That day has come. My collection of snakes has grown large enough that its getting really expensive to feed them all, and I dont have a big enough freezer to order loads of food in bulk. I considered two options. Look on craigslist for a top loading chest freezer to stop with rodents, or finally take the plunge into breeding my own food, which seemed like the more fun/exciting option.

I decided to start out with a small colony, to see if rat breeding in for me. Went out this weekend and bought materials to setup 3 enclosures for 2.1 trios of rats in each.

The enclosures themselves are 116qt bins. I used a dremel to cutout the top of the lid, and put some 1/2" wire mesh in place. Each enclosure has a wire mesh column that descends down to the rats. Food can then just be poured into the column. So far it seems to work out quite nicely! The water bottles are just velcro'ed to the front of each bin. Constructing these took wayyyy longer than I anticipated and I dont really look forward to building more of them. But I will probably need grow-out bins in the next month or two. I think I may just end up getting someone to help me construct a rodent rack, probably easier to deal with.

Anyway, here are some pics of the new setup.