Looking to start a small colony

[Mrr]

Hey guys,

I'm looking to start a small rat colony to feed my collection of 5 snakes. Can anyone give me an idea of how their operations work? I was thinking 1 male to 2 females.. but does the male have to live solo or can he live with the ladies? I know they don't do well solo so I thought I'd check that point. Anything else I should know?

Thank you in advance

[303_enfield]

Buy one female from a pet store that houses the males an females together. Works 99% of the time. Build a rack system an you’ll be fine. When I get home I’ll post the links.

Are you ready to gas an freeze? Rats grow fast. If you live feed your gonna have a ton of rats. Unless you separate males an females. Every 21 days they can drop a new litter.

Good luck!

[Mrr]

Thank you for the reply! I'm looking into building my own CO2 chamber to euthanize and then I'll be freezing. I'm not sure if there are any pet stores around here that keep them together.. I was going to go to my local feeder supplier and just grab a male and female (or two females) off of them to get started. Seems cheaper than paying a pet store price too

Do you keep your males in with the females constantly or just to breed and then they go back to their enclosure solo?

[nikkubus]

There are a lot of ways to do things, and scale makes a huge difference the best way. What and how many or what age are you trying to feed them to?

[303_enfield]

Give your general location an somebody will point you to rats. As for getting them from your breeder of feeders. I wouldn't get a full colony that way. Too much inbreeding.

Learn from my mistakes.
1) Don't leave the male in when it's pup time. It will start fights, cause stress on mom an you may loose all the pinkies.
2) Don't leave unbred females in with ones about to drop. Stress an baby stealing= lost babies.
3) If you can't give a female her own tub at litter time. Make sure it's no more then two an they are the same size.
4) Handle all rats. You don't need a demon that attacks you. Cull nasty rats.
5) Injured rats need to be removed at once. Or they will be killed an eaten.
6) You want the females to drop within a day of each another.
7) Have rat traps or glue traps in the rat room!!!!!
8)Pull mom out at 33 days (35 is weaned) or her sons will breed her!
9)Separate males an females at weaning. Unless your gassing at or before 55 days.

White rats while it's the norm for feeders adding color is good. If white rats aren't available some snake won't eat colored rats. I don't raise white rats. Colored rats bring more money if you sell a few pets.

Check face book for rodent breeders near you. Quality rats equals quality snake food.
I use Doggy Bag (dog food $14 for 44Lbs) from TSC for feed.
I put four females in with two males for 16 days. Then the girls go into their own tubs. Some tubs will have two females unless they show stress signs.
I give the girls one to two weeks off after I take the kids. Most big breeders don't, as rats only last 2-3 years. I cull females if litter size bottoms out or they're bad moms. My breeding female are 500g+ the males are 600g+.

I add "new" blood once a year so so. Trade males or buy a prago female an keep a few.

I also raise ASF (African Soft Furs). I like then better then Norway rats BUT they grow slowwwwwww.

I used this for racks with some mods.


Building a Rat Rack (arbreptiles.com)

Impotent rodent facts:

miscsigl.vp (afrma.org)


Good luck!

[nikkubus]

Give your general location an somebody will point you to rats. As for getting them from your breeder of feeders. I wouldn't get a full colony that way. Too much inbreeding.

Learn from my mistakes.
1) Don't leave the male in when it's pup time. It will start fights, cause stress on mom an you may loose all the pinkies.
2) Don't leave unbred females in with ones about to drop. Stress an baby stealing= lost babies.
3) If you can't give a female her own tub at litter time. Make sure it's no more then two an they are the same size.
4) Handle all rats. You don't need a demon that attacks you. Cull nasty rats.
5) Injured rats need to be removed at once. Or they will be killed an eaten.
6) You want the females to drop within a day of each another.
7) Have rat traps or glue traps in the rat room!!!!!
8)Pull mom out at 33 days (35 is weaned) or her sons will breed her!
9)Separate males an females at weaning. Unless your gassing at or before 55 days.

White rats while it's the norm for feeders adding color is good. If white rats aren't available some snake won't eat colored rats. I don't raise white rats. Colored rats bring more money if you sell a few pets.

Check face book for rodent breeders near you. Quality rats equals quality snake food.
I use Doggy Bag (dog food $14 for 44Lbs) from TSC for feed.
I put four females in with two males for 16 days. Then the girls go into their own tubs. Some tubs will have two females unless they show stress signs.
I give the girls one to two weeks off after I take the kids. Most big breeders don't, as rats only last 2-3 years. I cull females if litter size bottoms out or they're bad moms. My breeding female are 500g+ the males are 600g+.

I add "new" blood once a year so so. Trade males or buy a prago female an keep a few.

I also raise ASF (African Soft Furs). I like then better then Norway rats BUT they grow slowwwwwww.

I used this for racks with some mods.


Building a Rat Rack (arbreptiles.com)

Impotent rodent facts:

miscsigl.vp (afrma.org)


Good luck!

I agree with pretty much all of this. I would spend the extra couple bucks to get quality rodent food from the feed store vs dog food personally because you will get better, healthier feeders, but it's not a must. I would give the females a bit more of a break, like 4-6 weeks after weaning babies. You should get bigger litters, bigger babies, and have the females last a bit longer before they start to throw small litters. But that won't make or break things either, and if your scale is small you might be better off with a different interval so that you have a steady supply of live at whatever size you need. I'm assuming you need at least some live on hand to want to go through with the trouble of breeding because the money savings over rodent pro alone isn't enough to justify the amount of work (to me) after you pay for the co2, unless you are breeding on a pretty crazy big scale to get big quantity discounts on everything.

That rack looks almost identical to mine. I would caution you, if you go with 1/2" hardware cloth, DO NOT put the water valves like they have them there. You will end up with a flooded mess because they will pull it down into the tub and chew the water line. Also make sure your tubs slide in there pretty snug or they will get their teeth between the tub and the hardware cloth and chew holes into the tub and escape.

[Mrr]

Give your general location an somebody will point you to rats. As for getting them from your breeder of feeders. I wouldn't get a full colony that way. Too much inbreeding.

Learn from my mistakes.
1) Don't leave the male in when it's pup time. It will start fights, cause stress on mom an you may loose all the pinkies.
2) Don't leave unbred females in with ones about to drop. Stress an baby stealing= lost babies.
3) If you can't give a female her own tub at litter time. Make sure it's no more then two an they are the same size.
4) Handle all rats. You don't need a demon that attacks you. Cull nasty rats.
5) Injured rats need to be removed at once. Or they will be killed an eaten.
6) You want the females to drop within a day of each another.
7) Have rat traps or glue traps in the rat room!!!!!
8)Pull mom out at 33 days (35 is weaned) or her sons will breed her!
9)Separate males an females at weaning. Unless your gassing at or before 55 days.

White rats while it's the norm for feeders adding color is good. If white rats aren't available some snake won't eat colored rats. I don't raise white rats. Colored rats bring more money if you sell a few pets.

Check face book for rodent breeders near you. Quality rats equals quality snake food.
I use Doggy Bag (dog food $14 for 44Lbs) from TSC for feed.
I put four females in with two males for 16 days. Then the girls go into their own tubs. Some tubs will have two females unless they show stress signs.
I give the girls one to two weeks off after I take the kids. Most big breeders don't, as rats only last 2-3 years. I cull females if litter size bottoms out or they're bad moms. My breeding female are 500g+ the males are 600g+.

I add "new" blood once a year so so. Trade males or buy a prago female an keep a few.

I also raise ASF (African Soft Furs). I like then better then Norway rats BUT they grow slowwwwwww.

I used this for racks with some mods.


Building a Rat Rack (arbreptiles.com)

Impotent rodent facts:

miscsigl.vp (afrma.org)


Good luck!

Wow, thank you for such a detailed reply. Just a few questions about what you've said..

You said that leaving a male in with the female will cause fights, do you mean fights between the male and the mom? I've heard of some people that leave the male in with the females full time? My hope is to breed both females at the same time, so that they drop within a day or two of each other.

Do you find that you sell many for pets too? I worried if I got into coloured rats then I would want to keep too many, so I figured I'd go with white.. but I didn't think about selling to pet homes

In terms of what I'm looking to feed, I have two adult ball pythons (male and female), a Kenyan sand boa and 2 adult russian ratsnakes.. so the sizes I'll need will vary. I'm planning on pairing the ratsnakes and the ball pythons so having a steady supply of live and frozen food will definitely save me some money.

Thank you again for the advice everyone, I really appreciate it

[nikkubus]

Wow, thank you for such a detailed reply. Just a few questions about what you've said..

You said that leaving a male in with the female will cause fights, do you mean fights between the male and the mom? I've heard of some people that leave the male in with the females full time? My hope is to breed both females at the same time, so that they drop within a day or two of each other.

In terms of what I'm looking to feed, I have two adult ball pythons (male and female), a Kenyan sand boa and 2 adult russian ratsnakes.

The females can get aggressive toward the male, the male can get aggressive to the babies. Some people leave the male and it works just fine. I've done it both ways, but have had a lot better results pulling the male before babies are born. He can impregnate her again right after delivering, and you are going to get a serious decline in litter size doing that. Sometimes they won't fight, but I would say at least 20% of the time leaving males in with females babies get cannibalized.

With that amount of snakes you are probably fine only giving the females 2 weeks off and just replacing females at a faster rate. 2.4 should more than cover you I would think.

[Bogertophis]

...
In terms of what I'm looking to feed, I have two adult ball pythons (male and female), a Kenyan sand boa and 2 adult russian ratsnakes.. so the sizes I'll need will vary. I'm planning on pairing the ratsnakes and the ball pythons so having a steady supply of live and frozen food will definitely save me some money...

Raising rats to feed just 5 snakes is an awful lot of work- you'll end up with too many rats the wrong size, or the right size at the wrong time. Expense-wise, you'll probably break even. I used to raise rats (& sold surplus rats, mice & hamsters, actually) & I only use quality name brand rodent chow too, btw. And about white rats versus "hooded"- yes, hooded rats are cuter, so you can sell surplus as pets, and also, you can tell them apart- helps to avoid inbreeding too. I only raise mice now- as I'm "only" feeding 19 snakes, none of which need rats.

[Mrr]

Raising rats to feed just 5 snakes is an awful lot of work- you'll end up with too many rats the wrong size, or the right size at the wrong time. Expense-wise, you'll probably break even. I used to raise rats (& sold surplus rats, mice & hamsters, actually) & I only use quality name brand rodent chow too, btw. And about white rats versus "hooded"- yes, hooded rats are cuter, so you can sell surplus as pets, and also, you can tell them apart- helps to avoid inbreeding too. I only raise mice now- as I'm "only" feeding 19 snakes, none of which need rats.

I know that I don't have the biggest collection at the moment, but I'm currently paying $7-11/rat every week - per snake.. even one litter could provide me with quite a bit of food. I think with a lot of these tips here, I could find a more cost effective way to do it. That being said, I don't want to seem overly naive here.. I'm aware that there are still expenses involved. I just feel like it'll save my overall food costs - especially when I begin to breed

Another question for everyone.. One feed supplier here suggested that when I separate the boys/girls at 5 weeks, that I put the boys in with the dad and leave the girls with mom. Will the older male rat hurt the little ones though? That's my only concern there, I'm not sure if he'll attack them or not.

On a related note (I can't remember if I've asked this), but can the breeder males be housed together when they're not being used for breeding, or will they kill each other? I know that male rats can live in groups (I own 4 currently), but I wasn't sure if that would change when a female was involved.