How is your set up?

A friend of mine and I are planning on breeding rats to feed our reptiles. I have 11 BPs and he has 35 misc snakes A dwarf camen and a monoter. I feed weekly and he feeds a mix between weekly to once a month. How many tubs would you recomend and how would you set it up (IE x tubs with xM to xF). Also How is your racks set up and how many rats are you producing?

Just breed as many as possible and freeze them off at the size that you need them.

I would say that you should build some breeding racks and some birthing racks and let them have at it.

You're going to need AT LEAST 40 breeding females just to really break even and that won't let you put many in the freezer.

approaches all depend on sizes needed and frequency.

Right now I'm short of space with the rats, but this is what I have:

1 grow out tub
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...rats/003-1.jpg

1 breeding tub
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...rats/004-1.jpg

And a rack for the nursing moms, 1 mom per tub
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...rats/005-1.jpg
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t...s/ASFs/013.jpg

I forgot to say, I have 9 snakes and I have about 50 rats at any given time, granted most are babies. I have 10 breeders give or take, I lost track :D

im running approximately 4 males to about 60 females give or take, the males each have their own tub and get the non nursing/not about to pop preggo females divided amoungst them. when females get preggo ( visably ) they go to the bottom tub in the rack and/or one of the 9 or so glass tanks i have set up ( 3x10g, 2x20g, and 1 30g ). i generally put anywhere from 2-4 in the 10s and 5+ in the 20s and 30 at any given time. they all just pile babies and community nurse them. i figure i have ~70 born a week give or take. sometimes A LOT more, sometimes a good bit less.

i will add too, with 30 snakes to feed, i still havnt had any grow out to even medium size to feed. i have frozen off several smaller ones, and i did keep pretty much every single female from my first round of litters to increase my colony size. im 3 months in give or take and just now starting to get those number. so you would want to start with at least that many, unless you want it to take a while to hold back rats to scale up your production