How long?

I'm planning on getting my first corn snake August 9th, and it'll be a male bloodred hatchling from cornsnakes.net.

I'm planning on buying my feeder mice online from rodentpro.com because I'll be living far from a petstore and I'm also rather scared because of some horror stories I've heard about the health of petstore feeders. Also, just moral issues of how the mice are killed and such.

ANYWAY, as with most online feeder supplies I can only buy my mice in quantities of 100. The hatchling would start off with small pinkies, correct? Well, how long would it take before they moved up to large pinkies or fuzzies? The thing is, shipping for the mice is very expensive, so I'd like to buy as many as possible as once, but I don't want to end up buying 300 pinkeis and then throwing out 200 of them! I also don't want to have 100 of each size and then just having 200 mice waiting in my freezer for a year.

I would say that if you have only ONE snake, it is not economical to purchase online... I say this because the freezer life of mice is about 6 months. In 6 months, if the snake eats four prey items a month, it will only consume 24 prey items. That means if you buy 100, you'll throw away 75.

See if you can find some local breeder of mice who will sell you a small bunch of frozen pinks. I wouldn't buy more than 10 or 20 at a time for only one snake.

Well, I doubt that finding a breeder near me will be an option. I have though found another feeder site that sells pinky mice in quantities of 50 and all larger mice in quanities of 25, so I think I'll buy from them and just have to throw out some mice until my snake grows.

Ive ordered through rodentpro and orders come in larger quantities per bag. Which is not very economical for 1 snake. I know that www.Bigcheeserodents.com they do pinkys in bags of 50. But they will do them in smallar but you have to pay more for the added convience. Rodentpro, packages in thick bags which last like 6 months or so as long as they dont get freezer burned. Bigchesse packages in vacume packed packages, and as long as you do not open the vacume sealed package the mice will be fine for well over a year. So a option, if you have enough freezer space would be to get the mice you will need for a year or so and only open the ones you need. Use that 1 pckg till its gone, then open another and then with vacume packed bags you wont have to worry about them going bad as soon as a basic big bag. Another option is LLLReptile.com they sell feeders by the bag, an dit includes shipping, may be a little bit more per mouse. But you wont have to worry about big shippments and too many mice. Hope that gives you some info.

Hey, thanks a ton for the info!