14 ball pythons

Hi I am considering breeding my own mice. And I was wondering if someone could tell me about how many breeding pairs I should have? I am only looking to raise enough to feed my current ball pythons. I dont want to have a ton of extra running around, but also at the same time want to make sure I have enough to feed my snakes. I was thinking about doing only 1 male and 5 females. Do you think that they would produce enough offspring to keep up with feeding my current collection? Any input on this matter is greatly appreciated.

Well, I have 15 snakes, 5 on rats, and I have three 1.2 breeding groups of mice. This number seems to work best.

Know, though, that no matter how many you have you will always have times when you won't have the size you need and will have to supplement. It never fails. :)

also do you know what would be the best substrate to you to keep the smell in control? I plan on cleaning their tubs 2-3times a week, with high hopes of no odor,lol.

I use aspen and it works just fine. :) Reduced smell and it looks nice to boot.

Do NOT use Cedar or Pine on rodents! Pine is alright for snakes if it's well milled, but since rodents are more prone to respiratory problems and sometimes chew on substrate, Pine is a no-no for them.
Carefresh should be avoided as well, as it is very dusty and horrid to clean up when wet.
Equinefresh and Woody pet (pellet bedding) are also fine to use...just not with moms and babies so I've heard.

I use aspen for all the animals in the house. For the mice, I just give them shredded paper towel or phone book pages for nests as well as toilet paper tubes to shred and they're happy.

think Im gonna give it a shot sometime this week thanks

keep in mind that mice don't get much bigger than 50 grams(from my limited experience at least), and larger BPs will either need to eat multiple full grown adults for a meal or be switched to a larger rodent.

adults on a mouse diet sounds impractical to me.

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

keep in mind that mice don't get much bigger than 50 grams(from my limited experience at least), and larger BPs will either need to eat multiple full grown adults for a meal or be switched to a larger rodent.

adults on a mouse diet sounds impractical to me.

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for my larger adults I would feed them rats instead, but my subadult/small adults and smaller ballz, multiple mice each feeding has been doing the trick for me.

I would think you need more than that at less two groups of 1.5 mice .It takes at least 6 weeks to put any weight on them. You will run out of mice very quickly.

yeh I guess I realy need to sit down and figure out how many Im going to raise, and how Im going to go about doing all of this. I thought about raising rats instead but my personal opinion of them is they are so much more dirtier, than mice. Would a colony of 1.5 breeding rats, smell worsed than a breeding colony of 1.5 mice? Thanks

Have you concidered ASF's??? I bred domestic rats and mice before and because of the smell and having to clean almost every other day i stopped. But my ASF's are awesome.... Thanks again Mike (sorry for the plug).