When did you start breeding feeders?

[Raverthug]

For thoes of you that breed your own feeders, I was wondering how many/what kind of animals did you have when you started breeding your feeders? I only ask because Ive tossed around the idea of breeding my own feeders

[FIEND_FO_LYFE]

I personally will not breed anything except ASFs.
I only breed for 2-3 snakes, because that is all they will eat.
Id rather not deal with the smell, and hassle of breeding my own rats, UNLESS i have to.

[tomfromtheshade]

I started breeding rats once I started getting into burms.

There is no way to breed burms without breeding rodents. The friggin' things will eat you out of house and home.

Imagine having 100 little bottomless pits that each eat 2-3 rat pups every week. It ain't hard to do the math on that one.

[het.pied]

well i started out two weeks ago.i picked up 5 females and two males. im keeping them in a 1.2 group and a 1.3 group. so far i have one female that gave birth(i bought her pregnant. and two that are pregnant. i have 6 snakes to feed so i think this will keep my snakes and wallet satisfied.

[Hulihzack]

I started breeding rats shortly after aquiring my group of Hondurans... putting me up to 12 snakes at the time. I only started breeding rats because rats were of feeding size at a much younger age than mice, so I could produce more food faster. I had 1.3 rats for a while, but I just scored some nice lab rat breeder cages so I will probably be upping my production a bit. I use the vanilla-in-the-water trick, change bedding once a week and the smell doesn't bother anyone in the house at all. Plus rats are kind of fun to watch and interact with so I enjoy the rat breeding greatly. And yes, it has saved me a LOT on feeder bills!

[Stewart_Reptiles]

When I reached 10 snakes until than I was buying and feeding F/T, now I raise my own mice and rats and feed live as it is more convenient for me with 60+ snakes.

[nbelval]

Just getting started. I have 11 snakes now with more on the way. I have kept rats for pets longer than I have snakes, so it's a little disconcerting for me, but it has to be done if I'm going to feed the snakes and not spend a fortune on feeders. I like it because I know exactly what the feeders are being fed and what condition they are in, versus not really knowing when you purchase F/T.

[chromeitout]

I believe I had aroud 8 snakes when I started breeding mice. I did have a local breeder I could buy from, so cost wasn't bad, but I decided to breed my own so I could pick the exact sizes I needed and I could choose between live, p/k, and f/t depending on the snake.

[Jay_Bunny]

I have bred my own feeders off and on for a while now but I'm just starting to get back into it. I have 11 snakes to feed and currently I have a 1.2 for rats and a 1.2 for mice. I also have 6 female mice that need a male in a few weeks (2 mothers and 4 daughters. Daughters are not old enough yet). I also have another female rat that is not old enough yet to breed and a male rat that was bred by my sister that will be coming home in a week or two. I plan on increasing production a lot since these few breeders are NOT going to satisfy the demand for feeders in this house. I need to make some new bins and then I can fill them. I use wood pellet bedding and aspen shavings as bedding. I feed Mazuri 6F and fresh foods.

[MarkS]

I guess it's been about 4-5 years now for breeding both rats and mice. I started off with 2.6 black hooded rats, they had quite a few interesting genes though so now I'm producing Blacks, Whites, Blues, Browns, Champaignes, in all different shades either solid colored or hooded and many with dumbo ears.

With the mice I started out with about 20 white females and about a half a dozen white males, then a few months later added a couple of brown females. For a few years after that, all of my holdbacks for future breeders were all white females and all brown males. This way I could always tell which were the females and which were the males at a glance.