thinking ahead..

Due to the growing number of snakes i now (and about to) have, I'm looking into breeding my own 'snake food', but to a minimum. how many male and female (rat) breeders do I need to maintain atleast 12 ballpythons? or 12 pythons isn't that much of a biggie and I'm better off buying food from breeders/shops? Thanks in advance :)

Hi I have 13 ball pythons, of which 6 are 1000g and one 2400g. Ok I started breeding ASF last summer. I got 3 girls and 1 boy. Great start. Once I figured out that they will not breed if they get too hot ( i was keeping them outside in FL) they started breeding like crazy. 13-18 babies at a time. I then kept a 1/3 ratio and started another colony. Long story short I have a 5 tub rack for ASFs with 3 permant adult colonies 1/3 ratio, a tub for weaners, and a tub to hold larger rats that I have to buy for my super large 2400g+ female. As of last month except for buying 2 rats a month I am completely self sufficent. I keep my ASF in the same room as my snake rack with no problems. They don't smell. And no my snakes don't seem to smell them either. I fed all my snakes (except big girl) every 4 days. You only have to clean the tubs every 2 weeks and I feed them cat food, bird seed, and astored veggies when I remember to get some! I hope this helps...It has completely worked for me.

thanks for sharing, well I guess I'm going for it. hope it works for me too :)

A good rule of thumb to go by is to have 1 female rat for every snake that you have. You will want 1 male rat for every 4 females to breed giving you a 1.4 ratio for your breeding colonies. This setup should produce enough rats to feed your collection with some extras to spare.

Things to take in consideration

You need to be able to produce without interruption

Rats produce between 6 to 12 babies per litter

Gestation is 21 days

Females will go through the following stage breeding, gestation, nursing.

A good rule of thumb is to have 1 female rat for every snake you own, if you have surplus euthanize them and either sell them or feed them to your snake that will take F/T

And if you want to sell babies eventually or even those breeder snakes you might not want to feed asf's unless you absolutely have to.
People that don't breed asf's rarely buy snakes that are asf eaters, which means you might be selling the snake for a reduced amount or not at all.

1 female rat to each snake and if you separate females from their colony while they have babies you'll want 1.5 female rats per snake ;)

duplicate post :rolleyes: