So i grew up on a farm an still have plenty of farm animals but in the last year i started to keep tarantulas and that was the stepping stone into snakes, and now i am dipping my hand into breeding ball pythons slowly, i def dont plan to get rich honestly just the interest in mixing morphs and seeing the clutches will be enough for me as long as i can sell the hatchlings so i dont end up with an over stock of snake lol. I found very fast that rats aren't cheap where i live. 5$ for med. live or frozen price is the same, and since at the moment im feeding only a few snakes ordering in bulk isn't a great way to save plus the shipping not to mention a lot of places online are sold out of med rats at the moment. I plan on building a small rack and putting it in my goat shed away from the house so they will have some extra warmth from the goats and the smell wont be an issue if the weather gets too cold i have the intent to house them inside during the winter in the garage. I had also thought about hangin cages like i use for my rabbits with wire bottoms so all the dropping fall onto the ground for easy cleaning or natural composting for the warm months as this would cut back bedding and smell.
Currently i have only been buying rats to feed but last week i bought a large (barely bigger then med.) male and female to start my breeding i want to pick up some actual nice feeders from a reptile show coming up in oct im hoping the feeder stand will be set up like last time but for now im only planning on small scale 1-2 females an a male. plan to breed them let them nurse and take the weaned ones into a grow out bin rebreed the females and repeat. So far i know one of my pythons will eat frozen. I picked up some of the recommend brand of food however its not the F6 its Rodent diet type same company, but i also was looking into a different feed. I use chicken feed ground fine for my roaches and superworms and it works better then the over price roach chow at 15$ per 50lb cant beat that, and one of the biggest issues we had was rats and mice in the chicken feed at the farm until we got cats so i did alot of looking and compared to F6 at 35$ per bag the hog feed is 15$ per bag and seems to be a pretty close sub.
So i plan to build a simple rack tubs arriving today, right now my rats are in quail cages. I want to look into like i said outside hanging cages to cut back the bedding cost (atleast 8months of the year) and test hog feed to see if that is a good alternative to the costly brand plus the shipping. I have been looking for any info on how much rats eat the breeding age any first hand experience even with bedding and F6 still will be cheaper to raise my own over 5-6$ a rat and the quality would be better.