Breeding vs Store bought feeders

This one's for everyone who feeds live mice. Do you breed your feeders or do you buy them from the strore as you need them? I've thought about breeding them but idk what would be more efficient... I've got 4 ball pythons, 3 are around 300 grams the other is around 450 grams. All estimates of course. Lol. I really need to get a scale. Any input would help alot. Thanks in advance.

In my area its either breed or frozen. Local stores don't have rats smaller them about 100 grams. Buying live every week gets expensive.

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Unfortunately for me my snakes wont eat f/t or live rats for that matter. The only thing I can seem to get them to eat is live mice. Which leaves me with breeding or buying them every week.

We have been breeding rats when it started to cost us $55 a week to feed our rats. Actually we bought from our local pet store. Costing us $55 a week. Then we built a rat rack to hold rats for a couple of weeks so we can buy them while sale from a breeder directly. Which help us save money by costing us around $30-35 every two weeks. And now we have six established female rats that have produced very well for us. So we haven't had to buy for about a month or two. So we have been saving $$


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Originally Posted by Brad91

Unfortunately for me my snakes wont eat f/t or live rats for that matter. The only thing I can seem to get them to eat is live mice. Which leaves me with breeding or buying them every week.

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We had a couple of mice that were pregnant. Buy we have them to a friend because they produced 15-16 mice and we didn't need that many. But I didn't even know that they were pregnant until I saw little pink sausage looking things in the bins. But you apparently have to be very careful because they will become very protective and eat the babies if they think that you are taking them.


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I breed for my collection a) it does save money when you have a mid-large size collection of snakes or various reptiles b) it's just nice having the appropriate sized feeder when you want it and c) you can maintain the highest of standards for your feeders and in turn ensure your snakes are getting the best.

Alright, so as far as saving money goes I'd be better off breeding them than buying on a weekly basis? Not sure what mouse food costs but I'm spending almost $30 a week on snake food right now.

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Originally Posted by Brad91

Alright, so as far as saving money goes I'd be better off breeding them than buying on a weekly basis? Not sure what mouse food costs but I'm spending almost $30 a week on snake food right now.

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We buy a 50 pound feed bag of rat food for $22, I know they have the same size but for nice. Don't know how much it is for mice though. But that bag last us for a month or two. Then the racks cost use $150. Each bin was $6. And then the interconnected water was like $25 more. Then if you plan to have bedding for them, that's also a cost.


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That doesn't sound too bad. I can make a rack out of those plastic shelving bins with holes drilled to hold water bottles. And bedding would be cheap too. I can get 25lb bags of pine or cedar at a farm and garden store for about $10. I'm really starting to lean towards breeding. It sounds so much simpler to just do it that way. :)

In the long run its cheapest to produce your own feeders. Just some things to consider.

What will you do if you have too many feeders and they outgrow your snakes?

Do you still have somewhere to buy live in case your feeders are too small for a given feeding?

The time to care for the rats now as well as the snakes.

Invest in a watering system. It's a big time saver