Ratville Rattery!!

I just wanted to post that last Friday (April 30) I purchesed a breeding pair of rats from my local petstore. As it turns out, the female was already pregant and I'm expecting babies in the next week! She looks like she ate a apple or somthing! I have them seperated so she wont get pregant again after she gives birth. I'll keep you guys posted!! :D

I love buying pregnant rats......it's like legal shoplifting! Yeah, it's funny when they're pregnant because you can't really tell until a week or so, then like you said it's like they ate a whole apple.
Congrats on your expected litter 8)

Thanks! I'm lookin foward to it too.

Congrats on your rat purchase. The biggest problem I found with breeding rats is that you have to euthanize them before they grow too big to feed to your snake! And they grow really fast. But breeding my own has definately been worth it financially. I have one preggo female now, and one female being bred to a male as we speak (I am choosing not to watch the gory details, lol.) Free food for all snakes!

UPDATE!!! My female (Jill) has just given birth!!! The're soooo small. I knew it would be soon cuz last night I saw them moving inside and could tell that she was in labor. There's lots of blood but I don't think that she's eating them though. I'm soooooo happy. This is the cheapest way to optain rats that I've found. Especially since my petstore dosen't sell sm. rats.

Congrats! The supposedly pregnant female I bought had her litter of 9 last Thursday!

How do you kill rats?

Here's my other question. Are rats pretty smelly?

well there are a few methods for killing - put in a plastic bag and swing against a hard surface - or a really humane way involving dry ice- here is a link to one method-

http://www.alysion.org/euthanasia/index.html

here is discussion on this topic:
http://www.ball-pythons.net/index.ph...opic&p=674#674

Rats are not as smelly as mice from what I have read, and rats are WAY more intelligent.

Rather than vinegar and baking soda however, I would use dry ice. :)

Thanks Johnah. That's awesome. I'm thinking about breeding my own rats. Do you know how much more cost effective it is to breed your own (as opposed to buying them)?

How would you use dry ice in this context?

hmm well depends on how many herps but I'm sure if you are willing and have the space breeding rats is pretty cost effective.

When dry ice is put in water it makes that fog right? That fog is Carbon Dioxide (I think...) anyways, it suffocates the same way combining vinegar and baking soda in the above article would, thing is dry ice leaves no possible scent (I've never tried or read of anyone trying but vinegar and baking soda may scent the prey making it not as appetizing to your snake) using dry ice (can be picked up at any party supply store) is odorless, easy, cheap, humane, and if you have any left over you can either fill a bucket with water and make fog for fun or break it into small pieces, fill an empty gatorade or other plastic bottle 1/4 to 1/2 way with water and put a bunch of dry ice chunks up - seal it and back away and watch the bottle expand and explode! :) (this is dangerous and is not recommended :lol: but is none the less very fun to watch and makes VERY loud bangs) as the dry ice (blocks of CO2 right?) meet the water and produce gas, in the sealed environment of a bottle there is nowhere for that gas to go so the bottle swells and blows up. I have no experience with this ... :P

Today is the euthanasia day!! I used the baking soda/vinagar method and it works great. I've allready killed 3 and there is 5 more on the way.