RATS - wanting to raise a colony, any help?

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

Hi there folks:

Basically I am thinking out a full design to build a rat colony to breed and feed to my rat loving snakes. The contruction part I think I have that down already, may need a bit of tweaking. Location is taken care off and all things needed to make the set up work look good so far. The whole design is on paper so far but every inch is counted for. I am considering this design and idea because more and more, I feel if we raise our own rats then we have more control of their diet and are much more certain on the health of these critters as food for the snake collection. For years I was against this extra work and headaches but see it has alot of pros I can enjoy over the small cons involved.

What I need to know is the general info on rats, meaning can everyone list Canadian sources for live healthy robust mice / rat supplers?

Please list suppliers websites, names, contact info?

Also any caresheets on rat raising or websites stating the standard husbandry and breeding of rats?

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and answering what you can.

[mykee]

Lots of good info on this site if you're willing to look for it.

[greenman1867]

Actually mykee has some great info on his website regarding building a rack system, and a CO2 chamber. Also a link to Mazuri, which so far has been excellent as food.

I would go with 1 male and 2-3 females (depending on how big your rack enclosures are).

Shawn

[Jeff_Favelle]

Ralph has a step-by-step on his site to build rat racks. I wouldn't do it any other way unless I was going to straight out buy Freedom Breeders. No question.