rats to snake ratios-neccesity farming

My rats cause me to take maybe 15 minutes a week on them? Dump bedding from tub, wipe tub, add new bedding and rats and go. Then every 4 days or so I fill water bottles and food. Thawing and doing the zombie dance for 8 snakes would take me much longer. I love breeding my own feeders. I spent 30 bucks to get a dumbo Burmese female too. That's how muh fun I have breeding for colors. They're a lot of fun as pets and breeders.

I've looked into that, and while it would be cheaper, my human housemates would never go for a freezer full of rats. I can get away with stashing one still in it's baggie and box and the grocerie bag i walked out of the store with. But only if I stick it behind the ice bin. Buying a deep freeze is out of the question at the moment, but I will be getting one eventually. Im thinking a handfull of rats in bins kept under my bed or in my closet would solve most of my problems.
So what the general consensus seems to be is 3 females and 1 male. I can feed the some babies off as I need to while some grow bigger. If its anything like gardening I should be able to keep things in balance. I still have questions about rat husbandry- but I will continue reading on in the forum. Thank you all!!

Something to think about is that under the bed or in a closet are both locations with limited air circulation. That usually means more stink. Your house mates might not like that any better than rats in the freezer.

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Originally Posted by kc261

Something to think about is that under the bed or in a closet are both locations with limited air circulation. That usually means more stink. Your house mates might not like that any better than rats in the freezer.

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Lol, I'll just have to keep it clean then.

Well Respiratory infection is my thought with limited airflow.

RI is definitely a concern.
I know someone who kept a rack in an open closet and those poor rats kept getting RI one after another no matter how much meds they were on. It was just constant due to limited fresh air flow.



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Something else to consider... You will end up having to CO2 them (think a litter of 8-10 with your snakes only eating ~3 at a certain size) and then those extras will have to go in the freezer. You may want to breed in a cycle... i.e. 1 female at a time spaced apart so that you have different sizes at different times or you can breed 1, grow to certain size, then CO2, then breed another female about 2 months before you need more feeders.

And smell is a factor. I only have 6 pet rats now and they are in large cages with a fan going (guest bedroom) and I have to change bedding once a week... if you have more rats and less space, etc. You're looking at bedding changes every 3-4 days maybe to keep it not smelly enough to tolerate sleeping in the same room. And you'll need a place to store the bedding and food. A large bag of aspen (like native earth from petfood direct) is about 3.5 feet tall x 1 foot wide and a 40lb bag of harlan teklad is about 3feet x 8". I'm using our guest bathroom tub to store my food / bedding.

Just something to think about, rats are really cool as pets as well and I plan on breeding mine in the future, but that won't happen until I have a larger more ventilated space to put them in and more snakes to feed.

You might want to see if the roomies would be OK with you storing f/t inside ziploc bags inside a hard non-transparent plastic container in the freezer.

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Originally Posted by Marrissa

My rats cause me to take maybe 15 minutes a week on them? Dump bedding from tub, wipe tub, add new bedding and rats and go. Then every 4 days or so I fill water bottles and food. Thawing and doing the zombie dance for 8 snakes would take me much longer. I love breeding my own feeders. I spent 30 bucks to get a dumbo Burmese female too. That's how muh fun I have breeding for colors. They're a lot of fun as pets and breeders.

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I will not lie. I feed live as well as it is quicker for me. I just think that breeding rats for 2 snakes without planning on killing and freezing is a logical nightmare. I feed live because I have a decent number of snakes and I know of avenues to get rid of my extras if I have to many.

Alright, after taking everybody's input into acount, i decided to go ahead and get a few breeders. I have two females who are already aprox 2 and 1 week pregnant and one medium male. I also got two smalls and two meds to try my snakes on live. I tossed the other med in with my 6ft hog island who did impressively well. The other two smalls will give to my b.p., 1 a week to last until one of the litters should be born. I may have to go and get some f/t smalls from petsmart before my breeders and babies are ready but i figure better to start small than have too many.

This is the community bin. There are several holes in the top but I may put some in the sides as well for extra ventalation. Nevermind the shoe, didnt realize that was back there.http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/x...psyxcw5yxn.jpg