Breeding Feeders

[AndrewGeibel]

I have been becoming more and more dissatisfied with the quality of the feeders I am able to get around here. The thought of breeding my own has crossed my mind. Yes, I know this wouldn't be the most cost efficient solution for a person with two snakes. However, I do plan on getting more snakes and I am kinda interested in breeding rats. Is there anybody on here that does this that has some input?

[frankykeno]

Andrew, I started breeding my own rat feeders I think when we hit 5 snakes or thereabouts. It may be workable for you with 2 if you plan for what you will do with extra feeders (euthanize and freeze them, donate them to a local reptile or raptor rescue, trade them for dry goods at a local pet store).

There are a number of good stickies in the Feeder forum about managing a small rodent colony. For me personally, I love raising the feeders. I enjoy rats as an animal, appreciate their ease of care and love knowing our snakes are eating top quality prey we raised for them. For us we decided to breed rats for two reasons. One was cost, the other like you was the quality of prey. One week it was good, another is was poor. We just were not happy with any inconsistency when it came to feeding our snakes so for us breeding our own feeders just made good sense.