Buy rats or breed rats?

[footballpythons]

I am probably getting some new ball pythons in, and I was wondering what is usually cheaper buying rats or breeding them? Also are asf rats any good?

[bcr229]

People with large collections often breed their own feeders because it's cheaper - but you do have to factor in the time spent caring for them and how much your free time is "worth" to you. Since I run a small business in addition to having a day job I have very little free time, and what time I do have I'd rather spend with the family and the snakes, not fooling with rats.

Also, I hate rat stink so I'd rather buy my live feeders locally once a week and feed them off.

If you want to breed ASF check your local/state laws, some places prohibit them because they are very destructive, even compared to the european rats.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

It really depends there is more than cost involve there is also time.

If you have a handful of snake breeding might not be worth it (little saving and time involve) however if you have a sizable collection and buy food and bedding in bulk you will see a big difference in price (but there is work involve there a lot of it)

As for ASF sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't my animals would not touch them and on the top of that ASK are like the spawn of evil.

[wolfy-hound]

If you enjoy breeding rodents(this is not sarcastic, I do know reptile keepers who truly do enjoy it and I myself enjoy my rats), then you could breed your own. But it is more work, more space, possibly smelly, etc. Buying FT is better and so much less hassle.

I breed my own, but I cut the colony back and started buying live locally from Rodents On The Road. I enjoy the rats, but I'm thinking of eliminating all of them now, just because it would be one less thing to do every single darned day. So maybe i'll set up a few pets in a cage and get rid of the rest.

If you do breed your own, you should be pretty meticulous. Otherwise you may end up with times that you have a glut of rats, and times when no one has any babies.

I'm not a fan of ASF. I'll tell you why...

They are not odor free. They're rodents. They smell.
They are often more bitey. This can be fixed with selective breeding.
They seem able to squeeze out of tiny cracks and are difficult to recapture.
The babies can jump incredibly high even pre-weaning size.

Some people are hesitant to buy snakes that are eating ASF because if the snake won't swap to regular mice or rats, ASF are expensive to buy.

[stickyalvinroll]

if you can't afford to have the comfort of having frozen rats shipped to your house then breeding is your only choice. It's a lot of work tho I gave up in a couple months.

[ChelseaV]

I'd say it was your preference and what ever works best for you.

I used to breed rats, mice, and gerbils for pets a couple years back. They all have a very strong odor and if they escape, good luck trying to catch them. I have a relatively small collection of snakes now so buying once a week is no big deal for me, but if it expands to a larger size, I'd consider it.

[Daigga]

The only thing about rat breeding is that you will very quickly find yourself spending more time with your rats than snakes, just because rats require much more hands on keeping. I kept a rodent rack for a while, and appreciated not having to buy feeders all the time, but raising them myself came with different frustrations. A few examples;

The chewing. The tubs I used were cement mixing tubs from lowes, which for some reason have this stupid little keyhole in the front lip. My first male and several of his offspring ended up gnawing huge holes out of these slots, which led to me chasing down escapees, buying new tubs (6 dollars every time!) and having to find someone to take in my male rat, who was way too big to feed off to any of my snakes.

Health problems. Slightly more rare, but one of my first females and the second male I bought developed some weird equilibrium problem. This male, again, was too big to feed off and had to be rehomed (his wibble-wobbly thing was much less severe than the female, who couldn't stand without falling over and screeched when she was touched), and I ended up culling and tossing the female since I wasn't sure if it was anything I should worry about feeding my snakes.

Smell... They weren't nearly as bad as the mice I tried for all of a month, but the tubs still had to be cleaned every 3 to 5 days to keep the room smelling aspen-y fresh.

Unforgiving of husbandry problems. Lesson learned the hard way; never assume anything is working fine unless you check it. I had a malfunction with my watering system that went unnoticed for maybe 3 days tops, and in that time I had 3 of my 5 tubs chewed through, and one of my females decided to eat all her babies. I checked every valve every morning and afternoon every day after that, but that was still terrible.

You have to cull them yourself. Between snakes not eating and general production, you tend to either have not enough or too many, and when you have too many you get to kill and freeze the extra. I ended up going with a dry ice chamber, since cervical dislocation is way too hands on for my taste.

If you don't mind the time and energy required and you have enough snakes to warrant rat breeding (I had 6 snakes when I started and I maxed out at 12, with 10 female rats to feed those 12 snakes) then go for it.

[wolfy-hound]

With chewing, I've had to ruthlessly cull ANY tubs of chewers. In each instance, if a bin is chewed, I cull the entire bin. Now I don't have chewing problems, although as noted above, if they don't have water, they're going to chew, kill each other, etc. You can't let them go without water.

[Darkbird]

For small collections breeding your own feeders isn't practical, there will be little savings when you factor in the time and hassle required. But there comes a point when you can see a large savings over buying feeders, you just have to pay for it with a bit of sweat equity. And with a good rack and auto-watering setup, the daily maintenance can be quite minimal. Mine are set up so that they could go up to 2 weeks without any attention, even though I never leave them unattended that long. Just makes it easier for the kids or pet sitter when I go on vacation. I also take advantage of those times when production is high to build up a stock of frozen, which recently paid off when some family issues made it impossible to keep the rats breeding properly and I had basically no production.
Now as for asf's, I actually kind of think of them as a little magic bullet for BPs. I've been able to use them many times to jump start a problem feeder where nothing else was working. But everything said above is also true about them. They will be very bitey until you have a chance to cull out those and get the non-biters breeding. They are big time chewers regardless, I actually sell my extras to a friend, and noticed one trying to chew a hole in the BOTTOM of the transport tub.
For those using mortar tub based racks, a small piece of aluminum flashing and a couple rivets will more or less chew proof those annoying holes. Just cut a square about 3", bend a quarter inch or so of one end around a stiff piece of wire to make a kind of hooked end, slide that over the outer edge of the tub and roll the rest to the inside, then just drill and rivet it into place. Whish I had a picture to post, never had a chew out where that was done.

[CloudtheBoa]

I used to breed rats for just two snakes and it still saved me a lot of money (as in at least a couple hundred dollars yearly literally), and maintaining just a breeding trio wasn't time intensive. My main problem was culling them, it was always hard once they got older.

They were really low maintenance for me because I had them outside in a car port in a huge 6' wooden enclosure. The whole front was made of screen and the bedding was kept 4"-5" thick. They didn't have any smell, and I only had to change the bedding every 2 months or so, when it started looking dirty, or when I was expecting a litter. The enclosure lasted about 5 years before I was unable to continue breeding. At that time, the wood had not been soiled by urine or feces or the weather, and they hadn't come close to chewing it down.

Each person will have different experiences, it's up to you whether or not it's worth it for you, as it is more than just cost as others mentioned.


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