Breeding for feeders
 

Hello! I am looking into getting my very first snake ever.

I currently already breed mice but would like to be prepared to breed enough to cover feeding my snake.

I am hoping someone who breeds can help me work out how many mice I would need to keep my snake fed myself. I don't mind having extras, I just don't wanna have not enough.

The first things to figure out is what size prey you will need. If you need adult mice then then you have to factor in time to grow them out. Next is if you plan to feed live or euthanize and freeze.

If you have one corn snake that eats 1 live mouse a week. You would need about one buck and 4 does (separate) and rotate him between each doe every week since gestation is roughly 21 days. You might be able to get away with 3 does. In theory you would be getting a litter a week to provide you with enough to feed the snake. Just assuming each litter is 10 babies, the snake eats 4 a month, that leaves you with 36 extra mice per month.

If you can euthanize and freeze then you would only need one buck and one doe. Figure a litter of 10 per month, the snake eats 4. You are left with a surplus of only 6 extra frozen mice.

So the real comparison is if you want to pay for feed for the 36 babies + 5 breeders or just food for the 2 breeders.

Im not worried about expenses of the mice. I currently have ALOT of mice. I breed pets and working on mice lines and I end up culling pretty heavily because well mostly I don't need a bazillion males lol I currently just have been giving away the culls.

I've always been interested in snakes but have never owned any. Figured it would be nice to have a source to deal with my culls.

I expect to get a young snake but who knows. I've read likely it will start with pinkies and then move up.

I'll do frozen.

The hardest part for me is figuring out the size of mouse to feed and trying to figure out how many mice to hold back to reach that size.

Thank you a bunch. That was very helpful!

That's a lot less mice then I thought even.

It sounds like you already might produce enough for the snake.

I breed my fancy mice for pets and food. I have a lot more snakes than you to feed but typically I'll make several passes through a litter. First when the litter is born I remove about half to feed my little snakes or to build up a surplus for snake breeding season. Next when they reach fuzzy size I'll cull the less fancy ones. Most of the time it's self black or grey ones. The third pass is is hopper stage and removing extra males or ones that aren't good with being handled. Late hopper stage I decide who is future breeder and who is getting sold as a pet.

As far as what size to feed to what size snake there is some good info in this link. http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=145515