Hi,

I just went through what you are contemplating. I definitely am glad I am doing it in many ways. The best reason and thing I have discovered is NO MORE FROZEN RATS AND NO FROZEN RAT COMPANIES....C YA FROZEN RAT COMPANIES. Anyway I have many posts in this forum that asks all your questions and more. You should check them out. There are some awesome breeders that have helped me immensely. It takes 23 to 28 days to get a litter. You will get between 8 to 10 pups per rat mom. They will have more each litter. Up to 15 so I have heard. I would count on 10 for your numbers on average. The weigh about 8 grams as new borns and gain about 10 grams a week. In two weeks their eyes open and they weigh about 20 to 25 grams and by week three they weight between 45 grams for females and males weigh about 60 gram. Count on about 10 to 15 grams of weight gain a week. I my self have 15 balls to feed. I need about 60 rats a month. So I am breeding 1.2 groups every 7 days. So every week I have two litters born. That is 20 rats a week. That gets me 80 rats a month. I feed off the females to my smaller snakes and I am growing the males for my female adult snakes. I am feeding my 500 to 800 gram snakes small rats. I am feeding my 2000 gram and higher snakes 150 gram rats. That is it. It will take you probably 2 or so months to build up your stock all the way up the weight chain. Right now my numbers have been lower than planned but I think they will catch up as my numbers increase. I only need about 20 medium Rats a month. The rest of my snakes can eat around 100 grams. Anyway I hope this helps and let me know if I can give you any advice down the road. It is really fun and my kids love doing it with me. By the way I am selling pet rats on the side and I am selling more than I thought so I am going to increase my breeding to keep the rattery going on the side. I am making 10.00 bucks a rat and they are selling great. I am actually making money on the rats and feeding my snakes now for free. My rats are extremely healthy and well fed. No more frozen lab rats and rats that are covered in toxic chemicals to keep the mites off. I know most people think the frozen companies are good, but I thought they were difficult to deal with on many levels and their prices where killing me. I was paying about 1.00 a rat. That is like 60.00 dollars a month and over 700.00 dollars a year. The other thing is that the meat would suffer a lot of protein loss in the freezer every month. All I can say is that it is like everything else we all go through in this great hobby of ours. We can't just start out with everything at once. We all start out with aquariums and heat lamps. Than we switch to racks and heat tape. We all have frozen rats and mice, and then we learn how to breed our own. It is a beautiful thing and I love to watch others learn with us along the way.

Good luck,
Mark
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STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

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