Beginner Feeder Farm

Hiyo. I’ve been playing with the idea of starting a feeder farm. Just a small, personal one. I’m mother to four beautiful snakes, two of which are eating mice at the moment. I have two corns and two baby garters. The garter babies are too small to eat fish, let alone mice. But I will be moving them over as soon as they’re big enough.

I have a 5-year old corn, Ramses, and a 2-year old corn, Luca, that are very tame and eat really well. Ramses is eating one large adult every 10 days and Luca is eating one small adult every 10 days.

I’m just wondering if it would be a good idea for me to start a small farm, seeing how expensive it is to feed the snakes. Now that I have four snakes, I thought it might be time. Any suggestions on how to properly start one up?

If you can find them, buy mice that are raised for use by laboratories. Typically they are disease free and the colonies are tested periodically. If those are unavailable check out local pet shops. I was lucky when I started a couple colonies because I could pick out any mice they had in a large tank for $1.99 each. I picked out 3 or 4 pregnant females and one male. I could then raise the baby mice to any size I wanted. The downside is that you have to buy good quality feed to raise good quality mice, and you can't be reluctant to euthanize the mice. Mice really stink and there is no end to their urine. I wouldn't want another colony in the house. I'd probably go with African Soft Fur rats, but they aren't the most docile rodents I ever had. But they don't stick like mice.

Should say they don't stink like mice. But they are prolific. Others on the forum have raised them, and you can do a search to see what they said about them.

Twolunger said:

If you can find them, buy mice that are raised for use by laboratories. Typically they are disease free and the colonies are tested periodically. If those are unavailable check out local pet shops. I was lucky when I started a couple colonies because I could pick out any mice they had in a large tank for $1.99 each. I picked out 3 or 4 pregnant females and one male. I could then raise the baby mice to any size I wanted. The downside is that you have to buy good quality feed to raise good quality mice, and you can't be reluctant to euthanize the mice. Mice really stink and there is no end to their urine. I wouldn't want another colony in the house. I'd probably go with African Soft Fur rats, but they aren't the most docile rodents I ever had. But they don't stick like mice.

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Thanks so much! Any suggestions on feed? A specific brand or type I should look out for when searching for food for the mice?

If you have a small colony the pet supermarkets have feed like Mazuri available. I used hog pellets meant for hog maintenance that were 15% protein. Don't get the high protein formula.They are available at Tractor Supply or farm feed outlets. I supplemented the pellets with oats and carrot pieces. One bag of pellets lasts a long time. One benefit of using pellets is that some heat is used during the manufacturing process and bacteria on the grain is killed. If I fed grains bought from local farmers I heated it in my oven for 30 minutes. There is a list of things that you shouldn't feed
rodents on the internet.

Thanks so much

I have a small colony of mice, and I have raised ASF's.

It's pretty easy, once you get started.
I got some of these from someone selling out. I put them on a shelf by my laundry room.
I use horse bedding wood pellets in the bottom, it helps with the urine smell. I add pine shavings and add some Carefresh bedding.
I put empty toilet paper tubes and/or paper towel tubes, and/or empty egg cartons. They like to chew them up, and sometimes use the egg cartons to build nests in/under.

With the small number of snakes you have, I would stick with mice, because you can easily be over run with ASF's. Unless you have large Corns 500 gram+, Adult ASF's are too big for them.

My colony of mice is intended to be supplemental, and to have access to newborn pinkies for hatchlings when I have them.

I was breeding ASF's when I had more Irian Jaya Carpet Pythons. One of mine is on long term breeder loan with a friend, and when I get her back, I will likely start up another ASF colony to stock back up on feeders for her.
I will only do it for a little while, because their litters are so much bigger, and it doesn't take long to end up with enough to last a while.

I currently have three of those bins for mice (rat size bins) with 3-4 female mice, and one male.
I have an extra bin set up for a grow out bin, so the juvenile mice can get to full size without hindering the new litters in the breeder bins.

I feed Mazuri rodent blocks, I pick mine up from a local farm store. I supplement with a rodent blend that the farm store sells.

I really like those mouse breeding cages, but they are really expensive, unless you can find someone getting rid of their snakes and rodents. My son gave me a bunch of them when he bought out a snake breeder. I had extra bottom containers, so could swap them out daily if necessary. Unfortunately, I gave them all away when I cut back on my snake collection. I do see them on EBay new and used.

Thanks so much this helps a bunch! I’ll definitely think I’ll be holding off until my baby garters are big enough to eat pinkies. I’m having issues with them even eating worms right now, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Have you tried f/t pinkie head? Or maybe a mouse tail, to get them eating?

I have a local friend who has produced gorgeous California Red Sided Garters, and I have been tempted to get one or two. One day I might.

I haven’t tried that yet. I’ll have to give it a try this week.

I went to Tractor Supply, and bought a 120-gallon galvanized steel livestock trough for my mice. They seem to do well in the communal environment, with a lot of room to move around. The tank is 48" long, 24" wide, and 24" high. The steel is very slippery, so I don't even need a lid with the 2-foot height.

I have several exercise wheels, and hide boxes for them. I remove late-term pregnant females to a 30-gallon aquarium to nurse their babies in peace. Then everyone goes back into the community tank. I euthanize as often as I need to, to keep the crowding to a minimum. Surplus goes in the freezer. It's nice to have all sizes of feeders available, as I have snakes of all sizes.

Oh, I go to the grain-processing plant, and get a hamster/gerbil seed mix in 50-lb. bags, to which I add oatmeal, Cheerios, and Mazuri mouse breeder blocks. My animals do very well on that diet, and the females have large, healthy litters.

Seems like a lot of work, but with just the one big enclosure, it's not too time-consuming. And with 50+ snakes, I need a large, steady supply. I sell some surplus locally.

Kathy

I had the same set up for quite a while, but I kept it in a shed during the warm months and moved it to the basement for the cold months. However, I didn't remove the pregnant females. Several of them kept the babies together in one hide. You can do it that way provided your colony doesn't have any cannibalistic mice. We got good lab mice from a guy in the Romulus area.

Rosy009 said:

Thanks so much this helps a bunch! I’ll definitely think I’ll be holding off until my baby garters are big enough to eat pinkies. I’m having issues with them even eating worms right now, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

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I was given a garter by someone when they heard I had snakes, I am not sure if he was a baby, but he WAS very small.. I bought some frozen tilapia fillets (because you can't buy just one at the grocery store) and just cut chunks off of it with scissors. I also cut tails or feet off the mice being fed to the other snakes and offered those- much smaller than a pinkie and good calcium..My garter is a little trash can, he eats EVERYTHING, You know about avoiding thiaminase, right?

Watching him eat when he was little was fascinating, It wasn't exactly 'chewing' but it looked a lot more like it than my corns, And offering the occasional earthworm as he grows bigger is very entertaining...

Nancy

I started breeding mice in April last year. I have a few dozen right now. I've had nearly 100 at once. I keep them out in my garage and they do fine through the winter, but I have stopped breeding for now because one of them got her babies wet and they froze to death... I figured it wasn't really worth the struggle and I have plenty to breed when it warms up again. I have some frozen to last us through the winter. I started breeding because my corn wouldn't take f/t for a bit and I got sick of buying live every month. I buy big 30# bags of Mazuri breeder diet and they do great on it, some of the older ones are huge! I feed scraps too when we have them, and stale cereal and the like. I keep them in homemade bins (sterilite tub + zip ties + hardware cloth), a couple tanks and 5 or so critter trail type cages. I separate all the males if I have the space to do so as they will fight to the death when they get older. So I feed males off first. I separate pregnant females after having cagemates eat their babies a couple times. I have had good luck with my mice aside from that and I enjoy breeding for different colors to make it more interesting. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Meant to say that selling them locally helps support my hobby, I nearly paid nothing for my snakes when I was actively breeding but I'm taking a break through the winter as mentioned.