keeping snakes and feeders in the same room

have any of you tried this? right now my rats are in my garage and the snakes are in a room. we're having a really hot summer, so my breeder rats are dying like flies. all the while, my ball python eggs are incubating. i forsee a famine if i do not act quickly. so i'm thinking maybe i can move the rats into the snake room, where it's easier to control temps. i'm just concerned on whether that will have a negative effect on my snakes' feeding response. they get really excited when they smell food coming, i do not want them to loose interest in food if they smell rats in the same room 24/7. as usual, your advice will be highly appreciated. tia

Never had problems, I have indoor bunnies and pet rats in my snake room too

I've only done it once, but I had rats with chewing issues so when they escaped they went back outside. Do you have a fan blowing on the rats? The ventilation really seems to do well in the heat. I had mine in an aluminum shed, when it first got hot a few died. I went out and bought a canopy tent and left the door open and didn't have a single one die the rest of the summer.

i do use a fan, but rats are still dying. fan is just circulating hot air, not really helpful in lowering ambient temps. i think the fan works on people because the breeze evaporates our sweat, but rats do not sweat so it can't do anything for them. my garage has concrete walls but wide open on front and back. rats are kept in screentop racks, so the set up is well ventilated, it's just so dang hot....

my snake room is separate from the house, so i think i can live with a few escapees. but i'm still hoping that my rat rack remains chew proof.

I've kept my rat colony in the same room with my snakes.
No issues. In fact, I think the snakes' feeding responses got better.


And regarding keeping rats in heat, I've kept rats in 90 degrees no problem and breeding kept up as normal. Keep air circulating as mentioned. Also putting frozen water bottles and granite/tile slabs in the tubs will help lower temperatures as well. The rats lie on the granite/tile to lower their body temps.

temps in the shade commonly reach 95F and sometimes even more. i really wish the rains would come soon.....:please:

i'll try the stone thing. i do not have granite, but there's some scrap marble. as for frozen water bottles, i'll think about it. i do not like any moisture in my rat tubs.

thanks.

I've have rats and snakes in the same room. Everybody is fine.

Wild ball pythons live in rodent burrows, they leave when it smells like snake. I've had feeder rats in my snake room for only a week now but my snakes seem to be thrilled about it. They are eating voraciosly when before they barely ate at all. Could be coincedence, could be they love it. Just my input.

I thought balls lived in termite mounds? Lol. Anyway, i've moved the rat racks into the snakeroom. I hope no more rats die, my breeding females are down to 9, i hope the young ones make it to breeding age before the bp eggs hatch. I'll also try to buy some adult rats, i'd be lucky to find willing sellers since local feeder rodents are an endagered species during this time of year.

My snakes are getting fat, since i feed them more often rather than waste the rats and pups. I guess they should put on extra weight, since they'll need it when i run out of feeders.

They live in both.

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By the way, i'm talking about a sixteen tub rat rack. Each one Is supposed to have 2 females and babies. Maybe a few feeders in the room would stir excitement, as i have seen whenever i bring in a bin of rats on feeding time. but with that much rat smell in the room, i was concerned that the snakes will get so used to the smell that they won't notice the difference between having and not having food in with them.

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Originally Posted by J.P.

have any of you tried this? right now my rats are in my garage and the snakes are in a room. we're having a really hot summer, so my breeder rats are dying like flies. all the while, my ball python eggs are incubating. i forsee a famine if i do not act quickly. so i'm thinking maybe i can move the rats into the snake room, where it's easier to control temps. i'm just concerned on whether that will have a negative effect on my snakes' feeding response. they get really excited when they smell food coming, i do not want them to loose interest in food if they smell rats in the same room 24/7. as usual, your advice will be highly appreciated. tia

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It's crazy that you posted this! was checking on my breeder rats IN MY GARAGE last night and 4 males gone 7 females gone im out in phoenix arizona so when i say it gets hot out here i mean it. Glad im not the only one nervous to move the rats into the snake room. Only difference is my snake room is a spare room in my house! curious if anyone can recommend an air purifer for around 100-150$ that will do the trick for a relatively small room. also interested in others experience in keeping everyone in the same room thanks! and glad you posted this!

about keeping BPs and rats and other rhodents in the same room: thats perfectly fine


about the temperature issue in itself: here i have some ideas. when the humidity is low, USE IT. soak some towels and scraps of cloth in cold water and hang them out to dry, all over the room. humdity goes up, temperature goes down. with air movement, humidity stays down, and temperature stays down as long as you continue to re-soak the towels and cloth when they run dry.

it really works, evaporative cooling is a thing. high humidity wont kill your rats, heat will. so if humidity is not already high, if water can still evaporate, that gives you a real option. increasing air flow is just an indirect way of increasing evaporation. if you combine increased air flow with a bunch of wet towels hanging in the room, you get real results.

different idea: for a different thread, i checked the thermal capacity of different materials. and clean water really is near the top. it has a ridiculously high thermal capacity. higher than salt water, higher than solid blocks of copper or stone or concrete or steel, by weight AND by volume. freezing water in bottles and putting that in can help, but even cold water will help. if you can get relatively cold water from the system, just fill some buckets with that cold water and put them in the room. evaporation only helps. when they are up to ambient temperature, replace them.

if the floor and the walls can take some water, like when its a wooden garden shed, you can go for a triple-purpose approach: take a garden hose that delivers cold water, and spray down the walls from the inside. the cold water will take the heat out of the walls, you get plenty of evaporation while you do it, and when you are done the wet floor and wet walls will give you more evaporation cooling.

if its a rugged wooden shed standing free, i would totally go crazy with water. spray the inside walls, spray some over the roof, make the floor soaking wet, hang up towels, put water in buckets. and when the cold water in the buckets has become hot, throw it at the inside walls. you can lower the temperature by 15 degrees celsius with these methods, provided that you are dealing with "dry hot" and not tropical "wet hot", where the heat is combined with 90%+ humidity.

another idea: give the rats water bowls where they can dive in and soak their coat. they cannot sweat, alright. but they can make their fur wet, and in the heat they will happily do so. even if the water is hot and stale, when they jump in and do a roll and get out, they now have a wet coat that will cool them down quite a bit, based on evaporation, similar to sweat, depending on humidity and air flow.

when fighting heat, water is your friend.

I have a six level small cement tub rack for the rats in my room. I also have a BP rack and various tubs of snakes in my room. I've never had an issue. If anything my picky eaters are generally more eager to eat than the ones out in the living room.

i have no problem cooling the small snake room. an evaporative cooler sucks dry air from outside and blows a soothing breeze inside, while an exhaust fan sucks the hot humid air out from the ceiling. i'll see if tis is enough. will add the water bowls if still needed. i want to avoid it as much as possible because of the mess.

hanging up some soaking wet towels all over the place never hurt anyone.

and what kind of humidity are we dealing with anyway? low humidity means you can use SCIENCE and PHYSICS to drive down temperature.

kinda offtopic, but its so cool, i had to put it here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39sv7ZGUEoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDQOvzFetxs

except that we are talking about evaporative cooling, not magnets. but the result is the same. it works. SCIENCE!

Snakes hang out with me in the man cave, the rats are in a seperate room with an exhaust fan because i cannot stand the smell. but i have a whole rack of African soft furs and a few breeder mice in the room with the snakes and i've found no difference in behavior other then none have a poor food response. This is with ball pythons, corns, hognose, and a boa so i cant speak for all species.

Get an air conditioner. One really hot day may not kill all your breeders, but it can affect whether or not they breed and if they do breed, how large the litters will be.

I kept some rats in a tub once on the top of the rack... then they started fighting each other so I had an early feeding day.... Our hamster stays in the same room.

I take mine to the pet store and always have to wal Kk by ferrets. They don't even notice them.

This was one of the first things I googled before I got a snake. A lot of people have or do it and it's not an issue

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after two weeks of having the rats in the snake room, i did notice better feeding response. i want to thank everybody for the advice!
really helpful!!!! except nobody warned me about getting bit. one yearling wanted to eat me, striking repeatedly and cashing me as soon as i pulled out the tub. i was really scared, she was behaving almost like a black mamba. i never thought balls are capable of that much aggression. she only calmed down after i gave her a rat, she had to eat right on the floor because i was afraid to pick her up.