Starting Out - Questions About Quantity

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Originally Posted by Sebrina

I keep 2 colonies of 5.25 per colony in a rat rack, this isn't counting the offspring they produce just the breeding colonies. I eliminate my rodent costs and even make a few bucks (not much trust me) selling to local reptile owners in the area. If you only spend 5 minutes in a reptile room per week with this many animals your doing something wrong. I've had picky eaters in the past as well but I've yet to meet a snake that didn't transition over to rats if your persistant (no, not starving an animal). I've just started to transition over to ASFs, currently have 3.9 hoping to fully transition once we get the ball rolling with that. I've tried 1.2 - 1.3 - 1.4 and 1.5 sure it works but takes way too long. Most of my rodents are very docile and I even let my kids play with them. The only fighting I get is over a custom wheel I just put in last week in every rack enclosure, but nothing major.

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I don't think you read my post entirely. I never said anything about 5 minutes a week in my reptile room.? I spend about an hour a day, and 4-5 hours a day on weekends. I said with only 2 mouse colonies, it would take around 5 minutes per week to care for them.....but I use a much different setup than most. Efficiency is key to keeping a large group of rodents. Even with 5.25, I could do it on about 10 minutes per week.

As far as getting some balls to switch over, I don't consider them being switched over if it's switching them to ASF rats. I'm sure they would easily take something that is native to them. I have around 30 ball pythons and most take live rats, some however, will only accept live adult mice and I have tried everything. Granted, they are all pastels that started on rats, they now only want live mice. I have not tried ASF because I can't get them in my area.

I'm not sure how many animals you have, but having a small-med size collection you will run into more obstacles than with just a few.

No worries Brandon and my apologies if I offended you, would you mind sharing what type of setup you have. If I can learn something new today it was well worth it. :) I currently have about 35 snakes (most are hatchlings only a few ready for breeding), this is in fact my first year breeding my OWN snakes.

No offense taken at all Sebrina. I didn't mean to sound harsh if I did. I've been breeding snakes for almost 20 years and rodents for nearly as long, until the last couple of years. I decided, with the advice of my wife, to stop breeding rodents a couple of years ago.....she wouldn't let me in the house. lol.

In my experience with ball pythons, they may start great on frozen thawed rats, but at 700-1000 grams many of them fast for several months. When they decide to begin feeding again, they switch their preferred food to something that makes things difficult for us keepers. This has been my experience with balls since I began keeping them in the early 90s.

As far as rodent breeding goes, I'll see if I can't find some old pics of my setup. With the help of my cousin, we could clean around 200 cages in the matter of about 2-3 hours per week. We set up automatic water, had food bin that would last a week, and kept most colonies in 1.5 groups. We were pulling around 2000 mice per week, including pinks, fuzzies, hoppers, weanlings, and adults. Our initial startup with from my original 16 cages I used to feed my own animals. We were running over 100 breeder cages in less than 2 months after holding back stock from the originals. Although we used the rack system, you can also use a similar style without the rack for effecient cleaning and production.

I'll try to get a pic up soon.

I'd definitely like to see pics of your setup, Brandon!