Question for those of you with large collections

[MrLang]

I keep the whole room humidified with 1 humidifier at 55% or so, which keeps my snakes shedding perfect on paper towels without misting.

For feedings I have an excel sheet with a column for each animal. When I feed I enter the date on the side and go across and mark in pen who ate what, refused, weren't offered.

I have another sheet that I make random dated notes on; things like sheds for my females getting locked, weird behavior, full cleanings, etc. are there.

For cleaning I keep extra tubs. When I spot clean I simply drop the animal in a new tub with its hide and water and wipe/spray the dirty one.

For Water, I don't do it yet but a lot of people use a stabilizer (could be a ceramic bowl, piece of pvc pipe, anything) and drop disposable 4 oz shallow deli cup in it. You can fill a bunch and just do a clean swap into the tubs, dumping the old into a bucket and stacking the cups as you go. They might even be dishwasher safe

[reptileexperts]

x2 to mr lang post about record keeping. Works for me as well like this. For humidity, water bowels toward the back of the cage but not directly on a heater works excellent and keeps humidity in tubs 60-66% all the time, no shedding issues. But I live in a pretty humid region, so any given day is 30-40% humidty in the entire house.

[Don]

For feedings, I use blue tacky. I feed on the same day every week. A rat goes into each bin (properly sized - label on the front of the tub tells me what size to put into each tub). As I get to the last tub, it has been long enough to circle back to the first tub (after I've cleaned up my feeder bin). Each tub is checked and if the snake has not eaten the rodent, I pull the rodent and place a blue tacky dot above the tub. The uneaten rats go back into their bins. At anytime, I can look at my racks and tell you which snake has not eaten and how many weeks it has been since it ate by the number of blue dots.

I tried using paper records, but for me it is harder to know what is going on. I keep my records on the metal bars above the tubs (ARS Racks). With just a glance, I can tell you which snakes have shed and when they shed (by a label), which ones are eating or not (based on the blue dots), which males are paired with which females (males name is on a magnet that is placed over the female's tub when paired), which females have locked and when (by looking at the white board where it is tracked), which females are proven breeders, when and how many eggs they laid and the age of the animal. Everything is on the racks in front of me. Not knocking the paper or computer records, it just doesn't work for me. The breeding records are on paper as a back up, but I hardly ever refer to them.

Baby racks are handled differently, because they may be moved around as they sell. I use index cards to track feedings and transfer that data to an Excel spreadsheet. I monitor live versus f/t feedings. On the index card, I put the morph, sex, hatch date, first shed and weight at first shed. Then track feeding dates and food item eaten. Even my incubator has a white board on the door, so I can record data that I can see quickly while in my ball room.

My point is to find what works for you and go with it. With my method, I feel all of my 100+ snakes are well taken care of. With just a glance around the room, I can see if anyone or anything needs any special attention and it takes me very little time to do.

[3skulls]

Good info Don. I think as I evolve and my collection grows, I'll incorporate a tag / sticker method.

A quick glance and knowing who needs attention will make things a littler easier.

[mechnut450]

we only got a small collection but I know it take me alone about 3 hours to clean, and feed out about 25 snakes lol. but I do handle the snakes and check for anything, and it so much easier to use a paper towels

[Freakie_frog]

Started with one snake that grew to two that then grew to ten and now with the babies we're at about 250. The thing with have that many animals is having a routine. For example we feed on Friday and clean and water on Saturay, and with breeding everyone rests on Sunday and back to work on Monday. So even if s snake poops on Sunday it's not getting cleaned until Saturday. The reason behind that is that with a couple of hundred snakes and over you'd spend every waking hour spot cleaning and re-cleaning have a schedule and stick to it, that way you know everything is getting done so you don't miss watering 3 snakes and they dehydrate or for get to pull a feeder, or miss cleaning a tub for weeks..

[Foxtuning65]

We currently only have 22 snakes but my methods work for me. Hatchlings are on newspaper and have very basic set ups. We will use index cards for feeding/shed so when they sell the card can go with them.I have a white board on the door to the reptile room that we keep track of the daily stuff, who shed, who's in blue, breeding etc. Every night I go by the door and get my binder. In my binder we have a spot for every single snake. Keep track of bowel movements, sheds and breeding and feelings.
As for water, I do the take a bucket in to refill dishes method. Works for me. Spot cleaning for any that are on aspen. We keep boas, balls and Burms. So our methods are mixed across several species and we've never had an issue. We too have extra tubs just in case for each rack. It actually takes longer to care or our iguana than our snakes.

[EAC Reptiles]

To the OP, I actually use a sprayer that you are talking about to mist down my tubs. My house is extremely dry in the winter so I have to mist them. I went to lowes and bought a 2.5g garden sprayer, took it home and cleaned every part of it and use it just for my snakes (I labeled it so it would not be used for anything else).

As far as tracking information goes, I have tired many different methods. I've tired methods that all the big name breeders use to little notebooks for each snake. I settled on index cards that I made in excel. I have all my information that I feel is important on them. The only way to know what works best for you is to try different methods and see what fits you best.

[Amos1974]

Now that I have gone from 50 to 130+ in the last year the best change I made was going to plastic deli cups for water bowls... I used the 4" ceramic crocks until i got my freedom breeder tubs with the built in water bowl holders and found out that the 12 oz cups that fit the baby tubs fit perfect in the 4" crocks... it makes cleaning all the water bowls so much easier!

[Amos1974]

and I also use the sprayer you talked about...