Rats and Snakes.

I have about 25 ball pythons with plans for more so Im looking into starting a rat breeding coloney (for obvious reasons). Im remodeling some space in my house specificly for this project. My question is how seperate do my snake and rat coloney's need to be? If I could keep them in the same room that would save me a lot of time and money but Im thinking thats not a good idea, am I right?

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Originally Posted by donkiez

I have about 25 ball pythons with plans for more so Im looking into starting a rat breeding coloney (for obvious reasons). Im remodeling some space in my house specificly for this project. My question is how seperate do my snake and rat coloney's need to be? If I could keep them in the same room that would save me a lot of time and money but Im thinking thats not a good idea, am I right?

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You can keep them together.

Or, you can keep them separate.

There's folks doing it both ways with success with both species.

Some people keep rat colonies and snakes in the same room without problems, so it can be done. I imagine the snakes might get used to the smell of food being around.

I know of alot of ppl that keep them in the same room with noe seperation at all and they seem to be fine. Me personally I have the rats in my basement and the snakes in a big walk in closet in my bedroom. For smell reasons is why I don't house them in the same room but I don't think that is a problem.

thanks guys, that gets my hopes up on saving some effort and money. Is there anyone out there that actually keeps snakes (especially BP's) and rats together and who wants to chime in with an opinion? Is it a non issue? Do you need to be more carefull when you handle your snakes? Any unforseen issue that I am not anticipating?

When we first got our racks we were living in a much smaller house and I housed my rats and asf in the same room with all my reptiles until we moved when we moved we had a building to put them into. BUt I never had a problem when they were housed in the same room.

I have my rat racks and snake racks in the same room, no issues at all. My friendly snakes are still friendly, my few cranky snakes are still cranky.

I keep a few snakes in my rat room no problem. I do have a small corn that knows the second I come in the room with a rat, I think it would be mildly bugged by food always being near lol!

I have them both together ......and its a feeding frenzy cause the room is scented....if your not paying attention you will get tagged...once out the cage its fine...

I have a ASF trio and 3 BPs in the same room, im still feeding rats and rarely mice as the ASFs havent drop litters yet. Anyways, I think having the ASFs around makes the BPs have an appetite, They eat anything I give them.

I would imagine it would be fine with bp's. But I wouldn't do it in a room with big burms or retics, but that's just me.

i have 6 adult rats 20 pinkies and 7 small rats in a room with 20+ bp's and are fine..just make sure your animlas rats and snakes are well fed and watered and always wash hands!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:gj:

I work at a local Pet Store and we house our ASF breeding stock in the same room as our BP's and I have never had a problem! :)

For the first couple of months when I started breeding my own rodents, I kept my rodent racks in my snake room.

Although I never had an issue with it, I would worry about the dust and smell from the rodents giving the snakes an RI more than I would about snakes displaying a feeding response.

Rodents make a lot of dust. I read that vanilla extract will cut the ammonia smell, but I never wanted to "mask" the odor. I just changed the bedding before it developed an odor. You can "mask" it if you want to, but I would still change the bedding every 5 days.

Make sure you vaccum and dust everything in the room often, and don't let the rodent bedding get an ammonia smell to it.

With 12 tubs running 1.5 regular rats each, and 6 tubs running 1.5 ASF rats, I changed the bedding every 5 days while they were in the same room as my snakes. I also cleaned the floor daily, and vaccumed and then wiped down the walls and ceiling with a damp towel twice weekly.
I also changed my snakes water at least once per day while they shared space. Usually, twice per day at 7am./7pm.

I keep my rats and snakes in the same room. The snakes range from hatchling BP's to full grown RTB's. There is an up side and a down side to it though. The up side is the snakes are always ready to eat so no problem feeders ever on my behalf. The down side is the snakes are ALWAYS ready to eat so until they are taken out of their enclosures they do not know that I want to hold them. It can be done with no problems at all just be careful and everything should be great.