Cost....

I am trying to figure out if this is even worth doing. I have 3 corns. Right now the littlest is taking 1 pinky and the other 2 are taking 1 fuzzy each. Would it be a money saver to have 1 colony of mice? Cull some of the pinks and let some grow to fuzzy size then cull them. Have the male separate from the female of course after she's preg. then have them mate again when food gets low?

Also how much was the initial start up price for the first colony and accessories?

My opinion, no. Not as long as your getting good quality squeakers, especially if its from a local source.
I would say if you have ten snakes it might be worth it. I have around 25 snakes, and I'm thinking about getting a colony, but mice are stinky and I hate having to kill them, so I've put it off.

If it's worth it or not really depends on how much you're paying for feeders and if you have a place to put the mice. Mice really stink! I keep mine in my garage but have to keep it well ventilated. It still stinks though.

Where I used to live in N. Cali pinkies were $1.53 each. Which is fine if you're only feeding one snake. You'll have to figure out you're own costs but here's how I broke it down.

1 pinkie x 3 snakes x 52 weeks x $1.53 = $238.68

For one colony of 5 mice (1.4)
1 10.5 CF bag of pine ($11.00)
1 bulk bag of block food 30-40lbs ($22 - $30)
cage and accessories ($30)

Total $63 - $71

You're snakes won't be on pinkies forever so the food will get more expensive. Keep that in mind.

Was it worth it for me?... absolutely! Now if you're getting your feeders at a much cheaper price or the supplies are more expensive that changes things. You really have to figure out your costs for a year and compare them. Hope that helps a little in your decision.

I'd say that for the number of snakes you've got, it's probably not worth breeding mice unless you LIKE mice and actually want to BREED mice OR you're paying huge prices for pinkies/etc in your area.

Green Bean said:

I am trying to figure out if this is even worth doing. I have 3 corns. Right now the littlest is taking 1 pinky and the other 2 are taking 1 fuzzy each. Would it be a money saver to have 1 colony of mice? Cull some of the pinks and let some grow to fuzzy size then cull them. Have the male separate from the female of course after she's preg. then have them mate again when food gets low?

Also how much was the initial start up price for the first colony and accessories?

Click to expand...

As Vinnyj said, you have to determine the cost effectivness and time factor involved to relate to your specific situation. I'll give you another example of the costs broken down for each...

Before I started breeding my own mice, I was purchasing enough feeders from a not so local store for 1.50 each (regardless of size - great deal for adults, not so great deal for pinks and fuzzies) for approximately 20-25 snakes on a weekly basis. So, we'll say 20 for the sake of the computations.

$1.50 x 20 x 52 = $1,560 (not including tax btw...) per year. That's roughly $130 per month. We decided that was way too much and bought 2 colonies to start. (was supposed to be one, but one of the mice was miss-sexed and we ended up with two.) which turns out to be about $6.5 per snake per month.

Now for the cost of keeping the 2 colonies. I was optomistic when I started, and purchased 2 medium critter keepers for about $8.00 a piece, bag of aspen shavings runs about $7 (20 liter bag that will last 1 - 1 1/2 months), small bag of lab blocks $9 (5lb bag) and 1 bag of commerical seed diet $6 (about 4-5 lbs I think) that would last little over a full month. So, total for the first month was: about $42.00 including tax.

Maintaining the colonies for each month after start = $26. That drops the monthly cost of feeding the snakes from $6.5 to $1.30. In an ideal world anyway...

Now, I quickly learned that 2 small colonies (1.2 each) would never be enough to support that many snakes, they just don't breed or grow that quickly.

That also doesn't calculate the time and effort put into keeping the mice cages clean and stink free. We currently clean out each tank 2-3 times a week (depending on population and how bad it looks - if one colony tends to produce more waste in a shorter amount of time we change it more often.) Our mice require ten times the care and maintenace of the snakes that they feed. (Or so it seems to me.) Yet, to this day it is more cost effective to maintain the colonies.

(We are up to 8 colonies that are breeders and 4 additional cages dedicated to the juveniles that will be fed off over the next couple of weeks. Plus one colony of rats.)

Costs:
$20 a month for bedding (Aspen that is used for both snakes and mice)
$30 a month on food (mixture of seed diet and lab blocks)
Total: $50 per month to maintain hundreds of mice, that feed 72 snakes cost per snake per month - $0.70. That's estimating the food costs of the mice high because we usually buy in bulk now when we can.

Bottom line...

If you can deal with the mice (cleaning and other mice related issues), plan on purchasing more snakes sometime in the future, and find getting feeders from a local source a bit high or hard to find - it might be worth it to you to breed your own mice. But, it really depends on your situation... might be more cost effective to order on-line from somewhere like rodent pro. With less mess and clean up involved. :shrugs:


Jenn... *sinks back into lurk mode*

Thank you all for your imput, I am still thinking it over and have a few other issues to cosider. 1 bedroom apartment (so smell is a concern) and I have two cats with free reign of the entire apartment.

I can get pinks starting a .49 cents if I shop around, but i don't like the looks of 'em, they all have white stuff on 'em, freezer burn maybe. So I buy them at a different store for .99 cents and that shop isn't the best of shops to be at.

So I dunno.... Maybe I'll consider it later in the year when we're able to move to a two bedroom apartment.

I see you are in Ohio, this is what I do as an example
1. go to a reptile show and buy mice bulk All-ohio in Cleveland or Columbus or there is one in Redford Michigan.
2. buy bulk from American Rodent (google it), they run specials occasionally. This summer I got free shipping to Ohio on a $50 order and sometimes they have surplus animals in certain sizes. I purchased what I believe to be enough mice for the year for under $75 shipped with 3 snakes that worked out to be less than $0.50 a feeding and all I need is freezer space and well sealed bags.
I looked on their site and see that free shipping is $100 maybe you could try to find someone to split shipping with? Keep checking back at their site for specials it changes all the time.

Just what I have done. Plus I hate the smell of mice!!

Peace
Paul

See if there is a reptile club/group near you? I can get pinkies for .25 each through my local club. We buy in bulk & sell to members at cost at the meetings

Jenn that was a great post! Thats exactly what I did... I figured out the cost of buying feeder and breeding my own...I started breeding and now have over 100+ pinks a week born... I find it a quite rewarding to breed and feed my own mice, not to mention selling 100-200 a week as feeders..lol!
Ryan
~Valley Pets~

I agree with the other posters - The cost for keeping mice isn't that much, but it's the stink that really gets to you.

It didn't cost me much at all to start a colony. I bought 2 mice, 1 male 1 female for $2 each. They then reproduced and I kept back 2 females. And my colony is currently 1 male 3 females. So
Cost of mice - $4
Cage - my mom bought a stack of rubbermaid boxes for storage and I just took one. It's a 64 qt and cost like $5 each.
Cage - $5
Bedding I bought a 20 liter bag of aspen for my mice and my snakes. I've been using it since July and it's still half full. I change my snakes' cages once a month and my mice cage once a week. So say I round up a little,
Bedding - $10 per year
Food I have a 5lb bag for $7 that lasts around 3 months for the colony.
Food - $28 per year

Total - $40-50 per year for my 1.3 colony, who produce more than enough to feed my 2 snakes.

I have 2 snakes to feed. Mice around here are at LEAST $1 for the smallest pinks, more when they're older. So that's 2x1x52 = $104 per year IF they're eating pinks.

Personally I do enjoy breeding mice. If you're able to buy Fancy mice in your area, they have some pretty interesting genetics. However if you do breed them, I would advice not separating the male, because sometimes it takes longer for the colony to be re-established, or the female might even kill the male because he is foreign. You might end up with not enough pinkies to feed your snakes.

However in the future I do plan on buying frozen mice in bulk once my two snakes have reached adulthood(don't need different sizes), since I'm pretty bad at killing the mice when they're older. And most reptile shows have mice pretty cheap, and you don't have to deal with the stink of keeping mice.