Not sure if you just want to know how to humanely put the rats down prior to feeding, or how to breed rats, or both. Just to cover all bases, I will address both questions.

There are several ways people use to breed rats. Some use rack systems (basically shelves designed to hold rat cages in the same format as a bookcase or snake rack) but since you only have or will soon get, two ball pythons, you don't need alot of rats.

Myself I have 10 snakes of various species. TO meet all their needs, I have (or will have..still working out the exact numbers I will need, especially now that my first breeding group is too old to breed and the new group hasn't started yet) two breeding groups of 1:3 (or 1:2, haven't quite decided yet).

FOr your setup, a single group of 1:2 should be fine.

Buy three young rats, one male and two females, or buy two young females now, get the male later. Most petstores sell young rats, usually about 4-6 weeks old. This is too young to breed them. They need to grow up another 4-8 weeks before they can be bred. Keep the two rats in a rubbermaid container (or spurge for a fancy rat cage, your choice.) Make sure the container is pretty high and is about 60q (about 56L). For three adult rats and babies, this cage will be a bit cramped. For my 1:3 colony I used a large Roughneck rubbermaid container that is about 42"x21"x17" (appr.) Though the rats will eventually find places to chew through (mostly the little 'foot' indentations at the bottom) you probably won't need to replace more often than once a year. OR, you can stable hardware cloth (1/4" wire mesh) over the 'feet' indentations ahead of time. I didn't do this but I may wind up doing it anyway. Just bend the staples over so you don't cut yourself on them or the rats on tthem (if you staple outside instead if inside, though I recommend doing from inside the cage outward, this way the sharp ends are outside the cage).

For the top, I cut out a large opening in the lid, covered this with hardware cloth (1/4" wire mesh) and stapled it in place with a staple gun. You can cover the folded over staple ends with ducttape. THis also hides the rough edges of the hardware cloth as well.

For cage furnature, I just use elbows, curves, T and Y junction 3" or 4" PVC pipe sections. You could also buy straight sections and cut them into 6"-12" sections. THese give places for the rats to hide in, nest in and play in. My rats never seem to chew on the PVC pipes much or at all. Some form of wooden chew toy should be tossed in, to help discourage them from chewing the container. I used the packs of wood you can get at Canadian Tire sold as kindling (not the treated stuff, that probably will kill your rats). I beleive it was packaged by craftsmen (basically left over wood pieces) to raise money for charity or something. This stuff may not be available anymore but you can just buy a piece of regular hardwood or kiln dried white pine (or spruce) 1"x2" or 1/2"x2" sheet of wood at home depot or other lumber store and cut it into 2-4" sections and use that. Cost you about a dollar for 8' length of this trim. Much better than buying the colored pieces of wood at a petstore, which cost about $8 or more for a few small pieces.

Ok, will cut the rest short.

Use kiln dried pine shavings, aspen, Carefresh, yesterday's news, or similar small mammal safe beddings. (kiln dried pine is the cheapest, but personally I think aspen is better, though this is costly.....mixing pine and aspen works best, cuts down in the piney smell that can be harmful to rodents, and adds the more neutral smell of aspen which also absorbs odors better than pine). Don't use cedar. Its bad for the rats and bad for your snakes. Not sure if the rats can transfer the toxins from the cedar to your snakes, but why risk it?

Food: Rats are omnivorous, they will eat pretty much everything that is healthy for a human to eat(ie healthy food for us, not fast food, chocolate, icecream etc, actually no dairy products should be given to rats at all, that includes cheeze).

THe quality of food you give your rats inturn, provides more quality in the food you feed your snakes. Feed your rats poorly and you will be feeding your snakes poorly. The best food to offer your rats is a quality Rodent (or Rat) lab chow. Hagan makes some, as does Mazuri. I think there are other brands but these two are the only ones I know of. A large 50pound bag may cost $65 or so canadian but it will last you a year with just three rats. It last me a year or so with 4 rats so three should eat much less. Unfortunately I ran out and haven't found a new source yet.

What I feed my rats (at least till I get more lab chow) is a high protein/fat adult dog food (should have at least 20% protein and 8% fat for breeding and growing rats). Avoid any that have red dyes, this dye is harmful to snakes. I also include large parrot mix from Hagan for variety. I tried the rat mixes....and the rats eat maybe 60% of it...the large parrot mix, they eat it all. For $8 on sale for a 2 pound bag, I certainly don't want any wasted. I give the parrot mix for variety and to hopefully give them extra nutrition not in teh dog food. Fresh vegetables, cooked meat (chicken or turkey), some fruit etc, as treats are good too.

I should also mention I consider my adult rats pets, at least my first colony. They are pretty tame and don't get all defensive when I take them out of the cage for cleaning and 'cull' their babies for food. IN the past when I had rats that I didn't tame, it was much more difficult to get them out of the cage for cleaning, specially when they had babies. So, while they are young I suggest taking them out of the cage, play with them a bit and basically get them used to you. It will save fingers in the long run.

Of course have clean fresh water available at all times for the rats...a large sipper bottle is fine. To mount these to the rubbermaid container, (at least the cheap kind of bottles you can get at Walmart for about $5) I just wrap wire around it and form 'hooks' and hook them over the edge of the cage, then put on the lid. THe lid helps hold the wire in place so the bottle doesn't fall off. There are bottles available designed to be attached using a bolt you can put into the side of the cage, with the bottle entirely inside..but these are expensive and the rats may chew through them since the bottle is more rectangular in shape. Then agian, the rats may chew through the round bottles as well. But this is not very common, though I did have a bottle eater with one group, would eat through a new water bottle in about 10mins after it was put in the cage. After going through abuot 5 bottles, about 10 710ml plastic pop bottles (I was lucky that the water bottle nosal would attach tight enough to the popbottle I coudl substitute), I decided to just put the offending rats down and grow up a new group. One woudl do it, all in the colony started doing it...was annoying. I was able to save the bottles for a period of time by putting a ceramic feed dish over the top of the bottle but once that got knocked off, bottle would be chewed...which of course, spills all the water in the bottle into the cage).

Ok, humanely killing rats. Really only two good methods.

CO2 gas. Puts rats asleep, they die, no pain, no fuss (other than them soiling themselves when they die, so deffintely have papertowel in the kill tank). Below is a link to how to make a basic CO2 kill tank.

Other method, cerival dislocation (severing the spine at the base of the skull). Hold the rat firmly by the tail, either whack the base of the skull with a screw driver or pin the rat by the back of the head and pull firmly with the tail. THe rat will jump all over the place with this is done but it is reflexes, the rat is dead as soon as the spine is severed.

I Have not has much success with pining a rat down and yanking on the tail. Either I don't do it hard enough, or the skin of the tail comes off in my hand and I have a rat that is still alive with a half bald tail. I find a good hit at the back of the skull while holding the rat's tail does the job for me.

Pinky rats, harder to put down with CO2 because rat (and mice for that matter) babies are designed to resist asfixciation (having 8 litter mates and MOM lying on top of you tends to make it hard to breath). THus to CO2 them properly, you have to leave them in the tank for much longer.

Feeding live pinks is no problem. IF you want to freeze them for later, you can either freeze them alive (not humane, no matter what anybody else may say, but I do it anyway. They are too small to whack at the back of the head and pulling on their tails with the head pinned, just winds up tearing off their tails, and that looks much more painful than freezing them will).

I hope I answered all you questions and didn't loose you somewhere in my babble long ago.

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