Buying F/T vs. breeding your own?

I'm just wondering, what are the disadvantages and advantages to breeding your own rats/mice vs. buying F/T? I honestly thought it was much more expensive to switch to breeding your own because you have to pay for bedding, food, extra tubs and such. But, it looks like that that's not the case. Is it not worth breeding your own if you have have about 15-20 snakes? How much money do you actually save while breeding your own? Thanks!

Pros:

Do you save money yes? I cut about 50%-60% of the cost and I do not pay shipping.

I know exactly what my snake eat and where it comes from, this mean quality.

Cons:

The smell you better have have an option of outside building or basement room with a good exhaust fan so you do not smell it in your house.

Cleaning up, it's more work you have to clean up and interact with the rodents.

Rats grow fast so you need to be ready to euthanize before you get over populated with over grown rats. (Euthanizing rats is no fun)

Honestly, unless you really enjoy raising your own feeders for your snakes and you have enough snakes to warrant breeding feeders, its usually not worth it for most people.

Depending on the size of your collection, you would end up spending more or equal time with the feeders as with your snakes. Although having live feeders on hand makes feeding time easy. Just pick an appropriate size rat, pre kill or just throw it in, whatever your preference is and boom that's it. With f/t there's a little more prep work involved such as the thawing process reheating then doing the dance or leaving the rat in the cage.

I find f/t to work best for me because I have been able to get my snakes on f/t and I simply don't have time to breed the feeders myself. Storage is easy with f/t and the best part no smell from the live feeders!!!

Overall though to each his own and if you really want to take a shot at breeding go for it. I have and found that it just wasn't for me.

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@Deborah: That's a huge difference! I honestly thought you would be saving about 5-15% due to buying food, bedding and such. Also, how do you euthanize your feeders? I've heard that the best way to do it is get some dry ice, put it in a small container with holes, then get a large cooler, put the rats/mice in, hen put the dry ice container in it, close the cooler and then wait for 5-10 min. Is that the most humane way possible?

@notmyfault: Time is the thing I'm worried about too. I don't know if I'll have time in the future, but hey, if it saves me quite a bit of money, I'm down for trying it! haha

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@Deborah: That's a huge difference! I honestly thought you would be saving about 5-15% due to buying food bedding and such

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It comes down to where you buy your supply, I buy bulk, enough for a month and I buy from a local feed store.

I produce over 2000 feeders each year.

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, . Also, how do you euthanize your feeders? I've heard that the best way to do it is get some dry ice

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The problem with dry ice is that first it's not always easy to find, second it does not keep, third it's expensive compare to other alternatives.

I have a Co2 tank, I used to use a paintball canister but my needs increasing more and more, I switch to a bigger Co2 tank (10 lbs) which is exchanged when needed.

You can get a setup for less than $50

My advice would be, if you only have 15-20 snakes and they all eat F/T is to stick with it. To add to what Deborah said,

Pros:
Cheaper (kinda)
Quality (you know the health of your rats)
Live always available (picky eaters)
Convenient (food is always on hand)

Cons:
Time consuming (cleaning)
Expensive to start (racks, watering, etc)
Smelly (omg yes)
Space (racks, food, bedding)
Killing rats is not fun!

Honestly, if I almost wish I didn't breed rats. They're a lot of work and they smell. The convenience factor is the only reason I breed them. When you buy F/T in bulk, the price comes close to even when you factor in food, bedding and racks. Building a rat rack is worth like 80+ rats. For smaller collections that readily eat F/T I'd advise against it. But, once you start getting into feeding 300+ rats a month and you have space/time available, it becomes worth it.

It also really depends on how many snakes you are feeding, and how long you have done so.

Like replacing all of your light bulbs with LEDs the initial cost is much higher... But over time you save money because the continuing costs are much less... So eventually you will save money but not at first.

Second I think that breeding feeders makes no sense if you have less than 10 snakes, the time and money required to breed rodents (not to mention the smell) out weight the savings (which are less since you aren't feeding as many rodents a week)

I currently have 7 snakes and I buy frozen. I buy 6 months worth of rodents at a time ($300-$400 usually) but save at least $250 vs buying rodents locally. To me that is more than enough savings for now.

Once I have a few more snakes and am not living in an apartment I will start breeding my own as it will at that point be worth the effort and I will have a rodent breeding shed in my back yard.

I concure with literally everything aaron said. For now im fine feeding f/t. In the future, when i hope to have many more snakes and am living in my own home, i will most likely breed my own. I'll definetly be doing it in a shed though bc those suckers REAK lol. Idc how many times a week you clean out the tubs, they still smell bad to me lol.

Also, and im not trying to start a fight here, ive heard snakes will generally feed better on live. As in less refusals. Whether this is true or not, i dont know for sure.

Great comments here and I don't really have anything extra to add except that I wouldn't necessarily include quality as a pro in raising your own... or rather, I wouldn't exclude it as a pro in buying f/t.

I get incredibly high quality f/t locally from a fellow bp enthusiast that breeds extra rats for other locals.

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Originally Posted by Jabberwocky Dragons

Great comments here and I don't really have anything extra to add except that I wouldn't necessarily include quality as a pro in raising your own... or rather, I wouldn't exclude it as a pro in buying f/t.

I get incredibly high quality f/t locally from a fellow bp enthusiast that breeds extra rats for other locals.

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The point of adding it as a PRO is because I know what my rats eat. No chance they've been fed dog food with red dye in it. That piece of mind is very important IMO. I've also ordered F/T from online places when my colonies didn't quite do the job, but when I received them I noticed a big difference between my rats and theirs. The rats I've bought are packaged poory, have bloody noses and purple feet. Now that my colonies have grown substantially, I sell my excess rats to other snake breeders as well and I can tell you, none of mine look that way.

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Originally Posted by dart

The point of adding it as a PRO is because I know what my rats eat. No chance they've been fed dog food with red dye in it. That piece of mind is very important IMO. I've also ordered F/T from online places when my colonies didn't quite do the job, but when I received them I noticed a big difference between my rats and theirs. The rats I've bought are packaged poory, have bloody noses and purple feet. Now that my colonies have grown substantially, I sell my excess rats to other snake breeders as well and I can tell you, none of mine look that way.

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So would you say there's a difference in the quality of the rats you sell to others versus the ones you keep for yourself? My point was that you can get just as high quality rats f/t by buying from a trusted breeder as from breeding them yourself so that's not necessarily an advantage for breeding yourself over buying f/t.

I should have added that I started breeding my own feeders when I reached 10 snakes which was a great move since a few month late I started hatching my first animals as well (having love when you breed snake is essential)

Here are my reasons-

Pro's to my own breeders-
I know where they have been and what they are eating
More space in my freezer for people food
Convenience (this one is huge)

Cons-
More work cleaning
Male rats smell (asf's, not as bad)

As far as time spent with feeders, it probably works out to the same as time spent messing with thawing rats.

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I got out of breeding my own, but I have a source now who delivers live once a week and takes anything not eaten back with him. He's currently only producing just for my collection and his.

I know and trust him, and much of his collection came from me. It's nice when we can trade snakes for rat credit.

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it is a toss for me. i like rats personally, however i do have allergies to them. but will deal with it when needed. i mainly order F/T's, but will breed for hatchlings if i got the time and space to do so until i get them switched to F/T's. after that, i do not have any local hook ups for anything thing smaller than adult mice, and small/medium rats, and $5 for an adult mouse is crazy!!!!!.

I too am 50/50 on breeding vs. buying.

Pros of breeding:
MUCH less waste for those picky eaters - you can throw the uneaten live ones back in their tank.
No defrosting.
No split rats during feedings.
Some of our snakes ONLY eat live (as much as I hate it), so it's convenient to have them on hand and not have to store-hop to find the right sizes.


Cons of breeding:
We're finding that it's actually costing us a bit more to breed. It's getting harder and harder to find rodent block/food and bedding in bulk where we live.
There's a lot of time and energy into breeding - cleaning, feeding, watering, etc. - that I don't spend defrosting.
Personally, I have a hard time raising animals without getting attached.

At this point, we're still trying to figure out the best route for us.

My own account:

We have around 15 snakes now. We probably had around 10 or 12 when my WEEKLY feed bill for buying live rodents was $50. That's $200 a month, $2,400 per year. 30 minute round trip to the store, an hour and a half "shooting the breeze" with the shop owners. This is when I made the jump to breeding my own.

Now, I am going to round it up generously, I am spending $50 a month, $600 a year. Initial cost for my 6 bin rack was about $150 if I remember correctly. I try to keep my breeding to a 1.3 or 1.4 so I only have to clean about once every 5 days and that takes 30 minutes. Daily care of feeding 1x a day and waters every other day, takes less than 10 minutes.

You are going to be spending a fair amount of time with your rats on a day to day basis. This is why you don't necessarily need to be in love with your rats, but at least like them. If you are on the disliking end already, be sure to get good stock that are not aggressive and that don't run and scream when you pick them up. Nice rats are a lot more pleasant to deal with than the skittish ones.

I raise rats for my 6 ball pythons.

Cons: They can stink, they do take a lot of work if you don't want them to stink, and they don't breed exactly as many as you need so you can end up with surplus or not have enough on any given week. I've set things up so that I err on the side of too many.

Pros: I don't save any money, but I know that my snakes are getting fed good clean rodents that are getting plenty of clean feed and water plus extras like fresh fruit and vegetable scraps. I always end up with too many so I get to help out a friend who runs a small reptile rescue with my surplus.

For those of you who do breed your own which of the two tend to smell better; rats or asf's?

Also when you clean out the rats bins what exactly do you do? Is it like cleaning out my bp tubs or not as involved as far as all the disinfecting?

sorry to have :hijackd: the thread, but i feel like these 2 questions go along with it pretty well:)

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

For those of you who do breed your own which of the two tend to smell better; rats or asf's?

Also when you clean out the rats bins what exactly do you do? Is it like cleaning out my bp tubs or not as involved as far as all the disinfecting?

sorry to have :hijackd: the thread, but i feel like these 2 questions go along with it pretty well:)

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Asf's smell a lot less. They are easier to clean also, because the typically pick a corner and that is the toilet. Spot clean every few days, complete clean roughly every two weeks, sooner if needed.

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I do a total change. Rats go into a holding bin, a routine they know very well, I dump out the old, wipe down with lysol wipes or the generic wipes, and fill back up and rats go back in. This is my chance to give everyone a really good look over and see if I have any neat pups.

I haven't had any problems with using the wipes. A little sneezing from the initial dust of new bedding, but usually by the time I put rats back in, the bin has dried and the smell is gone.

I have a 6 tied system and a gravidy waterer.
4 mommy rats, 1 daddy rat, and 2 colonies of asfs (1.2 and 1.4)
18 balls and 12 hatchlings and 12 eggs (right this second LOL)

I keep 2 mommies together (so 2 tubs), an empty tub for daddy when he is not doing his thing, a tun for weaners and then the asfs use 2 tubs. I clean the rats every 4-5 days and the asfs every other time. I only have one room for my hobby so the snake rack and the rat rack are in the same room. I do not have a problem with the smell. Or I should say any guests that come over never even know about the rats till I point them out!!

When I clean I put the little ones in a holding bin, wipe out with a clorox wipe and refill with the shavings. Mine are also spoiled and get fruit and veggies from our table as well.
I actually like breeding the rats. Quality is the key!! I KNOW what they have eaten and that they are healthy.

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Originally Posted by Mike41793

snakes will generally feed better on live. As in less refusals. Whether this is true or not, i dont know for sure.

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I do not find it true it all. We offered my garter live feeder fish and earthworms and he didnt take them but put in a f/t pinky, its gone in 5 minutes.