How do medium sized breeders do it?

I guess I should say that I think a lot of this is due to having a "bad snake" day. One of those days where you wake up early its your Saturday and your child is screaming and you know you have 4-6 hours you need to spend in your snake room. I think I need to switch to plastic throw away bowls..to much time spent cleaning the bowls they have now.

Is the youngster still small enough you can put him in a sling and wear him while you work in the snake room?

Some things that I did to speed up my maintenance :

PVC pipe and bowls
http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...psgqpfdipl.jpg
http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...psv2twlrcj.jpg

Combined with water in the room
http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...psy6deaowp.jpg

So to change water, I just have a stack of washed bowls, tub for the dirty ones, and the hose. Swap bowls, fill em up, next cage. Clean dirty bowls when convenient. My collection isn't huge, but I get through my snakes quick and easy. I used to have a big pitcher I would use to fill the bowls, but the hose is faster and you can also mist snakes if needed.

I will also spot clean with a little 2 gallon trash can with a grocery bag in it as a garbage bag. Then just toss that in the bigger trash can in the room.

Feeding day the first thing I do is start dethaw, then go back and get stuff for the live eaters, do something else for an hour, come back feed all the dethawed, check to make sure all the live eater ate, done.

If you can find ways to make it faster/easier on you, I'm sure you will feel less overwhelmed.

I have a small child as well, 8 months and husband is deployed, I put a playpen in the snake room and always set a small clear tub with the feeders at eye level to Gabriel and he sits there and watches the rats forever!

And then I devote 2 days - one is feeding day, as I feed only live this also means making sure everyone makes a clean kill
and one is clean up day. ( I also just bought the pvc to start doing the throw away waters!)

Another question - are you maintaining the rat/mouse colonies to feed all those snakes? Because that's a huge job as well.

I do breed my rats. I dont know why but they dont seem like as much work even though I know that they are more. I guess I have a better system down for them than I do for snakes. Even before I had snakes I bred rats to sell as feeders so I have been playing the rat game a lot longer than the snake one (gave me a few extra years to work the kinks out of the system)

I think I just need to get used to it. I recently last month or two decided to give an honest effort at breeding on this scale and more than doubled the number of snakes I have. In time it will probably seem normal instead over bearing down on me LOL That and getting my kid up to age cleaning size will be wonderful :D

Its all about efficiency. There are a million ways to perform any task, some work better then others. Keep experimenting. You can ALWAYS find a way to improve.

In any process there are 7 forms of waste

Transportation
Inventory (too much or not enough)
Movement
Waiting
Overprocessing
Overproducing
Defects

Ok, im not a medium sized breeder, but I do know a thing or two about creating processes

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I take care of everything myself; however, I don't have kids, this is all I do workwise, and I don't mess with breeding rodents.

Why have we left out one key element in all of this discussion. . . PASSION

If you are not passionate about your projects, your animals, your results, you will not be able to handle even the smallest limit. If you are passionate about your subject and what you intend to do with them, you will make the best of the most work. . .

I'm not a small breeder / medium breeder / large breeder. I'm just a guy who's passionate about what he works with and houses 50 snakes, 12 being retics, 6 being boas, and the rest being smaller. . . With 5 retics past the 10' mark, its a lot of work. And when I mean a lot of work, I mean daily. Doesn't matter if I'm at work for 12 hours on days or nights. Doesn't matter if I have a date that night, or hanging out with friends that next morning. Doesn't matter what's going on. If I was not absolutely passionate about these snakes, I would've cracked at this point. Changing waters, papers, and scrubing urine and feces out of a cage every day you are near the collection is a big task. Moving bigger snakes around is a big task.

it's the same with ball pythons. If you are in it for the money, then consider it a job that has the implication of life or death / success for your snakes. If you are doing it as a hobby, then focus on what part of the hobby makes you happy, get a groove going and then push forward. But I promise, if you do it because you are living proof that someone can be passionate about a "slimy" snake, you will want to get in there and maintain your collection. Don't think you have enough time with kids? Do a checklist for daily time wasters and see what's there. How much time are you on the internet (bp.net included), how much TV do you watch? Are you following a series?

Again, this is speaking as a guy who loves his collection and goes through the daily grind of working 48 hours a week away from my office, then spending 2-3 hours a day when I'm home sorting through cages, changing waters, feeding, and handling snakes. Add into that I'm a working professional photographer and have image deadlines, prints going out, and tours to worry with. If I can manage the time, then its living proof that you anyone can if they are passionate about their collection.

:rolleye2: