To breed or not to breed

So, i am getting my 2 new snakes...i will have a total of 4 now, 2 2006 BPs, 1 2005 BP, and 1 2006 RTB. I feed mice, and they are super cheep here. i get 6 meals for 6 bucks (for hoppers), I am not sure if i should start breeding or not.
Any opinions?

p.s. i'm not sure how to make this a poll, if a mod. could make it a poll and make it be yes or no, that would be awesome! Thanks.

hmmmm....


het pied male + pied female

i say do the deed....in about 3 years

hey guys....i think i forgot to mention...if i breed, it's going to be rats, not mice.

if your snakes are eating mice then why would you breed rats? that's like saying "i'm a vegetarian and i'm going to order a side of beef" :rofl:

well i'm going to switch them over to rats. i'm going to have to one day. especially my RTB.


and thanks for making it a poll.

your welcome amy (regarding the poll)

but... are you aware that ball pythons are imprint feeders? once they choose what they like it can be very hard to transfer them over to a different prey item? IF you want to do it, you need to do it when they are young.

boas however, will switch back and forth... they'll eat whatever is offered that week ;)

If you have more than a few snakes then growing your own feeders is the WTG.

When I only had 2 boas it was well worth it to breed rats and now that I have a ball that will only take live so far, its not only more conviniet than running to the store but cheaper. If you buy the rodent blocks in 40-50 lb bags they are under 30$(here at least). Plus your friends always appreciate free rats for pets or food.
Hope this helps a bit

well...this is the thing. I think breeding is the way to go, but i really don't want to breed mice....they smell. I am goin to start the new guys on rats (coming at the end of the month...BPs), i just have to get some tanks to start my little rat colony with.

Breeding rodents will save you money in the long run and can be fun all by itself. You will have the option of feeding either live or frozen, (you'll have to kill and freeze your own rats) You can freeze them at the right sizes for your snakes instead of depending on the pet store to have the right sizes in stock. You'll know how fresh they are and how well fed they were.

A couple of downsides are. You'll spend more time cleaning rodent cages then you'll spend cleaning snake cages. Unless you have a number of rodent colonies going, you'll be in a 'feast or famine' situation. It seems like you'll always be producing either too many or not enough.

Overall though, I've enjoyed it and I think it is worthwhile.

alright...if i do breed how many colonies should i have? i was thinking two... with 1.3 in each.

Having one breeding female per snake is a pretty good rule of thumb. That will give you plenty to feed off, as well as surplus to freeze for later. Be forewarned though, it is easier to justify new snakes if you have a ready supply of food handy! :D

-Evan

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Originally Posted by Evan Jamison

Having one breeding female per snake is a pretty good rule of thumb. That will give you plenty to feed off, as well as surplus to freeze for later. Be forewarned though, it is easier to justify new snakes if you have a ready supply of food handy! :D

-Evan

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I didn't know that! Great tip...i'll get 4 females, and can i do with only one male? or should i get two?

that will be my next excuse, "i have too much food. better find more mouths to feed :D :D :D "

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Originally Posted by Amy05

I didn't know that! Great tip...i'll get 4 females, and can i do with only one male? or should i get two?

that will be my next excuse, "i have too much food. better find more mouths to feed :D :D :D "

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Well to avoid overbreeding your females you'll want to separate your rats, and being social animals you'll want to have a buddy for your male...so two males would be perfect.

As well as providing a companion, it will also strengthen the bloodlines if you decide to keep back any females for future breeders so you get less inbreeding going on.

-Jason

great! so i should have 3 tanks (2 for females, 1 for males)? 10 gallons are enough, correct?

No. Ten gallons is not enough for two fully grown, adult male rats. The ventilation would be horrid and they would get respiratory distress from it. Not to mention, how can they possibly have any enrichment in something that small? You would have to change the bedding every 3-4 days to keep them even relatively comfortable.

Get a decent 2 level or so wire cage with a plastic pan(Petsmart is good, no galvanized wire, it will rust) for the two boys, a plastic tub with the lid replaced with wire mesh as the "meeting place" and 2-3 ten gallon tanks for the females to be individually separated for birthing/rearing.

With only 4 snakes, it would be more feasible to not breed and just to get 4 rodents at the pet store every week. I breed mice for my 13 snakes(Ball Pythons and Corns) as it wasn't cutting it buying $35 in undersized mice from Petco every week. The boa gets rabbits, so I don't have to worry about that every week(I can get those in bulk).

As I said, I do breed mice, and no they don't smell. If they're fed a good diet, kept on good bedding that absorbs(such as kiln-dried pine), and you put a little baking soda in their bedding, they smell like any other little furry mammal. Neither my rats nor mice stink. If you can handle the musky scent of ferrets(which I like and don't mind :) ), then you can handle mice. I like mice because they can never get too big and I don't have to worry about what to do with ones that get too large for anything I have to eat. I have about 4-5 groups of 1.3-1.4 and they supply my snakes perfectly. I haven't had to buy a mouse(unless I wanted one for a breeder) in about a year. True, your boa will eventually need to be on rats, but you can easily buy those frozen in bulk from a good rodent dealer for much cheaper than you could breed them(depends on size).

Just do what would work better for you and your snakes. I doubt breeding would be feasible for you, at this point. Four rodents per week is nothing compared to others' food bills.

Do alot more research and figure out what would be best.

I'll have to feed four snakes come January, and here my pet store charges $6 for small rats....I'm not sure what your situation is for feeder price Amy, but for me $6 is a little ridiculous to shell out every 5-7 days per rat...

I'd rather spend the money up front, setup a nice rat rack and breed my own, plus make a bit of money back selling excess feeders with good temperments to the pet store for food/supplies.

I know I could feed frozen thawed and save money by ordering bulk online, but I really don't care for having to thaw out frozen rats....plus rats are great pets, by far my favorite "small" rodent.

Caging-wise I'll be following these plans for the most part...http://www.arbreptiles.com/cages/rat_rack/ratrack.shtml

Good luck with whatever you decide!

thanks. adult rats are about 3-4$ here. i feed f/t either way. i do think it would be fun to get into breeding though. i just have to find another money tree :cool:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j1...Splinter02.jpg

That was going to be my stud rat, until he decided to go homicidal on my hand...https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil.../firedevil.gif

I'll only ever keep incredibly friendly, non-biting rats...

No Amy 10 gallon tanks are not appropriate for multiple adult rats or even multiple young rats. They simply do not provide anywhere near enough room for a social, active animal to exist properly. I only use them for maternity tanks where one single female goes to give birth, raise and wean her young. My adults live in large, well ventilated plastic tubs or very large glass tanks (40 breeders) or in large wire rodent caging. Rats will turn on each other if overcrowded.

I'd suggest you do a lot of research first as rats are a high maintenance animal and it may not be worth your while to breed them yet.

I keep 1.3 in a 40 breeder now. I'm gonna put the male in a 40 breeder with another male tto keep him company. When I know the females are preggy, I usually just feed off the male but I'm going to start keeping him in his own tank. Having 2 boas, its easier for me to breed rats. It gets expensive buying XXL rats every 1-2 weeks at petstores for primary food source. Its easier and cheaper to supplement them with retired breeders instead of solely f/t. Not to meantion it gets expensive buying 10-20 lbs of rats every 2-3 months.

For those that breed mice, how do you give them water? whenever i have excess mice from the petstore i just give them small water dishes. It is annoying replacing those and they seem to tip them them over alot. I tryed useing a small water bottle and put an upside down bowl so they could get to it...but they didnt drink from it.

If the water dishes are round, go to home depot with one of them and look at the PVC pipe and buy the correct size and cut it like a ring to put on the bottom of it. This should keep the dish from tipping.

Bowls are not good for mice - even if they don't tip them over - they fill them up with their bedding. I tried bowls for awhile and finally got them a water bottle.

Bowls are terrible for water, water bottles are much better and I've never had a rodent that didn't learn to drink from one. The only problem I've had is with them climbing to the top of the water bottle and chewing holes in them which causes all the water to drip out. I got around this by cutting the top off of a red bull can, turning it over and putting it over the water bottle like a sleeve.

Mark

Look for the tiniest sized water bottles or ask at your local pet store for water bottles that they use with their store mice stock. When you fill it and hook it up, tap the ball and a drip of water will come out. They'll smell that and if thirsty will pretty quickly figure it out.

Jason, that male rat wouldn't have been a good candidate for breeding anyway. He's a high-white and could be carrying megacolon. He has a lightning blaze and is a husky. Both of which don't help his case. Sorry he turned out to be nutso, but it was probably for the best as who knows what he could have passed to his offspring. The professional breeders in the rat fancy have been trying very hard for YEARS to get megacolon out of lines. It's really best to breed rats that are selfs(only one color), hoodeds, berkshires/irish/english irish, siamese,russian blue point(any color points) and capped. Any rat with markings differing from that or more white than color, shouldn't be bred. We're trying to better the species, not hinder it. Breeding rats that are high white, that results in megacolon babies, and not ever breeding any of the rats from those lines again would be the best possible outcome. Megacolon just spreads like wildfire and it's preferred to just stop it in its tracks by not breeding rats such as yours(especially for feeder purposes as who knows who may get ahold of those rats, and if they carry MC, it will just keep spreading).

And yes, water bottles are the best possible way of providing water. I wouldn't use any other method as it is just unsanitary and gross. I recently went to Petsmart and found tons of 32oz water bottles for $1 apiece. They are the good kind(Lixit) and do not leak. I keep my mice in lab cages right now, but once I move them to my house for the winter, they will be moved back into 10-g and 20-g long tanks. Haven't ever had problems with chewed water bottles, but I do give them tons of other stuff to chew such as kleenex boxes, thick cardboard tubes(from WalMart's photo place-the printing paper comes on them), paper towels and the rolls, etc.

Hope that helps.

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Originally Posted by SatanicIntention

Jason, that male rat wouldn't have been a good candidate for breeding anyway. He's a high-white and could be carrying megacolon. He has a lightning blaze and is a husky. Both of which don't help his case. Sorry he turned out to be nutso, but it was probably for the best as who knows what he could have passed to his offspring. The professional breeders in the rat fancy have been trying very hard for YEARS to get megacolon out of lines. It's really best to breed rats that are selfs(only one color), hoodeds, berkshires/irish/english irish, siamese,russian blue point(any color points) and capped. Any rat with markings differing from that or more white than color, shouldn't be bred. We're trying to better the species, not hinder it. Breeding rats that are high white, that results in megacolon babies, and not ever breeding any of the rats from those lines again would be the best possible outcome. Megacolon just spreads like wildfire and it's preferred to just stop it in its tracks by not breeding rats such as yours(especially for feeder purposes as who knows who may get ahold of those rats, and if they carry MC, it will just keep spreading).

Hope that helps.

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Becky,

I believe we had that discussion when I posted the pictures of my rats a while ago:) , however still great prevalent information for anyone else looking for breeders! I was going to breed him to hooded females to lessen the possibility of spreading possible MC gene to any offspring, it probably was for the best however that he went crazy.

For my future colony, I want to work with hoodeds, black selfs, blues, keeping it low white this time around....but I first need to get a rack built and get them set up right.
As always, great information Becky! Local BPnet Rat guru!:salute:

-Jason

What in the heck is megacolon? I've never heard of it. Some kind of a rat disease? Or condition?

It sounds like it could be used as a descriptive term for some people I know..... :D

Here's a good read on Megacolon that should sum things up much better than I can describe.

http://ratguide.com/health/digestive/megacolon.php

-Jason

Thanks for all the info.!! I'm not going to jump into breeding right now, but when mine get bigger, or if i get more snakes, i think it would be appropriate. I'll start doing research now so i can be prepared for when/if i actually do. More knowledge the better :)