Breeding for pre-weaned?

[predatorkeeper87]

I was giving something some preliminary thought. I am willing to go ahead and do the research and run the numbers myself but I thought I may save myself a little time by asking those that are experienced if it is even worth my time to do the research. I am anticipating hatching approximately 50 ball pythons this season spread out over a couple months. Historically I have had problems sourcing live rats smaller than pups. I very rarely feed live other than babies who refuse FT for thier first meal. I have sometimes been forced to resort to mice which I really do not like to do. If my numbers hold true right around 33% of my babies have insisted that the first meal is live. Would it be worth it to keep a couple breeding female rats to supply me with the approprietely sized first meals? Can I control the birth rate and times of the rats good enough to meet these needs? I really do not like the smell of rats so keeping a colony is out of the question for me. I was guessing maybe two females and a male? Any excess production would be frozen before being weaned. I figure doing that would significantly keep the cost of raising the rats down and significantly reduce the number of pup and smaller rats that I am buying frozen if I continue the process year round. I typically sell most of my young snakes after they feed twice.


Thank you for any guidance

That's doable, with a good trio you can expect between 20-30 babies. Gestation is roughly 24-28 days, and 5-5.5 weeks until they are weaned. You just need to time the hatches and the rat births, but definitely doable.