Rat colony setup questions

[LotsaBalls]

Sorry my brain is hurting today and searching on my phone is making it worse. I have 2 racks setup, one with five tubs (cement) and one with six. I have 6.14 adults. I started with one 5 tub rack and a ratio of 1.3-4 but from those litters (all around 10-12) I only have 6-8 babies left alive. And cleaning once a week didn't seem enough.(for the wife) so I built another rack to spread them out to a 1.2 ratio. Am I going to be able to keep them like that and get good numbers or should I rotate the females out to birth and ween. I have 11 snakes to feed and will be getting about 4-8 more in about two weeks. I can freeze extras but don't want to get stuck with 2-3 weeks of buying rats at a pet store when Im breeding.

[jason79]

I have a 13.55 colony and I had the same problem with 1.4 and 1.3 setup. I do get alot of rats from it but seems to be alot of loss too. So I have started to use a birthing rack so far it seems to be working way better but it maybe to early to tell. I just started to use the birthing rack 2 weeks ago and all the pinky's seem to be making it so far. I made a 6 tub test rack with 3 tubs have one female each and 3 tubs have 2 females each. If the 2 females per tub work I will probably use the mixing tubs from lowes for the rack. If the lone females do better I will build a rack with the smaller cat litter tubs.

[sassy-pants]

I rotate my males and I have much better results than that. The few times that I've had lone females raising their whole litters, it has been hit and miss. I lost a whole litter of 12 to an inexperienced mom who didn't eat the placentas off of her babies, so I prefer to keep 3 females to a mason tub and rotate my male through the rack, 2 weeks/tub, then he moves to the next one. My females all take turns in nursing all of the pups, and I frequently see them split into even groups in three spots so everyone gets fed.

[singingtothewheat]

I am definitely doing this on the fly, so feel free to fix it if I messed it up you guys.
On the snake side.
If you figure each ball python at adult is eating 1-2 small adults (1.5 size greater than the head) per week.
1 per week x 52 = 52 per year.
2 per week x 52 = 104 per year.

On the rat side

One female = about 8-10 litters/year, with each litter being 8-12
this equals 56-120 rats per year.

So you can sort of think of it as one serious breeding female per snake per year. It really depends on the litter size though.

Now, lets see if I even came close to right. What do you guys think?

[jason79]

The amount of rats you need depends on the number of snakes you need to feed every week not how many rats per year each snake eats.

[singingtothewheat]

If your talking about a colony you need to know about more than the week in question, you need to plan. This is an idea for how to look at the plan.
However you break it up

I am definitely doing this on the fly, so feel free to fix it if I messed it up you guys.
On the snake side.
If you figure each ball python at adult is eating 1-2 small adults (1.5 size greater than the head) per week.
1 per week x 52 = 52 per year.
2 per week x 52 = 104 per year.


On the rat side

One female = about 8-10 litters/year, with each litter being 8-12
this equals 56-120 rats per year.

So you can sort of think of it as one serious breeding female per snake per year. It really depends on the litter size though.

Now, lets see if I even came close to right. What do you guys think?
__________________

[jason79]

In my opinion you need more like 2 females per snake for it to work out. I have 15 bp's and a dwarf caiman and I think if I only had say 16 females I would be out of feeders alot of the time.

[singingtothewheat]

Thats 16 full time breeding females who produce good litters. But yea, It certainly wouldn't hurt to err on the side of too many vs to few.

I sure didn't mean for this to sound hissy. I guess I was trying to show the minimum amount of solid breeders it would take. I know when I first set up mine I WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY underestimated what it was going to take.

[RichsBallPythons]

My males never see females when they are pregnant and nursing.

Once females are weaned from the babies is when they are tossed in iwth the males for a week, then separated till babies are born. Females are kept in groups of 2 for nursing.

[singingtothewheat]

My males never see females when they are pregnant and nursing.

Once females are weaned from the babies is when they are tossed in iwth the males for a week, then separated till babies are born. Females are kept in groups of 2 for nursing.

Yup, exactly