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Getting Started..

JenC

JenC

Missin her snakes
Can someone help me out?

I keep getting deeper and deeper into snakes and since have 6 snakes getting another boa in 2 weeks, and who knows whats going to happen at the next expo.

Food prices are getting up there, so i was wondering how i could start a rat/mouse colony. How many colonies and how many rats/mice per colony? Any additional information would be muchly appreciated!

Thanks!
 
Once I exceeded the 4 snake mark, I started raising my own feeders and found several pitfalls. It was great being able to freeze whatever size I needed and having fresh stock on hand. I also knew exactly what my feeders were eating.

HOWEVER, as my snake collection grew, so did my feeder needs. I eventually found that I was spending more time (a lot more time) on my feeders than I was on my snakes. I couldn't go away for a couple of days since the feeders needed to be fed daily. The mice needed their cages cleaned every 4 or 5 days and the rats once a week. I sat down one day and figured out what I was spending on feed & bedding and realized that I was probably saving very little, if any, money over ordering in bulk online. I hadn't even accounted for my time, which was substantial. I switched to ordering online late last summer and will NEVER go back to raising my own feeders! Just not worth the time, money or effort required.

I've ordered from both American Rodent and Rodent Pro and was happy with both of them. IMO raising your own is just not worth it.

Mike
 
I get what your saying.

I do have alot of experience in raising/breeding rodents as we used to breed mice/hamsters and gerbils. and we jsut recently over the past year gotten rid of our gerbils.

I want to hear both sides on raising your own feeders, i heard the down side..is there even an upside???

Thanks so much for that last post..it actually got me thinking about it more in depth than i had.
 
Ok, Upside time!

Baby animals are cute, until you feed them off anyway. Some reluctant feeders will take live but not F/T. Live makes them work for it on occation which I personally think does them some good.
 
mrweaw said:
Ok, Upside time!

Baby animals are cute, until you feed them off anyway. Some reluctant feeders will take live but not F/T. Live makes them work for it on occation which I personally think does them some good.
Click to expand...

This could also be a downside! My kids often "fell in love" with a particular baby mouse or rat. I had to reinforce that they were food, not pets. If you become easily attached, you may have difficulty killing off some of the mice or rats.

The biggest upside for me was convienance. I had enough colonies going that I always had whatever size prey item I needed on hand.
 
I have raised feeder rats for almost a year, and are currently working on mice too..as my snake population has grown also...I do not find them really time consuming, and as for going away for a few days, I just put 2 or 3 water bottles in (depending on how long we will be gone, and how many I currently have in the cage) and put lots of extra food in...Cleaning the cages I find less time consuming than cleaning my snake cages, when I was their carpets water bowls and such...I also have 2 small children, and yes, there was 1 rat that my girls got esspecially attached to, and I just made that one that I kept for breeding...They understand that we can not keep them all...


terrysangel79
 
An Upside view from a newbie. I set up my colony on May 7, I just fed off 7 fuzzies to some of my snakes and 2 of the females look pregnant again. I clean their cage once a week, it doesn't smell bad, and I find it incredibly convenient :cheers:
 
So how many males are in a colony? females? How many colonies should i have?
 
Only 1 male! Any more than that, and they'll kill the babies. As for females, you can have as few as 1 and as many as 5. I usually ran mine at 1.4 or 1.5 and never had a problem with the male being able to service the females.

Good luck!

Mike
 
Only one male per cage, they don't play nice with one another. I usually set it up where I have 1 male to 5 or 6 females. You might be able to do more, but that is my prefrence. One thing to consider though is that once you establish a colony thats it. Introducing outsiders into the colony often spells disaster and can ruin the colony forever. If they kill the newcomer, and the usually do, they may get a "taste for blood" and start killing off each other as well. I had that happen in the past. The main colony I have now is 1 male, 5 females, and they are the best group I have ver had. I put them in the tank together and the only other mice that have been introduced are some of their offspring that were born there that I plan to start a new colony with.
Hope that helps.
 
I have another perspective on raising mice. If you have a shed our other outside place to raise lots of mice, then you can make the economics work because it doesn't take much more time to raise a hundred mice than it takes for a few. With a hundred breeding mice, you will be getting about 200 mice per week and the total cost per mouse is about 8 cents. Half of the cost is for food and bedding, and the other half is for electricity. The electricity cost is high for air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter. There are four major downsides to this.

1. The smell outside the shed
2. The smell inside the shed.
3. How you smell after you feed and water the mice
4. The fact that you become immune to the odor and don't realize how bad you stink.

The smell immunity problem is even worse when you raise mice in your house. You can have a smelly house and not even realize it. And people are reluctant to tell you that your house smells like ---- well you get the drift.

Mark
 
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