Cost-Effectiveness of Mousies

Greetings again to all -
I've been reading for some time, all of the threads that discuss how much time is needed to raise mice and rats. I am also hearing how much they stink.
My question to all of you then is: Is it really cost-effective to raise your own feeders? Factor in the time, and all related costs and compare it to ordering a freezer full of mouse pops.
I ask purely out of curiosity and would love to read some discussion.
Thanks

personally, it isn't for me. It takes enough time and energy to maintain the collection of reptiles I already have. I just buy mine in bulk.

This is what I tend to think. All that extra work...when I can just get nice vaccuum sealed bags of mice...seems like a no brainer. Yet, many people seem to delve into the world of raising feeders.

I raise my feeders because it is soo much fun. Its always cool to mix different colors of mice and see what you get. I have an air purifier so they don't stink and I am getting enough mice to feed all my snakes and it is pretty cheap so, it just depends how much your time is worth.

I think a lot of it has to do with how many reptiles you have. If you've got just a few, it's probably going to be more expensive to maintain the bedding/food for mice than it would be to just get frozen ones. On the other hand, at the zoo, we raise our own because there are a ton of animals we use them for. So if you've got that many reptiles, it'd probably be worth your time. The smell, on the other hand...it would take a whole lot for me to consider raising mice...and rats are even worse.

Imagine going through 500-800 adult mice a week? Think about the cost if you were to do that via frozen mouse suppliers.

For smaller collections it probably makes more sense. But once you get way up there, frozen just makes no sense.

Since I really cannot breed my own since I don't have my own apartment, I'm really thinking about ordering some frozen pinkies and fuzzies and at $0.39 or cheaper, it certainly beats $1 per mouse of any size, ya know? I hate to do it, but it's almost becoming a necessity. With the amount of money I spend on feeders every month, I could be buying a nice new snake without a problem.

I breed my own rodents. I actually breed way more than I need and sell the excess to a few customers and at shows. Not factoring in my time, the rodents I sell pays for the rodent food and bedding and puts a few bucks in my pocket. On top of that, my collection gets fed for free.

The Wife and I bred mice and a couple rats for about 2 months..then she started having an allergic reaction to them ! Even tho they were in the basement...one Saturday morning she almost couldn't breath ! Yikes !

My main source has been RodentPro for frozen. I have about 25 Adults and yearlings atm..so they go thru a lot..lol! I try to put in a good size order 2-3 times a year with them. Saves a bunch on shipping to get a "bulk" type order.

Anytime someone raise questions on the prices the big Corn breeders charge..I just think of the time and cost they put into feeding all those snakes (smile). As DanD does...they probably breed feeders..still a lot of time to do it all !

It takes me awhile to change water bowls, clean waste up etc. for 25 snakes ! I can't imagine the effort it takes when you have THOUSANDS of them.

My collection is at about 55 right now (with eggs and some purchased hatchlings on the way). I tried the mouse husbandry thing for a while, but it just didn't suit me. I buy my feeders from RodentPro, and usually order about 500 (various sizes) at a time. That keeps me in mice for about 2 months (give or take). Usually costs about 175 with shipping.....I'm sure it would be more cost-effective to raise my own, but I am willing to pay for convenience now (reach into the freezer and pick out a mouse, you know?).
I may, in the future, try again but I will have to have a 'mouse house' somewhere FAR away from my own. They are just too disgusting to keep in a spare bedroom...IMVHO
:cheers:

If you have a small collection it's not worth breeding them.
If you have a large collection~ well then it depends on how you value your time.

I run 10 tubs of mice, and 19 tubs of rats. My monetary costs weekly look something like this:
Feed: 50lbs per week at $15
Shavings: 1/2 bale per week at $4.50 (the whole bale is $9, but I only use half a bale a week).
Pelleted bedding: 40lbs per week at $5

So my reccuring monetary costs are approx $25 a week.

I feed out about 20 to 30 mice a week to the corns ~ they would eat F/T so I can value them at about $0.50 each so there is $10-15 there.
I feed out about 20 to 30 live rats a week to the BPs (they will not eat F/T so must value these higher. I can purchase dirty, nasty rats for $1 each, or nice clean live rats for 2.50 each) so on the cheap side I could feed the BPs for $20-30 a week, but I wouldn't, I would have to pay the higher $50-75 a week to feed those.
I feed the monitor about 14 mice or pinky rats a week. He will take F/T so we can value those at $0.50 a week. Thats another $7.

So, bare minimum I would have to pay approx $37 a week to feed, but that is to feed the minimum amounts of the cheap dirty rats to everyone, I would actually pay more like $97 a week to feed everyone. These numbers do not even count what I would pay to feed the neonates in the summer. I'm expecting about 100 hatchlings this year, at a pinky or two a week.

so I am saving a considerable amount of money weekly, and I am feeding strong healthy feeders I KNOW are clean. I make a little money back too~ not much~ I don't sell my extras for much. Mostly I trade them for even more snakes I have to feed!! LOL!

So monetarily on a cost per week basis~ It's a no brainer. Now the down side.

I spend approx 3-4 hours on every cleaning day. I would like to clean once a week, but the smell gets too bad~ so I clean more like every 4-5 days. (increase the litter cost some due to my cleaning more often, didn't think of that above).

I spend approx 30-40 min every day checking tubs, water spigots, and feed hoppers~ pulling pups, freezing and sealing when needed.

The tubs are kept in 5 racks, the racks cost me approx $100 each to build (at different times in the last several years) and at least two 8 hour days each. (MUCH longer for the first one while I figured it out!) They still look good, but I am only expecting about a 5 year life out of them.

There are 5 auto water systems, about $50 each. Again, a one time cost, but I plan to buy more valves soon to replace some that are 2 years old and getting slow.

The CO2 set up, and the vaccum sealer~ about $150 initial purchase~ recurring cost of about $32 every three months (CO2 fill is $2, bags for the sealer are about $30 for a big box)

I have an entire room (outside dedicated to them)~ so the cost of having the extra room.

Electricity to keep them cool in the summer. I have no idea how much of the monthly electric bill is theirs~ but electricity is HIGH in California, and it gets HOT in the summer~ so I Have to cool them.

Time, money and frustration trying to figure out:
How to cut the smell
Why that water spigot stopped working
Why did that rat die?
What happened to the fourth rat in this tub~ and whats this tuft of hair from?
How do I stuff 50-60lbs of rat litter in the household garbage every week?
What will the neighbors do if they realize I have an entire room FULL of rats?
But this one is too cute~ I can't feed it out!
Why is that one sneezing? Myco?? Litter issue?
Hair loss?!? Rat mites?? Too much protien??
The list goes on~ and on~ and on.

So~ like I said WAY up there~
If you have a small collection it's not worth breeding them.
If you have a large collection~ well then it depends on how you value your time.

JM :o) said:

What happened to the fourth rat in this tub~ and whats this tuft of hair from?

Click to expand...

That's too funny!!:roflmao: Thanks for that VERY detailed breakdown!! When I attempted to raise my own, I was only feeding about 10 snakes, and had only a few mice..(I think about 5).

WOW Cheryl ! Talk about a time and effort sink ! :eek1:

Exactly what Cheryl said. We bred rodents for a long time because I enjoyed the genetics of rodents and liked the little guys (that split faced one is ADORABLE!!) and breeding is, in our experience, the cheapest way to feed high quality, clean prey to your snakes.

I decided I liked spending my time working with snakes more than caring for the rodents and we now accept the fact that buying clean, high quality feeders costs us more than breeding them, but we buy frozen feeders. We limit the reptile collection to the number we can afford to feed and work with given the costs of frozen feeders.

Has definitely been a good decision for us - keeping between 40-60 corns and milksnakes of various ages. We also stopped overfeeding our snakes - was so easy to do when we had lots of rodents and not healthy for the snakes.

mary v.

Well, some of us can't just order bulk of frozen mice ( no company selling it in Poland ) and in my city there os 1 ( one ) shop selling mice of all sizes. Cost - $1 each, no matter if 1 day old pinky or jumbo adult.
For $1 I can buy pack of substrate I'm using for my feeders, that let me to change it in all containers.
I feed them with same dog food my dog eats ( high quality, I buy it in BIG bags, so it isn't that expensive ).
I have 2*1.3 and planning to get one more 1.3, as I'm about to get next two snakes ( to make total 10 ) - including probably gravid female.
Smell is unnoticable, even for someone coming to me for the first time-IMVHO very important is not overcrowding containers. I have one for weaned mice that need to grow up before used as feeders and this CAN smell bad sometimes as there are usually 8 to 10 mice in the same size of container that my breeding 1.3s have.
I sell some mice, but not too much, just to cover substrate and partially food.
One great thing : I know what my snakes eat. Really good thing
But I must admitt that if I was able to order 500 mice of different size and pay BigRodent price -> I'm not sure if I wouldn't drop breeding them. I'm not sure.
So even small to middle sized colony of feeders can be good as mine is for me.

Okay, I'll share what I raise and how much it costs...

I have a 35 cage mouse rack.... 4 of the slots don't work properly, so I have 31 cages of mice... running from 1.3 to 1.6 mice in each one. I also have three other containers of mice at the present, 1 for male weanlings, 1 for female weanlings, and 1 for my black-eyed-white experiment. I also currently have 5 cages of rats.

During peak production for one month I buy
one bag of dog food (50 pounds, $12)
One bag of Corn/Oats/Barley ($8 for 50 pounds)
One bag of black oil sunflower seeds ($4 for 10 pounds)
One bale of pine (9 cu. feet, $8)
One/sixth of a bale of hay ($1.50 or so)
Bottom Line: $33.50

I also give all my mice bottled water, but we pay a flat fee regardless of how much water we use, so that price is really not much...if we use 1/4th of our water and prorate the cost of the water, then $10.00 for water.

$43.50 and approximately $522/year

Usually I sell between $10 and $20 in mice/rats per month. Sometimes more. Usually about 3 or 4 times a year I sell $100 to $200 of rats at one time. So I make approximately $500 to $750/year on the mice/rats.

So the mice/rats really end up paying for themselves. I don't keep detailed records.

The mice feed:
9 corn snakes
17 king snakes
and I have enough frozen critters I've raised to not have to worry too much about feeding the upcoming 70 hatchlings.

Time and Effort?

I have the mice in their own building, a small 12' by 8' air conditioned building. I use AC from March to October. I use a heater in there from Late November to Mid February.

I clean the cages once a week. Each cage in the summer gets alfalfa hay and pine. In the winter I add newspaper and raw cotton (free ... hubby reads the paper, and I live in cotton picking country.... the cotton pickers leave cotton clumps on the side of the road. I usually pick up about a jumbo pillow's worth every other year. The mice love it for making a nice insulated nest in their cage.).

I don't have an autowater system, but I'm seriously considering it. Hubby and I just got approved for a home equity loan.... perhaps I will need to start a thread to see where people would advise I go to get a setup. If I didn't have to water the mice all the time, I would save a LOT of time. Right now I spend 1 hour every other day to water the critters, and 4 or so hours once a week for water changes and cage cleaning. (always a pain, because I cull out mice and rats and put them in "death row" to bring in to feed the snakes, which means another hour or two of feeding and cleaning snake cages on top of the mouse cage cleaning)

I enjoy the mouse raising because I enjoy the furry critters. In the winter I get into breeding for genetics and coat colors, in the spring and summer i breed enough to get enough pinkies into the freezer for breeding season.

For me the mice are as much a hobby as the snakes. I could NEVER afford to keep the snakes I keep if i didn't raise the mice too.