In Your Opinion, Should I Breed Mice, Rats, or Both?

[Bellabob]

I'm going to start breeding my own food for the snakes. It will be much cheaper and it will allow me to get a couple more snakes too. But I'm stuck on something. 2 of my snakes eat mice, and only one eats rats. Once I get things going I'm planning on buying a Carpet Python of some kind, and he or she will obviously eat rats. But I also want more colubrids. So both? Help me make a choice please!

[mainbutter]

Which snake of yours only eats rats right now? The BP?

Even after picking up a carpet python, that brings your total # of snakes to 4.

That's not exactly expensive to feed if you get frozen feeders at a reasonable price (similar to online orders). However, good general advice is to breed whatever you're feeding more of. If you're feeding two rats a week and six mice, breed mice. Vice versa holds true.

You COULD consider doing both. This is just as feasible with a small collection as it is with a large collection. Even just one pair of mice will provide a surprising number of babies, and easily feed multiple colubrids, if you plan out your feedings and how long it will take to raise newborns up to the size you want to feed. Having your snakes eating F/T will make this easier, as you can get a head start on breeding and start freezing feeders a month or two in advance of when you will need them, that way you can almost guarantee you'll have feeders in supply.

Whatever you do, do NOT feed a carpet python mice. Never ever ever ever. Start them on rat pinkies, keep them on rats their entire life. A 7 foot long mouser is no fun to feed when they need a bowl full of a dozen adult mice every week or two. I'd hate to see you start breeding mice and think "oh the snake I just bought is small, I'll start him on mice and switch it over when it grows bigger", and then run into issues down the line.

Even though my girl and I have a number of rodent eating animals between the two of us, we still just buy feeders online and at shows. After calculating costs of raising feeders, the benefit wasn't enough to justify the space, smell, and time of breeding our own feeders.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I would recommend breeding both, simply because you can never guarantee that all your animals will eat rats (also depending on their rats might also be out of the question (thinking about hatchling colubrids mainly).

Since you do not have many snakes at this point and since rodent reproduce very fast make sure you know what to do with the surplus you may get especially with rats that grow very fast and often outgrow ideal prey size in a matter of weeks.

[mainbutter]

Also, I will say that I prefer to have ALL my snakes eating rats. The only issue I will run into with any of my projects will be the hognose project. Hatchling hoggies are TINY and will surely need to start on mouse pinks for the sake of being too small to take even the smallest of rat pinks.

If you're not breeding, and your colubrids are of enough size to eat rats, and you're able to get them to take them, it's much simpler having them all eating the same thing.

[SnakeKB]

Breed both. You can end up selling some if you have too many. I enjoy breeding mice and rats. And it really doesn't cost that much. 25$ in food each month for them and 25$ in bedding a month. That's 50$ a month to maintain enough rats and mice to feed 7 or more snakes. I've got something like 100-150 mice and 50-75 rats right now.

[Bellabob]

I think I'm going to breed just rats. But I don't want to use 10 gallon tanks. Thier expensive and unecessary. Can rats chew through clear sterilite tubs? They would be soooo much easier to use.

[SnakeKB]

I use sterilite tubs for my rats and mice. I have 60qt ones for the mice and 115qt for the rats i think. I also use morter tubs in a rack setup too. The rack is much nicer to work with. I only have the weaned/small rats in the sterilite tubs because there just not big enough to reach the wire on the rack for food.

[Bellabob]

I plan on getting one male rat and 2 females to go with him , just to get started. Once the female gives birth it says to take the male out of the cage so he doesn't kill the pups or something. When I seperate him do I put him in a sepreate container with no rat in it? It said that rats get lonely and that they always need another rat with them. Also, I want to get the pups to about fuzzie or hopper size, keep a male and female for future breeding, and then eventually feeding off the rest.

Ugh I don't know what I'm saying. It would be really great if someone could explain this stuff to me.

[SnakeKB]

Leave them together. The male doesn't bother the babies. The females are the ones that usually kill them. That only happens if there's a problem with nutrition. I've never had an issue with adults killing the babies when keeping them all together. Some people seperate the pregnant female into a separate birthing container just to keep things more organized. But for a 1.2 ratio you can leave them together.

[Bellabob]

For some reason I feel I should seperate the females to give birth. But say both females in one harem are pregnant, and I put them each in a birthing tub. What do I do with the one lone male? Leave him in the cage until the mothers are done weaning them and then put them back in the cage with him?