I need to start a colony of feeders for my ball pythons, please help me decide.

[mykaija]

im going to agree with flame on this one, i have asf's as well as rats, they are all on pine pellets, and no one can tell i have rodents in my house. my landlord didnt believe me until i showed him. i have used pine shavings, and that does create a noxious odor when urine gets on it.

[MarkieJ]

Mice stink when you set them up on BAD BEDDING. Aspen or any other wood shavings is bad for rodent breeding as it causes bad smells and elevated ammonia level in which can cause sick feeders.

Like I mentioned, I've never tried them on pine pellets but I'll take your word for it. However, mice stiiiiiink when placed on pine, aspen, and care fresh. And you don't have to wait a few days... they'll stink it up within a couple of hours. Also I've never had a problem with sick feeders using Aspen, and I too have been breeding them for years.

[tweets_4611]

I went through this exact problem a few months ago, and I'm getting ready to start a mouse colony. I don't have any experience to offer, other than why I finally decided on mice.

I decided against rats b/c they can and will out grow your snakes unless you freeze them when they get to the right size. Many ball pythons can't, or don't need a full grown rat, and I didn't want to deal with the CO2 and freezing, so rats aren't for me.

I decided against ASF b/c they aren't nearly as common and mice or rats, and are much more particular when it comes to their colony set ups. I want to be able to introduce new blood, and be able to shift the rodents without causing a full blown riot and them eating one another (I know it can still happen with mice, it just seems that ASFs are much more picky). Also, I wouldn't want my snakes to get stuck on ASFs and then run out. I don't have anywhere locally to get more (there maybe somewhere in OKC, but I know there's not in Stillwater). I wouldn't want to sell them and have someone else stuck with whether or not they can find appropriate feeders, either.

So, I chose mice. They will never outgrown your bigger balls, and from what has been said the stink is manageable. I've read that the males stink more than the females, so if you feed the males off first, it should help with the stink as well.

When I get my colony set up, I'll let you know how it goes! ^_^

[Punkymom]

I don't breed rats, but I used to have rabbits and I used pine pellets in their litter boxes. If you have a local feed store you can get a huge bag for like $5 or $6 I think.

[kc261]

Each species has its pros & cons.

First question is what are your snakes eating now? If they all eat rats, I'd go with that, or mice if they are eating mice.

The biggest disadvantage to rats is that they grow quickly and can outgrow the size your BPs should be eating. This makes it close to impossible for people with only a few BPs to raise their own rats, unless they are able to euthanize & freeze them and their BPs will take f/t. Based on your signature, your collection is just getting to the size where breeding your own rats will work better. You can time it to have one litter born each week, and should have a steady supply of approximately the right number of rats at approximately the right sizes.

There are 2 big disadvantages to mice. The first one is really more of a hurdle to get over, but then it will be fine. It can be quite hard to get a colony going. Some people have lots of trouble with the litters being cannibalized. However, this seems to go away once you are on your 2nd generation. The other disadvantage is that you have to feed multiple mice to make a big enough meal, which makes feeding time take longer, and some snakes just don't seem to like to eat more than one rodent at a time.

ASFs grow to the perfect size for BPs, but not everyone has ASFs available to them (aside from being relatively rare every where, they are illegal in some states), so if you ever rehome your snakes or have babies to sell, that could be an issue. Also, if you should happen to have a disaster with your colony, you might have trouble finding replacements. I just read on another forum about someone who believes he let his male get too old, and didn't realize the colony had stopped producing entirely until after he'd already fed off all the younger ones, so now he has to find new stock and start from scratch.

Because I also have corn snakes, I decided to go with mice. It took forever for my colony to get going (I think I had 5 litters before a single pinky survived), but once I got over that hurdle, things have gone quite well. I keep them on the pine pellets and add vanilla to the water to reduce the smell, and it really isn't very noticable. I do have one female bp (my het albino, because of course it couldn't have been one of the normals) who usually will only eat one per feeding, so she grows pretty slowly.

[tomfromtheshade]

I would go with rats if I were you.

1. Rats are friendlier than mice, in my opinion, and they are certainly easier to work with than African Soft Furs. This would be a deciding factor for me.

2. Rats provide food for all stages of the ball python life. You can feed pink rats to newly hatched balls, and adult balls will eat medium rats. You will never need a larger prey item than a rat.

3. Rats can be gassed and frozen at about 8 weeks old for ball python food. This means that you don't have to spend a ton of money on feed getting them up to adult size before they make a suitable meal for your snake.

4. Rats are popular food items and they are easy to get rid of if you have excess stock that you don't need. Selling some of your overstock is an easy way to recover some of the money you spend in raising food for your own snakes.

5. I just like them better LOL.

[pliskin]

if smell is a concern , try making or buying a carbon filter.

I just set one up for my rat room and it virtually eliminates the smell. I'm breeding ASF's , though, so I can't say about domestic rats.