Need Some Suggestions...

Well I was thinking about breeding rats. I now have 6 snakes that will need to be fed. Icelos can take rat pinks or fuzzies, my new female BP takes hopper rats and Ashes will too when I get him, Hades takes small rats, and Chimera and Kozma take medium rats.

I guess what I'm asking is, is it worth it to breed them? How long will it take them to get to a reasonable size to feed the big boys? I figured I'd get one of those layered plastic storage containers on wheels that you can slide the drawers out. I saw somewhere else that somebody used them so I figured I could.

Anyways, how would I go about finding rats that are ready to mate? Should I get 2 large rats or are they just large because of their breed not neccesarily their age? I guess I really need to know everything, their care, breeding them etc....help :(

There are a lot of threads about this. You might try searching a bit and refining those questions, just a tad. ;) For me, the whole getting attached and hassle factor just make breeding my own rats unrealistic. It something you have to figure out a bit for yourself. You need to price stuff like bedding, rodent blocks, and caging. Plus you have to figure our where to keep the ever expanding rodent colony. I know there are a lot of people that love breeding rats. Sorry I wish I could be a bit more helpful. :oops:

I'll just say.. DON'T use a plastic storage drawer thing. The rats WILL chew out of it and you will have wasted your money. Get either wire cages, or lab style rodent cages. Big apple herp has nice ones..

If you have trouble finding answers to any of your questions, don't hesitate to ask.

I just started raising our own. Our first pair started out as snake food, and by the time the snake would eat, the rats were too big. Peekaboo had her first litter a month after being with Scabbers. None of my snakes needed pinkies, so I raised the first of them to just over 2 weeks, (fuzzies) & fed to the rats. The fancy rat sites say not to wean until 5 weeks (4 minimum) but Peek started weaning at 3. By then they all had fur and their eyes were open. I fed some and they were the right size for the snakes.

At 4-5 weeks, they were getting too big for my needs, so I euthanized and froze them. My Pissy Snake just took the first one for the first time last week. He's been on live adult mice for about 2.5 months, but he's since taken a FT rat pup. I tried again early this morning after work, but he refused.

My daughter just got a baby corn, and it's still needing MICE pinkies. I've got 3 females preggers right now, and I bought some frozen because I didn't know how soon the mice would pop and I didn't want to run out.

I knew going into it that I'd be doing in the litter, but it was hard. I don't know about your area, but it cost me $45 to get the hose, CO2 bottle, valve, etc. in order to gas them. Beside the bedding, feed, blocks/salt, housing to keep them all healthy. I did it because shipping is sooooooooo expensive for me to get the FT from a vendor, but I may change my mind after a while. Peek and Scabbers are pets now anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or another. I am thinking of breeding her again, so that I can freeze some rat pinkies for Wrigley. He's upchucked the rat pup :tears: and the mice I've fed him, :bleh: so this next time I'll try something smaller again.

Shipping is really expensive for me too otherwise I'd order frozen off the bat. But now that I have such an array of sizes of snakes, it seems like it should be a good idea to breed. Most other threads are dealing with people breeding to have the little rats to feed. I just want to know if it is worth breeding them because I'd have to wait until they get up to a medium size to feed half of my snakes. And if so, what size rat should I get to breed? Jumbo?

Get large rats to breed.. you shouldn't need jumbo, and jumbo rats will be older anyway. Rats don't live that long so better to get young breeder size rats!

The best size for breeder rats is 3-4 months of age. They can breed when smaller but not quite as efficient at it. Research local feed or seed stores for bedding and rodent chow, seems to be alot cheaper at these type of facilities. Dont use the plastic drawer sytems because they can chew out of them. I have a thread in the feeder section for a rat rack I built. This works very good. I have 20 or so snakes and breeding my own is more cost effective, plus I will soon be having a surplus that I can sell locally to get back some of my investment. Good Luck!!:)

Here is link to thread.

Bill

be careful with stuff you get from feed stores though... as often there can be mites living in the bedding... whenever i get anything from there it goes right into the freezer to kill anything on it.

personally i've given up on feed stores due to the amount of times i ended up with mites. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by recycling goddess

be careful with stuff you get from feed stores though... as often there can be mites living in the bedding... whenever i get anything from there it goes right into the freezer to kill anything on it.

personally i've given up on feed stores due to the amount of times i ended up with mites. :(

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Feed stores with mites??? The feed store I go to carries no animals whatsoever and get their bedding directly from the manufacturer. I could see that happening more at retail and pet stores that carry animals, the only way they can get snake mites in the bedding is being in contact or nearby to snakes that are infested. Does your feed store carry animals?

I think she means rodent mites.

ok, but wouldnt the same apply? Wouldnt it have to be contaminated somewhere? Same questions still apply.:)

Well.. most feed stores I know have a few rodents running around munching on spilled grain.

yup, aprils right!!!

It must be the difference in the management of facilities, because our local feed store doesnt have spilled grain and rodents running around. The city wouldn't allow it to be in town if it was attracting rodents. I guess there are bad ones and good ones, depends on the location.

Well we live in farm country.. where there are horse barns, there are rats and mice.. no getting around it.

Ok, so I'll get what one male and 3 female medium rats? How many aquariums will I need? Obviously one for the babies and mama. God I'm confused.

Gestation period is 19-21 days picked that up. I figure out of one litter, take half to raise up to appropriate size (small/medium rat) then take the other half and feed some rat pinks to Icelos and keep a few up a week or two more to feed to the new female. Will this be ok?

By the way Bill, thanks for showing me the thread. Those tubs looked like heavy duty plastic? Maybe I can have my boyfriend rig me up something.

There are a lot of feed stores around here so I'll start snooping around to see what I can find. I know one particular store that is really good, so I don't think I'll have a problem with mites. I've dealt with them once and REFUSE to do it again.

we live in a small town... and when i purchased bedding from them, my mice got mites! i've heard from other people on mice forums that they've encountered the same problem when they purchase bedding from feed stores. never had the problem with petstore bedding though.

hth,
aleesha

All I was trying to say is people shouldnt avoid ALL feed stores because of this. That is a pretty broad generalization. It should be judged by case by case basis.

Two tanks is fine. One for parents and babies (the male can stay with the female) and a second tank for weaned babies.

Rat gestation is closer to one month than three weeks. Mice have the 21 day gestation.

Oh okay, so I can keep all of the females in with the males? All 4 of them in a 10 gallon? And weaning...do they do it by themselves or is it a matter of me seperating them from their mamas?

4 in a ten gallon is pretty squished. I'd get a 20 gallon at least. I hate tanks for rodents though.. wire cages or lab style cages are the best.

Weaning - I separate them. Usually around 3-4 weeks and they're fine. You'll see them eating the normal rat food.

I think I'll get 2 cement mixing tubs from Home Depot. One for the breeding and one for the babies. That way I can put them in a small rack. We'll see how things go...I'll swing by the pet store tomorrow and see what they have so I can properly price everything. Thanks everyone!

Four breeding size adult rats in a 10 gallon tank wouldn't be enough space in my opinion. There are a number of ways to handle a rat breeding colony and a lot of opinions and methods.

Personally, we have a main cage where our male rat always lives and our females cycle in and out to mate with him. It's a pretty good size cage. Once the females look pregnant I pull them and put them into 10 gallon tanks, 1 female per tank where they stay till they wean their litters at about 4 weeks. By about 3 weeks or even younger the pups are trying mom's water bottle and her food but still nursing. Usually the female rat is about sick of them by this time LOL.

Once they are weaned they are seperated....males and females into seperate tubs to be raised to whatever size I need them to be. I have another female-only tub where I can rest females between litters or put a female in to raise her to breeding age.

We just recently started raising our own rats and currently are feeding 3 ball pythons (1 of our snakes is on winter fast and 2 more are out on breeding contracts) using 1 male rat and 3 female rats. Generally we have had the right size but occasionally I still fall short in one size or another so we'll likely increase the colony very soon as I hate paying pet store prices.


~~Jo~~