My rat breeding setup

That day has come. My collection of snakes has grown large enough that its getting really expensive to feed them all, and I dont have a big enough freezer to order loads of food in bulk. I considered two options. Look on craigslist for a top loading chest freezer to stop with rodents, or finally take the plunge into breeding my own food, which seemed like the more fun/exciting option.

I decided to start out with a small colony, to see if rat breeding in for me. Went out this weekend and bought materials to setup 3 enclosures for 2.1 trios of rats in each.

The enclosures themselves are 116qt bins. I used a dremel to cutout the top of the lid, and put some 1/2" wire mesh in place. Each enclosure has a wire mesh column that descends down to the rats. Food can then just be poured into the column. So far it seems to work out quite nicely! The water bottles are just velcro'ed to the front of each bin. Constructing these took wayyyy longer than I anticipated and I dont really look forward to building more of them. But I will probably need grow-out bins in the next month or two. I think I may just end up getting someone to help me construct a rodent rack, probably easier to deal with.

Anyway, here are some pics of the new setup.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5029/...6531cdeb_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5093/...224a274b_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5185/...473a0a54_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/...e0ba1aa1_z.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5178/...f9072d3b_z.jpg

Looks great man! I really like the looks/idea of these. I live in Lafayette, just down the road from ya. Was thinking about starting to breed myself. Might just have to pay ya to make some more! haha. jk. If you don't mind me asking.. how much was everything to do these 3? Thanks.. just a ball park figure would be awesome to know what I'd be getting myself into. And are those just zip-ties you used for the wire mesh? Again, great job!

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Originally Posted by anthonym

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/...e0ba1aa1_z.jpg

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I hope you don't stack them like that normally. You appear to be cutting off all the air circulation on the bottom two.

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Originally Posted by Egapal

I hope you don't stack them like that normally. You appear to be cutting off all the air circulation on the bottom two.

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I just built all this and set it up last night, I realized that same thing when I stacked them. I'll be getting some rubber feet to use as spacers tonight to attach to the bottoms of each bin.

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Originally Posted by cdavidson9

Looks great man! I really like the looks/idea of these. I live in Lafayette, just down the road from ya. Was thinking about starting to breed myself. Might just have to pay ya to make some more! haha. jk. If you don't mind me asking.. how much was everything to do these 3? Thanks.. just a ball park figure would be awesome to know what I'd be getting myself into. And are those just zip-ties you used for the wire mesh? Again, great job!

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I think I probably spent more on it all than I needed to because I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to tackle it all till I started. But I'd say ballpark, I spent around 100-150 for everything + rats. I think you could do it much cheaper though. Those are indeed zipties to attach the mesh to the lid, and 1/2" hog rings to make the feeding column.

Nice looking setup overall. :gj: One thing you may want to do is put some vents in the sides. With the tall tubs, alot of the ammonia smell will linger near the bottom of the tub especially when the bedding gets damp with it.

That's a lot of money! I'm 95% sure that doing this rack with water system here:

6 Tub Rodent Rack

http://www.arbreptiles.com/cages/rat...rat_rack12.jpg

I hope it works out for you! That's just a lot of investment for a clear tub system.

Regards,

B

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Originally Posted by Simple Man

That's a lot of money! I'm 95% sure that doing this rack with water system here:

I hope it works out for you! That's just a lot of investment for a clear tub system.

Regards,

B

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Yes, like I said, I am pretty sure I spent WAY more than I needed to. The bins were 20 bucks each at target. 25' of wire mesh was 35 or 40 bucks. And then all the little things (water bottles/hides from petco, some tin snips and other various hardware from the hardware store, and the rats themselves).

That is the exact rack I intent to build in the next month or so. But for now gonna use the bins to see if I'm up for the extra overhead or not.

How's the setup working? I just got all my materials yesterday and plan to construct these today. I ended up going with the 110qt tubs and kinda forgot about something.. I couldn't remember if the 116 qt's are a thicker plastic then the 110s. Have you had any problems with chew-thru's yet? If I feel these 110s aren't thick enough, I may go back and return them for the 116s. Thanks!

Nice setup! I hate to invest so much on plastic for rats, those little buggers always seem to chew through it WAY too fast. (or at least have the air holes drilled above their reach)

I love the mesh coloumn idea!
Very creative!