Switched to Live and Will Never Look Back

About a month ago, nearly all my snakes went off feed. My pastel, who has always been a fantastic eater on frozen thawed. So I heard more about live and how it is just as safe as frozen thawed so I picked up some live mice at the pet store. Every snake ate!

Now, I picked up three rats for a breeding colony and have them in a 40 gallon tank for breeders. Does anyone have any tips for starting a rodent colony? I am going to pick up more female rats soon.

The glass tank will need to be cleaned every 2 or 3 days because it holds the ammonia in very well.
The best tip I can give you is to get a rat rack made and let it ride from there ;)

If you have any mechanical ability you can build a rack. Its not hard and there is a tutorial in the DIY page

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Tori, were your BPs eating F/T rats or mice previously? Although live does seem to elicit a better feeding response, BPs are notorious for preferring mice over rats, also. I'm only pointing this out because I don't recommend continuing to feed them live mice if your intent is to keep them on rats. I would stick to the F/T rats until you have your colony built up enough to feed live rats (or buy live rats at the store). Just a thought.

I prefer feeding live prey as well. I tried the f/t route, but it took way too much time and
when a stomach blew out, always when not if, it was thoroughly disgusting. I do have
access to a supplier who's very cheap/clean and never runs out of whatever size I need
at any given time. I keep any left overs in a 20 gallon tank where they are housed and fed
until needed since balls are known to not be in the mood to eat on a whim.
I don't think keeping my own colony of rats and or mice would work for me since they
breed rather rapidly and grow just as fast, I only have 10 right now. My fear being that they
would be either too big or too small when needed. Something to think about before setting
yourself up. Granted I've read that some people freeze the rats at the right size for them
so this doesn't happen.
good luck

I'm so glad I started breeding rats. Its saved me so much time and money. When you are thawing rodents for 15-20 snakes, it gets kind of annoying. especially in the winter when 10 of them don't eat! I much prefer live. If they don't eat, toss them back in the bin for next week!

I've only had two bites so far, and they weren't that bad. One rat got my killer bee in a couple places really good, and you can barely even tell she was bit. I think sometimes people get scared of live because they are afraid of their snake getting bit by the rat, but the snake is a killing machine wearing scaled armor. They can handle a bite or two :P

As for breeding rats, I don't have much advice since I breed ASFs back to back. I know you should cycle female rats so they have a bit of a break. Also, grow out tubs are never a bad idea!

I use seperate birthing tubs and rotate the girls so I get a two or three litters a month. Right now I'm trowing all nine girls to males then they will have own tub to birth an once they are weined the girls go back to a boy. I feed live but sell frozen and am working on a shipment of 100 :) lol