cheap and easy breeding

It's not cheap breeding rats - you need to have a vet fund set aside in case your female goes into distress during labor, or becomes sick so that they don't infect the others. You need to provide high quality food, bedding each week. You'll need two males and two females, because when the male isn't with the female, he'll need a buddy - another male. And your female will need another buddy when she's not breeding - another female.

You aren't going to find much of a market to sell any as pets. For one ball python, not worth it. I didn't start breeding until I had 15 ball pythons.

Tweets and I are trying to start up a rat colony as well, but we only have 3 snakes between the both of us, but then again, we are also planning on getting more BP's sometime later this year. It wasn't a 'spur of the moment' deal, because we had discussed breeding rats for several months before we even bought them, like what were we going to do with the surplus, what would we do when we didn't have rats that were the right size, and things of that nature.
We got lucky on those two issues because we found a small pet store owner who said that he would buy our extra rats, and if there was ever a week where we didn't have the right size of rats, we could just drive the 5 min. over to his store to pick them up.
If you are dead set in breeding rats for just 1 snake, you need to be prepaired and fully think out every possible 'what if' situation. In my case, it's not so bad because I'll be sharing the costs with someone else, but I don't think that I would be breeding rats if I was by myself until I had a lot more snakes.

I can see that your not getting much encouragement. Its not really expensive to raise a small colony of rats. Get 2 males and 2 females. Small cages are cheap( I see them along the curb every week, set out for the garbage man). Some pet stores even have old tanks that they will sell you really cheap. Its the screen tops that cost the most. I've been making my own for years( but I have the tools to make it easy). You can buy your pine bedding and rat kibble at Wal-Mart and it won't break your bank.

As far as ending up with too many rats, check with your local pet stores. I have one really close that will buy any overflow of rats I may have. Most of the time they have to place a big order to get their rat supplier to come out and might welcome the opportunity to only have to buy a few when they are low. They might even give you more money on store credit than they would cash and it could work in your favor for buying reptile supplies.

Check some things out, get prices, and see what you can find. Just keep it small and simple. I'm not sure about vet bills on rats. Thats almost like taking a gold fish to the vet.( I'm sure someones gonna be angry about that statement)

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Originally Posted by Royalherper

Check some things out, get prices, and see what you can find. Just keep it small and simple. I'm not sure about vet bills on rats. Thats almost like taking a gold fish to the vet.( I'm sure someones gonna be angry about that statement)

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Not angry, just wondering why a rat doesn't hold the same value for you to deserve vet care? I had a female rat that never did get to be bred that I took to the vet probably 10 times trying to beat a respiratory infection back in January. Sure she was a Petsmart rat that cost me $6.99, but I took on the responsibility of her care, and that included providing her veterinary care when she needed it. Sadly, she lost her battle, but not for lack of trying.

Despite how much I hate seeing people get told not to try something I do have a comment.

You should never associate "cheap" with keeping any animal/pet. The whole point of my personal choice to raise my own rodents is so that I can put QUALITY into them. I know that they are in a clean safe environment and I know what food they are raised on. Trying to be cheap never enters my mind when it comes to keeping animals, if I come up with or replicate someone else's methods and it happens not to cost much its a bonus but not the intent.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Not angry, just wondering why a rat doesn't hold the same value for you to deserve vet care? I had a female rat that never did get to be bred that I took to the vet probably 10 times trying to beat a respiratory infection back in January. Sure she was a Petsmart rat that cost me $6.99, but I took on the responsibility of her care, and that included providing her veterinary care when she needed it. Sadly, she lost her battle, but not for lack of trying.

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I'm sorry you lost your pet. I just can't justify the means. I don't keep rats as pets and I don't consider them pets (for myself). If I did I could not feed their offspring to my snakes. Sure they are cute and I suppose they probably make good pets. I just can't mix my emotions like that. It took me almost a year to not feel bad when I fed my snake. I don't like to be responsible for the death of anything. But it is the rats role that it plays. Its food and I got use to it. If I had a pet rat and allowed myself to get attached to it, it would get vet care. But I only consider them food for my snake and thats it. I'm sorry you lost your pet and I hope you don't think me too cold. I couldn't raise a cow either because I would feel bad about cooking him on my grill :)

Thank you for your sentiment, Jason. She was not a pet though, she was intended to be a breeder. All of my breeders get vet care when needed. I breed to feed 17 snakes.

I was actually thinking about breeding (I have one snake also), but reading all the info I've decided against it. It seems most people don't recommend it unless you have about 7+ snakes. One day I may end up with that many but that won't be for a while. Another thing to think about is do you really have the space for it? Probably somewhere that doesn't get a lot of traffic and has good air flow since Im assuming its not gonna smell like fresh flowers. (Ive had to keep the occasional feeder for a little while if it doesn't get eaten right away and mice sure do stink). If you do decide to go ahead with it, you should make sure you actually have people who are willing to buy them before you start, for pets or feeders, so you don't go through all the trouble just to get stuck with lots of rats.