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Feeding Large Nuimbers of Snakes

M

mom2many

New member
Hi-

I was just wondering how those of you who have large numbers of snakes feed? How long does it take? My collection is slowly growing and it takes some time to move everyone to another container to feed, wait until they are done and move them back. Do you have a seperate feeding container for each snake or do you do them one at a time? I've been reading up on cutting the mice before feeding, which seems like a really good idea for digestion. This takes time also, obviously. Any time saving tips? Thanks.
 
you could each have one feeding box/whatever per animal and put it in the feeding box inside the enclosure and just let it out when they are done eating.
 
I split up my group into different feeding groups, which eat on different scheduales, so very rarely am I feeding eveyone at once. I feed in the enclosure; smaller snakes where substrate ingestion is a problem are housed on newspaper, and the older ones that can pass the occasional small piece of aspen are on aspen.
 
I do the same as DaemoNox. I feed on different days. Two get fed on Friday, three on Saturday, and my hatchlings are on a 5 day feeding schedule, so they get fed on different days.

I only have 7 snakes, but if I had bunches in a rack system, I'd probably house them on newspaper and feed them in their enclosures.
 
I have my snakes spit into groups that are fed on different days. I house everyone on newspaper so that when their container has been cleaned, which is done when I have each snake out to be weighed, I just give each their meal in their own container and move on. Right now, it only takes me a couple of hours for the biggest group, but when I have alot of new hatchlings, it has taken me up to 5 hours or so.
 
Right now my ersonal collection is at 16, but I don't just fed them and then say goodnight- I use the feeding time to handle them, move them around, get them used to handling, etc.

So my total time takes about 3 hours, but that's just me taking my time.

by contrast the breeder i am working with part-time has almost 200 corns, about 120 ball pythons and such, and it only takes about 2 hours to feed the corns and less than 45 minutes to feed the balls.

So i guess in the end it all depends upon how much time you spend, and what your level of focus is when doing it.
 
I only have seven snakes but I do have one feeder box per snake.

Well worth it in the long run as they just all get taken out and put back in at the same time that way.

Guess it depends on your numbers. 200 feeder boxes would be a lot of boxes to have lying around doing nothing most of the time .....
 
We have 70 snakes and each enclosure has a "post it" of a different color to indicate what size mouse the snake eats. Some of the "harder" feeders have an additional sticker, as well, so we know to put that one in a feeder box. We feed on two different days so we are only doing 35 at a time. Here is how we work it:

1. Michelle (age 11) counts up how many of each size we need
2. I pull what we can from our mice mommies and the rest from the freezer
3. I cook 'em up (not the live, of course)
4. Mandy will take a stack of papers (the hard paper from advertisements works GREAT) and lay them out on a tray - ie if we have to feed 4 small pinkies (yellow post it) then she puts 4 pieces of paper on the tray.
5. A different kid (usually Clayton) will dry off the warmed up mousies and put each on a piece of paper and snip the backs 4 times each.
6. The kids rotate with taking the tray to the cages, usually one opens the cage and the other drops the mouse in.
7. The post it is then transfered from the right side of the cage, to the left side to indicate that the "resident" has a meal and has not yet finished it. This way the kids know who has been fed and can avoid checking, etc
8. We continue this process with all of the size mousies with the kids doing most of the work.

With the post-its, I can easily see who has been fed already and who we missed.
All in all, we have it down to about 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes

9. After everyone is fed, we check to see which post its we can move back to the right side. (if it is on the "Left" the food is LEFT, if the post it is on the right, we say "RIGHT on, they ate!"

In this way, as well, we can quickly check the ones that had the post its on the left in the morning before school (that is Michelle's job) so if someone didn't eat - happens occasionally - we can take the mouse out.

This works great for us and gives each of the kids a job (and me a break).
 
That is an AMAZING system! I just love it. It gives the kids a job, plus they have to count and everything. Its awesome. Did you guys come up with that plan toghether?
 
It was definitely a trial and error type thing. First we tried putting the colors on each of the snakes cards but all of the going back and forth was driving us CRAZY. Then we tried just keeping them in groups but I have noticed that different morphs actually grow at different rates, and we were moving a lot of snakes around every couple of months. After one of our snakes re-gurged, I put the post it on the cage to show that he was not to be fed... Ta da, a system was started... it took off from there and makes it SOOOO easy.
 
Neat!

Corny, that sounds awesome! My 10 year old daughter helps me with our feeder mice. I call her the mousekeeper!! LoL

I have found that with the varying sizes of snakes, 23 in all, I can't keep track of who's eaten, who's shed and so on. So, I use the free herp program that someone here reccomended. All I have to remember is a ballpark of when the "kids" eat next and then go in and check. I can keep track of who has eaten, what they ate, when they shed. I even keep track of weights and lengths there too.

It's at: http://www.proherp.com

One important thing I'd reccomended as well is to back up the data base..hehehe.

Hope this helps!

-Tonya
 
Thanks everyone for your ideas. Corny-that is an awesome system. I'll have to let my older kids read that post. Tonya-that program looks great. I've been using a spread sheet to keep track of the few that I have, but I can see down the road how that program will save lot's of time. Thanks again.
 
I just do it whenever! I try to keep on roughly a 7 day schedule with my young adults and adult females and the adult males get fed once a fortnight or so but sometimes it's less or more often. I feed mine outside of their homes in plain bottomed tubs on wet thawed mice.
 
mine get fed on different nights and i use free herp to help keep track of who has eaten, if they regurged or not, and what i fed them.
two of my snakes will eat right out of my hand. so i dont really need a separate container for them, though i have tubs for them in case i cant hold them or watch them when i feed them. my hatchling anery is fed in his viv. he's on papertowels now anyway, so it's not a problem. when he gets a bit bigger, i'll move him into a 10 gal and then he'll be fed in a separate tub.
my grey rat is a shy eater. i usually have to put him in a tub, and leave him all day until he decides to eat.
 
All mine live in rubbermaids on newspaper so they're all fed in their tubs. Very easy and it should stay that way as my collection grows. I also use free herp. :)
 
I should add...I use computer records too to keep track of sheds, feeds, matings, weigh ins, etc but I just use a table in a word document.
 
Everyone gets fed on the weekend...typically Saturday OR Sunday (not both if possible). One thing that makes it hard for me is that my snake building is not located where I live. We plan on moving out there within the next few months, however. When we move, I will be able to spread things out a bit more. As of now, I usually go out there every other day. Once eggs start dropping, I'll have to run by there daily.

I don't have much of a system right now. I simply write down my snake's feedings on an index card that lives just outside of each enclosure.

It pretty much takes 7-8 hours for me to clean, water, and feed everyone on the weekend. This includes the rodents, too. I also change the water every couple of days.
 
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