Well... rats

( Cant think of a good title for this) But, I want to try rats again.

Twice I have failed at it but I think it was because of the stores I got the rats at. My mice are doing great but shortly I am upping my collection to around 11 and I do not want to have wait as long as it takes mice to get to size as the snakes will need* takes breath*, so, rats are going to be a better choice. My problem is size though, im not sure what I will do with retired breeders, and space is limited until I can get a rat rack up and running. Until then 50g totes will be their homes. Will that be good enough? I have the room for about 5 of the totes. Thats it for now, im sure that i'll have a few questions later! Thank you:cool:

Pick up a RedTail Boa, pretty docile and will be glad to get rid of the big rats for you! LOL

Find a snake breeder, or a show around your area, they should have rats or know of someone that does. The 50s should work.

Fat Boy hit it on the head. Rats grow so fast you can quickly become over-run. I did. And it may be harder than you think to get rid of adult rats. But, my biggest problem with breeding rats was that I became way to attached to the babies to feed them off. Just too darn cute. I'm back to mice again.

My colony is doing better. I had one bad apple in my colony and I got rid of her quick. Most of my breeders came from reptile stores or plain petstores.

And I agree with the boa idea. I plan on getting a columbian red-tail boa so I have somewhere for my retired breeders and unused feeders to go.

id love to get an albino boa, but id still have to wait for it to grow, and right now I do not have the space for one.

I just take the big ones that are getting old (around 2 yrs) and put them in a closed container like rubbermaid. I hook up a CO2 tank with a hose and gas them. Then it's into the freezer. Some of my really big girls can pound them down. My son inlaw has a red tail boa so he gets a few once in a while.
I feed live, all my surplus rats go into the freezer too. I keep them in groups of 1.3. When I get to many I cut back by removing the males for a while.

You have to manage your breeding.

Look at the "sticky" section for a breeding plan so you get roughly the number of rats you need each week (you will have about a 2 week window before the rats get too big)
Find a petstore that will take any extras (or other snake breeders)
Feed off the males first (so any females that get to big can be used as breeders)
Adpot retired breeders to pet stores or via Craigslist as pets. (until you RTB is big enough).

Just a few ideas hope they help.

You can also look around your area for a reptile rescue or a raptor rescue organization, even a herp club of some sort. They may be quite happy to take your larger rats as a donation to a good cause. :)

DUde build a little rack like i did

my other female is looking pregnant now, and i also saw them mating:D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lord jackel

You have to manage your breeding.

Look at the "sticky" section for a breeding plan so you get roughly the number of rats you need each week (you will have about a 2 week window before the rats get too big)
Find a petstore that will take any extras (or other snake breeders)
Feed off the males first (so any females that get to big can be used as breeders)
Adpot retired breeders to pet stores or via Craigslist as pets. (until you RTB is big enough).

Just a few ideas hope they help.

---

Ive adopted rats out through craigslist, but i have not found a petstore willing the buy breeders.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by frankykeno

You can also look around your area for a reptile rescue or a raptor rescue organization, even a herp club of some sort. They may be quite happy to take your larger rats as a donation to a good cause. :)

---

I'll look around

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by atp151415

DUde build a little rack like i did

my other female is looking pregnant now, and i also saw them mating:D

---

Im sick of racks ATP:P I just retired my mouse rack, it was becomeing a pain.

haha,
well i only spent 45 dollars in wood and tubs for my rack, i followed the one on arbreptiles.com but i halfed everything in half like how much wood you need and stuff. Those concrete mixing tubs work great and i havent had one even chew on it.

My baby rats have peach fuzz on them lol

Im only going to start with 2.2 rats. Unlike mice i would not be happy to be over ran with rats( id hate for too many to get huge) And thats feeding 2 snakes, plus a few of my friends.

no get 1.2, thats what i got and it works great
having two females instead of one per male gives him some more fun, lol

and thats one less rat to feed

If you do 1.2, you either have to have the male in with a female all the time, which doesn't give the females a break, or you have to have the male by himself when you are giving the females a break, which isn't good for such social animals.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kc261

If you do 1.2, you either have to have the male in with a female all the time, which doesn't give the females a break, or you have to have the male by himself when you are giving the females a break, which isn't good for such social animals.

---

Which is why I'm going with 2.2 ATP, so the male will not be lonely once I seperate them.

right now im at about 20 females breeding and another 30 starting in the next few weeks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Beardedragon

Which is why I'm going with 2.2 ATP, so the male will not be lonely once I seperate them.

---

Once you separate the male weaners your male won't be alone. I have 1.3 right now, and my male is just fine, and will b with his sons in 3 weeks. If you take your male out for handling everyday, then that will help with the lonely part.

I'd also look into a reptile rescue group to adopt a large snake like a large boa or a burm, that way you won't have to wait for it to grow up. I've adopted all of my burms from my herp society, we're always looking for people to place big homeless snakes with. I'd also start out with a larger group of rats. You never know if they're all going to be good breeders or not and if you do produce more then you need, you can always freeze them at the right size. They don't really breed like clockwork and you'll have times during the year where you have too many, and times when you won't have enough. Even with the same group of breeders you'll have peaks and valleys of production throughout the year.

Mark

Red Tail Boas are beautiful snakes... but they're too expensive and get too big for me in this little apartment. Not to mention that my BF would likely leave if I ever even thought of getting one!

Now, the rescues are an idea... We have at least one of each out here, I just wonder if they would be willing to pick the rats up since I can't drive. :)

Matt,

Animal Atlanta will take the larger rats off your hands, so no worries about that. I'm also going to be checking out a local raptor society, like Jo says that use them for hunting their birds.

I've also placed retired females in pairs into pet homes. You do have to be careful not to say what they were breeding for before - some people freak - but I've placed favored females in some nice pet homes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rabernet

Matt,

Animal Atlanta will take the larger rats off your hands, so no worries about that. I'm also going to be checking out a local raptor society, like Jo says that use them for hunting their birds.

I've also placed retired females in pairs into pet homes. You do have to be careful not to say what they were breeding for before - some people freak - but I've placed favored females in some nice pet homes.

---

Really, do they buy them back or for just giving away? No matter what thats good to know if I have any big rats I need to get rid of!

Find a local boa breeder and see if they will pick up your overflow. I don’t like the way our local reptile store pre-kills mice and rats for their customers and I have a bond with my older rats so, the boa breeder I give my overflow will CO2 them and that’s my idea of humane.

It looks like i'll be getting 2.4 rats from Trey(Mxrider42) tomorrow or tuesday so we will see how this run around will work!

Find a desperate pet store! I know of one that will pay me nice money for my used-up breeders. She has trouble finding them.. I do feed some to my BCI but he can only eat so much.

I got them! Trey(Who also has a wonderful collection of BPs which I wanted to take home as well) found me a really nice double rex(hairless) female, and two really light colored females that look great. The others are either albino or striped/hooded? One male is a dumbo rex albino and hes huge! Two are pregnant also, which is a huge bonus because all my mice are leaveing tomorrow:banana: I hate those things! In all ive got 2.4 and owe trey ten bucks which im going to send through paypal ASAP. Im very happy right now, after looking at his pups which are the size of my month old+ mice I cant wait to get started without the wait of them growing so slow!Again, Thanks Trey!

What I do is that I have kept 2 BP on F/T so any surplus that is about to be oversized is euthanized and placed in the freezer.

For retired breeders since I cannot possibly retire everyone as pet I give them to my local reptile store.

One question: With my hairless rat, I know that she will grow very short hair. How do I get a rat that stays 100% hairless? Breed a super rex to a super rex?

A true hairless is recessive. There are (i think) 3 different recessive genes, and I'm not sure if they are all compatible. They most likely are.

A super rex has varying degrees of hairlessness, sometimes they don't lose much at all, and sometimes they look nude.

One of the pregos gave me 15 healthy babys this morning! Not even 24 hours and my collection has doubled +:P