Mama rat with a bunch of babies!

[MontyP2016]

Welcome ;-)

[voodoolamb]

Also, if your snakes will take frozen thawed, you can raise them up to the size you need, euth all of the rats at once, and freeze them for future use.

I think it can be cost effective to raise your own feeders even for a modest snake collection, It really just depends on where you are currently getting your rodents. If you have a local feeder breeder or reptile shows that come to your area frequently, I'd say forget about breeding your own feeders unless you are into the rats themselves. But if you are in a position where you have to either buy online or from pet stores - with the price on shipping and the price gouging in brick and mortar stores (stopped by petco today $6.50 for frozen ad $10 for live medium rats, ugh) breeding your own looks enticing.

For a smallish collection, I would probably get 2 males and 4 or 6 females. The reason for two males is that I personally would want to keep the males and females separate so I could control the breeding since it's a small snake collection and it is cruel to house a rat alone. 4 females because you will have better production and longer breeding lives if you don't breed the females back to back. The average rat litter size is 8 - 14 but the feeder lines tend to pop out numbers in the teens, if you are feeding weekly, even for 4 snakes you'd want to aim for 2ish litters a month, taking a month off here and there if you've had some big litters. You'd be looking at about $25 dollars a month in food and bedding costs for a colony of that size. You can get by with less choosing a cheaper food or bedding than I do. If you're even remotely handy you can do a DIY set up for them either a rack system or bin cages for around $100 - $150 accounting for housing for the males, the breeding females, 2 birthing bins, and grow out housing.

[cchardwick]

Those who breed their own rats how many snakes do you have? I plan on building to four before years end and given the speed with which these rats grow i dont think thats enough to start breeding. Im afraid i will end up with a bunch of rats too big to feed to my snakes and be stuck with them.

I actually have 20 snakes, but I think you can breed rats with even just one snake depending on what snake it is. With a ball python the rats may eventually outgrow the feeding size, but that's one of the reason I got my dwarf reticulated python. She is now eating all of my rats that are too big for my ball pythons. Once my retic gets to full size she will be able to pound down extra large jumbo rats, probably even small rabbits LOL. This week I pushed the limit up to feed off bigger rats before they get too big, my snakes are growing like crazy as I get rid of these bigger medium size rats.

I feed a variety of rodents, so sometimes I'm feeding mice, sometimes African Soft Fur rats, but mostly just plain ol rats. And sometimes I feed on the bigger side, sometimes on the smaller side, depending on what I have available that week. I'm actually holding back more female rats so I'll have more babies since it seems I'm always running short. I also keep about 50 frozen thawed mice and rats to supplement in case I have a week where I don't have the right size. Usually when I run out of rats I have tons of mice, and when I run out of both I have extra ASF.

The social structure of rats is complicated as well, some females are content to have babies with other females in the tank. Others fight like crazy and need to be isolated. Sometimes female with babies will fight other females so bad that babies get killed in the process. You have to constantly monitor what is going on socially in the colony. It's similar with mice, you can't just throw a bunch of mice together and expect them to get along. I usually put in new young mice in the 'feeder tank' and take out all the hides and watch them for about half an hour. Then I pick out the mean ones and feed them off LOL. Usually works like a charm.