The cost effectiveness of raising your own feeder rodents will depend primarily upon the number of specimens maintained within your collection and the time you have to care for such. If you are feeding only a couple of snakes, then buying frozen rodents should not take a great deal of time or financial resources, but raising your own rodents will assure you have a readily available supply of healthy feeders . On the other end of the spectrum, if you maintain an extremely large collection, the time utilized to care for a rodent colony large enough to sustain such can have a negative impact on the amount of time you have to care for your snakes.
Whether to breed or buy feeders is a personal choice, dependent upon your financial resources and time, as there are benefits and drawbacks to both.
I once produced rats for my blossoming Drymarchon spp. collection. However, now that I have close to 100 of these incredible animals, I have absolutely no time to produce rodents, so I purchase them pre-frozen. I will start up a small colony when my female Drys begin oviposition, simply to have a variety of sizes, as Sonya indicated, for neonates.


Best regards,

Jeff



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Jeff Snodgres
University of Arkansas
snodgresjeffreys@uams.edu
501.603.1947

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