New critters

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by frankykeno

What Jamie has done here with these tubs and the hardware cloth cutout area is for rats and wouldn't be appropriate for your boa. Hardware cloth is likely to give you endless problems with humidity for a snake as well as being an issue for severe nose rubs. It's the right stuff for rats however as they can easily chew through lighter mesh materials.

Nice group of ratties you've got there Jamie. Looks like a good group to start on the road to breeding your own feeders.

---

Of course I would make needed changes such as use screen, needed ventelation holes, ect

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by frankykeno

What Jamie has done here with these tubs and the hardware cloth cutout area is for rats and wouldn't be appropriate for your boa. Hardware cloth is likely to give you endless problems with humidity for a snake as well as being an issue for severe nose rubs. It's the right stuff for rats however as they can easily chew through lighter mesh materials.

Nice group of ratties you've got there Jamie. Looks like a good group to start on the road to breeding your own feeders.

---

Thanks Jo! We can't get over how social they are. Shannon is in love with them. I don't know how she'll feel when we have to feed off babies (or how i'll feel) but we'll worry about that when it happens!

Jo is right, hardware cloth is not good for boas (screen in general is a bad idea as they are notorious nose rubbers). I have a big BCI that was kept in a glass tank with a screen top for years and she has permanent scarring on her nose. But thanks for the compliments on the tubs. They were fun to do!

Totally understand that Jamie. As much as I enjoy my rat colony it wasn't easy at first to feed off their young (especially the pups). As I said to you before though just don't let yourself do more than good maintenance care of the feeders and save your attention for the breeders...that helps somewhat. Also remembering that rats are meant by nature to be prey and as long as you give them a good care level prior to feeding them off, they've fulfilled their natural place in life and had a much better existence than most rats would ever have.

They are very socialable, quite intelligent rodents but in the end they are rodents and if allowed to breed and not used properly as prey animals would quickly overrun their environment, sicken and die. For some reason, for me anyways, remembering that I'm just kind of a facilitator in the predator/prey dynamic works.

Darn you all! I'm seriously considering breeding rats now. I'm tired of $36 a week feeding bills. Jamie, can you post a picture of how you have the water bottle rigged up?


So, I looked at the FAQ's, can anyone give me a ratio I should consider to feed 14 ball pythons? Currently, 4 '06 babies, 8 yearlings and 2 adults?

Well Robin I currently have a ratio of one adult male breeding rat to 4 adult female breeding rats and I have tons of feeders for the 4 adult/sub-adult BP's, 1 baby BP and one almost yearling BCI we feed weekly (the adult BCI and the almost yearling milksnake I usually buy for as they eat either oversized rats that aren't worth me raising up or mice which I refuse to breed). Most of my requirements are in the weaned/small smalls size range of rats.

Granted my adult female rats are all experienced females and regularily produce 14 plus pinks with no losses so you have to figure when you start out your females will produce smaller litters usually the first time out. As well you'll need growing out feeder tubs depending on what sizes you are needing.

If you started out with say 1 male and 4 females you should do well I think. Figure if you cycle in 2 females with him and they produce first time up say 10 young each, then pull them to maternity tubs and cycle in the other 2 females a week or so later. Then you would have about 20 rat young with another 20 born about a week or so after the first litters. That should give you a decent amount of young to at least start out with and see how it goes. It took us a couple of months of cycling in pairs of females with Casanova before we hit our stride and were completely feeding the BP's from our own rat colony.

Depending on if you buy very young rats to start out you may want to do what Jamie did and buy two males as no rat should live alone long...they really need other rats to socialize with. Even with our big breeding male if he doesn't have any females in with him we put in a couple of his sons from the male feeder tub for company.

As far as costs just a very rough estimate. I buy a huge bage of bedding every month for about $5.00. My own homemade rat mix I mix up every two weeks in a big bucket.....including the base lab block I buy in bulk and all the odds and ends I toss in it comes to around $11.00 to $15.00 very two weeks...so $30.00 per month on feed. The kitchen scraps I don't count of course as they would have just been garbage anyways. So for my colony of rats which is about 35 to 40 right now with two litters expected in the next week or so (that includes breeders, juveniles being raised to breed and feeders)....it costs us about $35.00 a month give or take actual cash outlay.

I can cost out the setup like I use if you need it. I don't rack the rats though we may get around to designing something one day for that. Currently they are just in a combination of bigger clear tubs (for the feeders), one big main wire rat cage where my breeder male lives in all his glory and "entertains" his ladies and a series of 10 gallon tanks which I use for one rat only maternity tanks or resting tanks for the females to hang out in for a week or two after they finishing weaning and before they head back in with Nova.

I have all the above on a great plastic shelving unit I bought from WalMart. Has four large shelves (capacity 75 lbs per shelf), snaps together without tools and cost me all of $17.88! It's by DuraShelf #9144 and most any WalMart stocks it. I'll get some pics of the rat setup as soon as I can for you. It's nothing special and a bit ghetto compared to the lovely rat racks some here build but it works okay for a small home colony.

jo, looks like you've got the rats down pretty good. must be nice to be able to raise/breed your own feeders. if/when we move out of surburbia, i'm going to do a rat shed.


robin, are you buying your feeders at pet stores? if so, try to get in with one of the employees and get the # to their rodent supplier. me and a few guys here locally buy direct from the pet store's supplier, about half price of retail. the same as the stores pays.


vaughn

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kavmon

robin, are you buying your feeders at pet stores? if so, try to get in with one of the employees and get the # to their rodent supplier. me and a few guys here locally buy direct from the pet store's supplier, about half price of retail. the same as the stores pays.


vaughn

---

I've tried that - all the employees are family members and they are NOT giving up their sources. They won't even give out my phone number with my permission to people who are surrendering ball pythons when they don't have the room for them.

I've tried googling for rat suppliers, but all I find are small breeders locally who clearly state on their website that they breed pets, not feeders.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rabernet

Darn you all! I'm seriously considering breeding rats now. I'm tired of $36 a week feeding bills. Jamie, can you post a picture of how you have the water bottle rigged up?


So, I looked at the FAQ's, can anyone give me a ratio I should consider to feed 14 ball pythons? Currently, 4 '06 babies, 8 yearlings and 2 adults?

---

Here is the water bottle pic. $3 at Petsmart and one of the new male rat

http://www.glassreptiles.com/picture...aterbottle.jpg

http://www.glassreptiles.com/picture.../rat070406.jpg

Thanks Vaughn, it is rewarding being independent of the pet stores or rat suppliers in our own little way. The rat rack is actually in our den Vaughn and believe it or not there's almost no smell associated with our colony (currently about 40 rats with 2 litters due shortly). I actually asked a friend once if I just couldn't smell them anymore and she said my rats smell better than her 4 cats LOL.

Oh btw Robin before I forget that plastic free standing shelving from WalMart I mentioned has a footprint of only 35.25" wide x 14.25" deep (the rack itself is 55.25" high) so it basically takes up no more than your average deep bookcase.