Finally the rat factory is workin!

I have 8 colonies of rats (no mice - can't stand the smell..LOL). 1.4 per tub...I never seperate the females when they are pregnant...My average litters are around 14...Never had a problem with the females getting along...They actually nurse each others pups...Daniel is right - a female rat will go into heat/cycle just a day or two after they give birth...My females give me a litter about once a month and are replaced (fed off) as breeders after about 10 - 12 months...If you have a nice size collection of snakes you pretty much have to raise your own rodents or spend a bunch of loot...I will say if you have a large colony of rodents they are a lot of work - well cleaning anyway...
Brian

I would like to get one too...but I am living with my Mom right now. She doesn't like the smell of them. I keep trying to tell her how much cheaper it would be. Think about it this way. Buy two adult feeder rats (one boy, one girl) for about $3 each, so $6 total. In like a month you will have around 10-15 pinkies. Freeze some...let some get to fuzzie size...freeze some...then so on and so on. Basicly you get 17 rats for $6. Now thats logical thinking ;). Why pay $1.29 for ONE f/t pinkie?

And I pay $9.99 for a 6-pack of frozen SMALL mice!

we started raising our own mice ... we feed live and paid 1.50 per mouse and my snakes are part cow they can eat forever!!! so that is alot of money. i have them one male to three female and things are moving along. i have 8 litters of babies (some are weaned and ready to be fed) and then i have some that were born yesterday :) i like my mice, they are relativly quiet and they dont smell but of coarse i clean their cages out alot in order for them not to stink. ill probably get over run by mice before too long ... so if your in the st. louis area and can pick up let me know and as soon as i get over run i think that we are selling them at like .75 a mouse :) i just like having the mice around when the are hoppers ... so fun to watch them bounce and hit their heads :)