Breeding for pre-weaned?

[rufretic]

I think I am going to try it at an extremely small scale just to see if I can put up with it. If I can't I won't have invested too much and can always feed the animals off. This is the first year that I am at least semi-serious about breeding the snakes. I am at the point that I can consistently produce stuff that is marketable and what I believe to be above average in quality. My statistically worst breeding has a 1/32 of producing a normal. The rat experiment will tell me if I can comfortably scale what I am doing. I believe Deborah is right about relying on others. I have been burned a couple times with people saying they had stuff and they didn't and coming up short. Even if I don't produce enough rats I will be better off than I am now and I guess I can always get live mice of the proper size to make up for shortfalls.

To be honest, my mind set was almost the exact same as yours, I do not like the smell of rodents and was completely against breeding them in my home because the few times I was anywhere near rodents breeding I couldn't imagine living with that smell in the house. Then I met a breeder that lives near me, he breeds fish, snakes, rats and now is even getting into gerbils and rabbits. The first time I was there I went for fish and did not even know he bred anything else(no rodent smell). The first time he took me into his snake room, also where he breeds his rats, I was shocked because the smell was almost non existent. Once I started increasing my snake collection I realized how expensive it was going to get feeding this many mouths. So like you I decided maybe I could get away with just a trio of rats without it bothering me. They did not smell up my house but I had a feeling they were not going to be enough. I already had more snakes so a week or two later I took the plunge and built a rat rack and decided to go for it. Now I have not been doing it for long but the smell is nothing like I thought it would be. I'm lucky to have a full unfinished basement that I can basically do what I want with it because I didn't want the rodents upstairs. I'm happy to say, there is absolutely no smell upstairs ever, my wife would not tolerate it and she would be the first to say, that's it get them out of here. But so far so good. If you don't have someplace like that where you can keep them away from your living quarters, you may have to deal with the smell occasionally. My basement does not have a sent typically but a day or two before it's time to change the bedding, I can smell it when I go down there. It's not bad though and is gone again a day after I do the bedding. The worst was the first week or two after getting the whole group when I think the males were marking I would guess. The tubs were more saturated and you could definitely smell it down there but after that, it has been really manageable. I think you might be surprised what you can get away with as long as you stay on top of maintenance. It might be worth giving it a shot with a few more rats than you were planning. The rack was cheap and easy to build and the cost of the rats doesn't really matter because if you change your mind you can feed them off, but it's not a big investment to try. Good luck with whatever you decide.