Rodent Breeding Update...

[cchardwick]

So I've had my ARS rat breeding rack for a couple months now and I wanted to give an update on how things are going. The rodents are eating much less food and I don't spend nearly as much time dealing with them since the rack waters and feeds all the rats. I've switched to using newspaper and shredded paper that I get from work, so it's totally free bedding. I change out the bedding once every three days to keep things fresh.

I ran into a few problems, first I found that I have to rotate the rats and actually have a breeding schedule to have a constant supply of feeders. Every week I pair up one breeder male and one breeder female and put them together in a tub. I've been doing that for a few weeks, soon I should have a new batch of baby feeders every week from the new pairings. Once the moma rat has her babies I found that the male and female start fighting, so as soon as she has her babies I move the male out into a male only resting tub with a couple other males.

I also split out the babies into separate male and female tubs once they are weaned and put the female into a resting tub with other females so she can have a break for a few weeks.

I'm still struggling with the mice, I started out with just random mice in each tub, but soon they overwhelmed the tubs by over populating them LOL. So now I'm going through each tub and feeding off all the males to my snakes except one breeder male and keeping just a few female breeders. So keeping just one male per tub seems to be working good. I found that they can't reach the water so on the ends I use 2x4 boards both cut to the same length. The top one I wrap in newspaper and secure it to the bottom with a rubber band so they don't lose their step up to the water by knocking the top one off. I also found that they can't drink from the water system so I've been using a few water bottles for the mice and keeping them up on top. I wish I had a few more tubs so I could separate the males and females once weaned, still working on that one. I may pair it down to just two breeder tubs and two grow out tubs for the males and females, I only need baby mice for my small king snakes, and the extra adult mice feed my ball pythons when I have a small rat litter.

My ASF colony is down to just one tub, they produce very slowly and quite a few babies don't survive. I actually accidently fed off all my males and luckily one of the babies is a male so I can keep the colony going. Will probably only keep a few in one tub just to keep them going since they are hard to find.

Ideally I'd like to get two more levels for my rats to have a few more grow out tubs and breeder resting tubs. I also plan on swapping out my retired breeders by feeding off the old ones to my big reticulated python.

I'm using Mazuri 6F feeder blocks, works great with this rack system. None of the feeder blocks fall through the mesh screen from above. I do put extra food in with the mice, ASF, and rat moms with babies that just open their eyes so the very young babies get a chance to eat solid food since they can't really climb to the top when they are that young.

I also use a label maker and magnetic tape to label each tub and I move the label with the tub. I also label the day it was last cleaned just so it's obvious. You'll also notice that I keep one slot open with no tub, I use that for cleaning day. I put in the new clean tub and move over the rodents from one tub to the other, both just slightly open. It keeps the rodents from escaping LOL.

I'm really enjoying this rack, it makes things really simple and I can fit a lot of rodents in a really small space. One tub per snake seems to keep all my snakes well fed feeding everyone twice a week. Here are a few photos, enjoy!!