I'm so excited about my rat breeding plans

[singingtothewheat]

Well within a few day's I hope to close a deal on a lab rat rack. I have two companies that I working with on used equipment and about have the deal finalized. Of course I won't get it for awhile but man oh man. This will make my life about a thousand times easier. For the price I'm getting I could maybe get just the tubs and wire lids everywhere else I've looked.
I would love to get rid of all the friggin aquariums. I hate em.

[chromeitout]

Congrats! However, have you considered building or buying a rack with auto watering? Those lab cages are nice but it makes me tired when I just SEE a picture of a full rack of them and all those water bottles! Just something to consider. Anyway, good luck and post pics when you get set up.

[singingtothewheat]

Both of these have auto watering set up but I believe that both are set up for pressurized systems and I'm not totally sure how I would make that work. Still, the idea of cleaning bins vs/ trying to haul around aquariums makes me endlessly happy!

[tomfromtheshade]

For the money I think that you would be better off building your own racks. I build a six level mortar tub rack with the watering system for about $150. You can run 24 females in that rack and it is a proven system.

I'm sure that the lab rack is good, but the mortar racks have been used successfully by a ton of large scale breeders.

[singingtothewheat]

Well it isn't totally a done deal. I'm just not sure I can build a rack, truthfully. I know for sure that I'd probably need to buy tools. They don't warp? I have one snake rack, I bought used. It's a piece of crap. You have to have arms like popeye to get stuff in.

[chromeitout]

None of my rodent racks have even begun to warp. The one in the middle has been in service for almost 3 years.

Don't let us discourage you from going ahead with your plans. If you can afford to buy a rack, then by all means go for it, I only mentioned it because of the water issue. If I had water bottles instead of edstrom valves, I would have gone crazy by now. If you can work out the watering on the systems that you are looking at then great, and if not then you won't be the only one with bottles, I'm just not going to join you!