Well, I decided to take a deeper look into quail for the snakes here. I can keep a constant source of quail easier than I can rodents. Plus, if I for some reason cannot produce my own during a feeding session, I have a supplier ten minutes away, who's selling for $2/bird, vs $6 per rat. Anyways, people were concerned about snakes getting "addicted" to quail, yucky poop and nutritional content. The yucky poop, well, if you give a dog kibble all its life, then suddenly toss a whole chicken at it, it's going to have some pretty nasty poop too. Turns out, snakes that are fed quail on a regular basis don't have yucky poop, it's just that their systems are not used to it. On to nutritional content. Quail have less fat, more protein and more calcium as compared to mice (adult) and rats (juvenile). Other perks to quail? Quail are sexually mature in 6-8 weeks. They lay an egg per day year round. They don't eat much (that's an opinion, I have rats and quail, and the rats seem to eat more per rat than the quail, plus food is much cheaper for poultry than it is for rats). You *DO* have to incubate the eggs yourself, however, for $50 ONE TIME cost, you will have an incubator that should give you at least a 75% hatch rate. The electricity consumption of an incubator is minimal. Add to the fact that you can stagger a hatch, so that you can put in say 10 eggs one week, then 10 the next week, and you can hold eggs for a week without loosing fertility. That would make it MUCH easier to have proper sized prey at the exact right times. Caging is insane on these birds as well, half to one square foot per bird. Plus, these birds don't need to take time to nurse, wean and take break from litters, like rats need to. Rats would produce approximately 8-12 babies per litter, and should have one litter per 12 weeks, depending on your personal ethics. That would be one rodent per week. Quail can produce one egg per day, with a 75% hatch rate, in 12 weeks you could produce 63 quail instead of the 12 rats from a single female.
And, quail are ground dwelling birds, not flying birds like some seem to think. Yes, they CAN fly, but they generally fly a short distance, then run to safety.

Add to all of this that you can butcher them for your own dinner, or eat the eggs, and, well, IMO, you've got a perfect feeder.

Anyone else have any input?