Do you feed live but don't raise your own mice/rats?

If they eat f/t I wouldn't feed live. I go to a local breeder and get enough of a good size to last.me a little. And he kills them on site via co2 and I take them home and freeze them.

Thanks everyone, I'm really leaning towards staying the f/t route but the two hatchlings I have are starting to concern me. I'm going to see if I can get a few hoppers Saturday when I go over to Reptile Passions in Charlotte. Does anyone happen to know if there are any mice breeders here in the Raleigh Durham area of NC?

I was buying live each week. I didn't want to house live rodents really. If I'm housing them, I might as well be breeding them and not buying each week.

The first thing I thought of was the fact that mice and rats grow extremely fast, so like buying a large supply of crickets, you'd have to buy smaller ones to use two weeks later. Then it was that at a certain size, you need to have the nursing mom.

I'd get everyone on the same schedule and buy the live rodents once a week and feed them all off within a day or two, so you don't have to house them all the time.

A lot of people have made some good points against buying your own feeders and housing them for 2-weeks. All are great suggestions and I too suggest that if you're willing to house them, you might as well have a tub or two (or a rack) for your rodents and breed your own.

It sounds like you're wanting to keep doing F/T but you want to buy from a more local source. I would suggest finding a FB group that will have a list of breeders in your area or put up an ad on Craigslist looking for a steady supply of live feeders. You never know, there may be someone breeding feeders for his/her own snakes and has some extra you can buy.

There have been great points and advice given.


My 2 pennies:
I once bought live from a pet store. My snakes eat live and were all on a 2 week feeding schedule. So I would buy every 2 weeks and be left with few or no leftovers. If there were any leftovers, they were put in a 20L with some food and water until the following week or held until next feeding.

Price for 8 snakes: $150/mo.

Now I breed my own ASFs for 12 of 13 snakes at a cost of $75/mo. Cost is food and bedding for the rodents. The lone snake not on ASFs is not mine and is on f/t hoppers.

You WILL save at least half the money raising your own, but you do have to figure in the time and effort put into cleaning, feeding and watering(and dealing with possible escapees grrr!).

If you don't mind taking care of rodents, it's a great money savings. If you despise cleaning rodent cages, it can be worth buying.