I think it's time to breed feeders!

[marct]

I have been feeding my animals F/T successfully for a while now. Every now and then (sometimes more than I would like), my animals go off feed and sometimes will only take prekilled rats. I also have a few balls that will only take live. To make a long story short, my freaking local pet store is selling his live small rats for $8.50 each. This cost is starting to kill me. Just this summer, I've spent about 20-35 bucks every 10 days for feeders.

I need advice from you experienced rat breeders. This may sound like a comical questions, but will I save money by breeding myself? I'm thinking about using a 1.3 rotation.

Any replies will be appreciated.

-Marc

[KRK Exotics]

One of the problems you are going to have is having live in the right sizes at the right times a litter of pups only stays what you would consider "smalls" for a short time. Personally I would start off with more females then you think you would need. Strange things happen, you cant always count on a litter from each female every 22 - 24 days like clock work every time. Even if you do wind up woth more feeders then you need you can always kill off and freeze the excess. If nothing else its always faster to downsize a colony once you find you have too many then it is to expand if you find you have too few. Bottom line is no matter how much research you do there is a learning curve involved and it takes time to esablish a self sustaining colony.

good luck

[suzuki4life]

one of the problems you are going to have is having live in the right sizes at the right times a litter of pups only stays what you would consider "smalls" for a short time. Personally i would start off with more females then you think you would need. Strange things happen, you cant always count on a litter from each female every 22 - 24 days like clock work every time. Even if you do wind up woth more feeders then you need you can always kill off and freeze the excess. If nothing else its always faster to downsize a colony once you find you have too many then it is to expand if you find you have too few. Bottom line is no matter how much research you do there is a learning curve involved and it takes time to esablish a self sustaining colony.

Good luck

fantastic advice!!!!!!!!

[tomfromtheshade]

Here is some more helpful advice that you will learn on your own eventually.

Male rats and female rats grow on about the same pace until they are maybe 6 weeks old and then the males get much larger much faster.

If you need large rats for any of your snakes you are better off growing out male rats for that purpose.

So, after you decide what females you want to keep for breeding you should feed the rest of the females off as smalls and mediums and then ONLY hold back males to grow out to large size.

I made that mistake through trial and error and had a stretch there where my boas were eating half a dozen rats a week because all of my rats were small LOL.