Where do you?...

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Originally Posted by Bobbafett

Unless you order mass amounts, the shipping will always be crazy high. It's expensive to overnight frozen feeders with dry ice.

I buy my frozen feeders at expos, and will stock up to make it worth it and to last me Til the next expo.

I breed my own live.

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Even with 12, it's super hard to justify $80 shipping on a $150 order. For OP, with one snake, they're going to have to order small amounts in order to keep from wasting so they're going to paying just as much for shipping as they are for the rodents. The price of shipping also goes up significantly over the distance shipped. I know we paid, of a total $340 order, $120 of that was just for shipping. And that was roughly 200 rodents.

No go for CL breeders around here. I have a few numbers of stores I'm going to call...

I buy live rats and ASF's from a local breeder for the few BP's who won't eat f/t. For the rest I buy from http://www.MiceDirect.com - occasionally they'll do free shipping specials on orders over $125.

Found a store in Knoxville called Agri Feed Pet Supply. The reptile girl there is going to try and get me a deal from the person they get their feeders from if I buy 50-100 at a time. No luck on any of the leads I found online for breeders around here.

For F/T we get them from Mice Direct. For the ones that needed live, we got them from petstores and expos.

However I plan on starting my own ASF colony this week for the same reasons we have our B. Dubia colonies for the geckos.

Ethics, I refuse to support vendors and petstores that have animals in crappy conditions. It is only a last resort that I use them for live feeders, and since I will now be completely self sufficient I will never walk into another again. Also, always having appropriate sized feeders for the BPs on hand. I have ended up in some tricky situations that made me sweat for both feeder and BP alike this last year. Snakes that are fed appropriate sized meals have scales thick enough to deal with appropriately sized rodent bites. Feeders that are smaller die faster from a stronger more all encompassing blood choke leading to faster cardiac arrest.

Cost, far cheaper to produce my own feeders over time with a collection of reptiles that is doubling in size yearly.

Availability, plenty of times I simply can't find the numbers of live feeders I need, or the sizes.

I personally use Rodent Pro. I buy 6 months in advance for 15 snakes so shipping basically gets canceled out and is the cheapest option for me

I guess if/when I get to that many snakes, it would make more sense to do it that way.

I'm actually getting another one in the next couple weeks. I can't wait for him!!! Even so, 2 snakes still wouldn't justify that much money in shipping.

I may look into breeding my own rats later on...

I would recommend http://www.rodentpro.com/index.asp they have a huge sale going on right now and when you order enough, like Snowshredder said, it pretty much cancels out the shipping cost. I JUST made an order with them, and I bought everything from weaned to large rats and even a rabbit. With all that combined it only costs $1.60 per rat including shipping. This should last me about 6 month s!
I also breed my own ASF rats as well.

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Originally Posted by Ronin

I would recommend http://www.rodentpro.com/index.asp they have a huge sale going on right now and when you order enough, like Snowshredder said, it pretty much cancels out the shipping cost. I JUST made an order with them, and I bought everything from weaned to large rats and even a rabbit. With all that combined it only costs $1.60 per rat including shipping. This should last me about 6 month s!
I also breed my own ASF rats as well.

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x2 about the sale. I just put an order in last week and saved $230 because all their stuff is on sale. Ordered 450 rats though

Is there an expo near you?