A question about feeders

[exwizard]

Originally Posted by jarich

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.

We dont have this problem because even though we handle all our rats and keep them tame as pets, they are not pets. They are livestock in our little rodent ranch and as such their primary purpose is snake food. Keeping them pet tame makes it safer for the snakes during feeding time anyway.

[Psyche]

Originally Posted by 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.

if i did get into breeding my own feeders i wouldnt want to breed mice, but how do you keep up with so many animals?? id feel overwhelmed