I of course can't speak for others but if your snakes will take F/t you just freeze them at the correct size. If you feed live you have three options depending on your circumstance. If you have a way to sell the excess or wrong sized rodents you can exceed your own needs. If you can't sell but you can buy you can produce less than you need and then buy enough to make up the difference. If you can neither buy nor sell or don't want to you pretty much have to feed something that will never get to big for your snake. That's why I breed Gerbils, and because I cannot get ASFs easily. The one big plus about feeding live and breeding your own is minimizing the suffering of the prey. My snake had a 260 day fast this year. If I were feeding F/T and refreezing once and offering on a 10 day schedule I would have had 26 refusals and 13 rodents in the garbage. Feeding live allowed me to just put them back in the tub and shut off my production for a while. Breeding my own I can keep my rodents in very spacious tubs, max of 4 adults to a 20"x26"x"6 tub which is more floor space than a 20 gallon breeder. I know my animals are getting quality food and are just generally well cared for.Originally Posted by Sugarbone
Great, I'd never heard of ASFs, and this thread has made me spend the last hour watching videos about them on youtube
Sorry to derail, but how do people who keep their own mouse/rat/ASF colonies balance age of rodents with amount? Like, making sure they have enough of the right size each week, and what do you do when the rats outgrow your demand (for example, not enough adult snakes to eat the rat pups for your juvies that aged into adults). Aim higher than you need and sell excess?
The idea of one day breeding my own food appeals to me, I think I just like breeding things
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