Rat colony setup questions

Sorry my brain is hurting today and searching on my phone is making it worse. I have 2 racks setup, one with five tubs (cement) and one with six. I have 6.14 adults. I started with one 5 tub rack and a ratio of 1.3-4 but from those litters (all around 10-12) I only have 6-8 babies left alive. And cleaning once a week didn't seem enough.(for the wife) so I built another rack to spread them out to a 1.2 ratio. Am I going to be able to keep them like that and get good numbers or should I rotate the females out to birth and ween. I have 11 snakes to feed and will be getting about 4-8 more in about two weeks. I can freeze extras but don't want to get stuck with 2-3 weeks of buying rats at a pet store when Im breeding.

I have a 13.55 colony and I had the same problem with 1.4 and 1.3 setup. I do get alot of rats from it but seems to be alot of loss too. So I have started to use a birthing rack so far it seems to be working way better but it maybe to early to tell. I just started to use the birthing rack 2 weeks ago and all the pinky's seem to be making it so far. I made a 6 tub test rack with 3 tubs have one female each and 3 tubs have 2 females each. If the 2 females per tub work I will probably use the mixing tubs from lowes for the rack. If the lone females do better I will build a rack with the smaller cat litter tubs.

I rotate my males and I have much better results than that. The few times that I've had lone females raising their whole litters, it has been hit and miss. I lost a whole litter of 12 to an inexperienced mom who didn't eat the placentas off of her babies, so I prefer to keep 3 females to a mason tub and rotate my male through the rack, 2 weeks/tub, then he moves to the next one. My females all take turns in nursing all of the pups, and I frequently see them split into even groups in three spots so everyone gets fed.

I am definitely doing this on the fly, so feel free to fix it if I messed it up you guys.
On the snake side.
If you figure each ball python at adult is eating 1-2 small adults (1.5 size greater than the head) per week.
1 per week x 52 = 52 per year.
2 per week x 52 = 104 per year.

On the rat side

One female = about 8-10 litters/year, with each litter being 8-12
this equals 56-120 rats per year.

So you can sort of think of it as one serious breeding female per snake per year. It really depends on the litter size though.

Now, lets see if I even came close to right. What do you guys think?

The amount of rats you need depends on the number of snakes you need to feed every week not how many rats per year each snake eats.

If your talking about a colony you need to know about more than the week in question, you need to plan. This is an idea for how to look at the plan.
However you break it up

I am definitely doing this on the fly, so feel free to fix it if I messed it up you guys.
On the snake side.
If you figure each ball python at adult is eating 1-2 small adults (1.5 size greater than the head) per week.
1 per week x 52 = 52 per year.
2 per week x 52 = 104 per year.


On the rat side

One female = about 8-10 litters/year, with each litter being 8-12
this equals 56-120 rats per year.

So you can sort of think of it as one serious breeding female per snake per year. It really depends on the litter size though.

Now, lets see if I even came close to right. What do you guys think?
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In my opinion you need more like 2 females per snake for it to work out. I have 15 bp's and a dwarf caiman and I think if I only had say 16 females I would be out of feeders alot of the time.

Thats 16 full time breeding females who produce good litters. But yea, It certainly wouldn't hurt to err on the side of too many vs to few.

I sure didn't mean for this to sound hissy. I guess I was trying to show the minimum amount of solid breeders it would take. I know when I first set up mine I WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY underestimated what it was going to take.

My males never see females when they are pregnant and nursing.

Once females are weaned from the babies is when they are tossed in iwth the males for a week, then separated till babies are born. Females are kept in groups of 2 for nursing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by flameethrower

My males never see females when they are pregnant and nursing.

Once females are weaned from the babies is when they are tossed in iwth the males for a week, then separated till babies are born. Females are kept in groups of 2 for nursing.

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Yup, exactly

If you do it that way you need even more rats because each female will be on a 3 month cycle. 1 month gestation one month nurseing until weaned then 1 month gestation again. I do plan to do exactly this because I think you will get a better yield and your females will live longer and have bigger litters I believe. But the earlier mentioned 1 female per snake will not work with this method for sure. I would probably go with at least 2 females per snake or maybe 5 females per 2 snakes.

And that will cut the number of litters to 4 a year. Hmmm...my head hurts again.

Great information...But my head hurts again...I know the birthing racks have been great for successful litters..But also the age of the female will help in the high number of pinks produced...I bred some of my females too early and only got litters of 8-9, but the next litter and with some age both got beautiful litters of 18 and all survived...We'll see if that continues, but I still have some young females in the racks and are expecting small litters...:(:(

all my females i hold back dont breed till they are 250+ grams so i know i get large litters. Sometimes i get females who never reach that size but they are sexually mature who drops 7 pinks every time. Nothing wrong with it if shes smaller but mature.

So if you leave everyone together and only get 5-7 per litter. But get twice the number of litters, it's the same as (per year) seperating them without the moving around and extra racks needed. Thoughts?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LotsaBalls

So if you leave everyone together and only get 5-7 per litter. But get twice the number of litters, it's the same as (per year) seperating them without the moving around and extra racks needed. Thoughts?

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no you won't.

idea of a birthing rack is three issues...

#1. allows mother to rest by removing her from immediate exposure to male after giving birth which would most likely result in her getting pregnant within days of giving birth

#2. removes male from exposure to offspring that will hopefully result in fewer deaths

#3. allows mother and offspring access to food.

problem I see with this logic is that mothers will fight over babies and food, so unless you plan to keep each litter and mother in their own bins...mothers will still tend to restrict each other and the babies optimum access to food and losses from fighting will still occur


without birthing racks you will get slightly less output but you will use less resources.

This discussion is exactly what I'm dealing with. I have been breeding mice for a few years with great success, but my rats have never had a good survival rate. In the past I've been keeping 1.3-1.4 in concrete tubs and never moving them. I only get about 60% of the litter grown to weans. If 3 or more drop at the same time the % is worse. I have just started using a few tubs in one of my mouse racks as birthing tubs for single moms. No drops yet, but I am confident that the survival rate will increase. Also, I 'll be able to tell who is a good mom and who isn't (replacing the bad ones). It seems to me that along with the low survival rate I have a poor growth rate. I believe what is happening is when more than one litter is born at a time one of the moms may be a better mom than the other, and ends up doing most of the work, which in turn leaves less care for each individual baby. I don't know if that's true, but I'm in the process of finding out.

We do private birthing racks here, always have and always will. I find there is a large gap in knowing who is doing what, who is producing the best etc with groups of females all together. Singly I feel is the best, and it lowers the risk of females infanticide, or fighting.

When space is tight, we will double up the two week olds, since they are beginning to eat solids and are already off to a good start, but I still prefer they all stay separate until weaned.

Been working out heavenly. :)

Im trying moving them out till they are a couple weeks old then putting a couple litters together if they are close in age. seems to go good. Now I just need to work on the smell, or so the wife says. (the rats, not me)

My recommendation is that you breed your rats at a 1.4 ratio in the cement tub racks. I prefer to keep the racks at 6 levels high due to height issues and ease of use.

Then for every cement tub rack you have you should build a birthing/nursing rack. I construct my birthing racks with medium petmate litter pans. They are 16" x 12" x 4" which is an okay size with floor space and at 4" high lets babies get up to the food.

I make the birthing racks 8 levels high and 3 tubs per level.

1 breeding rack = 6.24 adults.
1 birthing rack = room for 24 females to birth/nurse babies

This may not be the most space effective but my survival rate is near 100%. It lets you pull bad mothers out of the colony easily and gives you the most control over which females you keep back as breeders because you know which mother they came from and you can pick them based on genetic qualities.

I still scoff at birthing racks for feeders....:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I have some dedicated racks for grow outs for replacement breeders. I do it this way just because I like my colonies set as young as possible.

For feeders, or leftover weekly production, I use a metal cattle trough. I rarely have surplus but the trough is the easiest to collect from.