Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm thinking about raising my own rats and wanted to get info / opinions from all of you seasoned veterans. What's the best setup, number of males /females, how fast do they grow and reproduce, etc etc.

Thanks!

...I have been raising rats in racks in my garage for years. I have 12 large breeder trays which are Van Ness Giant Cat Litter Pans and 14 smaller trays from Freedom Breeder for females to raise the babies. I keep a male and 2 or 3 females in each of the larger trays. I clean everything twice a week. If you do not keep things clean you will have rodent health problems and production will fall. The males are the ones that make most of the odor but dirty messy cages will also smell. When a female looks pregnant I move her either by herself or with another female into one of the smaller trays. As soon as the little rats start eating solid food I move the females back into a larger tray to be rebred. Getting the females away from the little rats will make the little ones quit competing for limited milk supplies and they will actually grow faster eating solid food if it is always available. I put bent pieces of hardware cloth in the cages with weaned rats for them to climb on so they can more easily reach the overhead feed. Some people keep females with males fulltime but I have better overall production and less cannibalization moving females away from males to have their babies and raise them up to weaning. IMO racks with trays that slide in and out and overhead water and feed is the ONLY way to go. If you leave feed inside the cage with the rodents they will soil it making a mess and wasting feed. Water bottles get messy inside the cages and take too much time to refill and seem to leak more than good central overhead water systems with edstrom vari-flow valves. With overhead feed you use half inch mesh hardware cloth for each of the trays with a framework with small strips on the bottom to allow the trays to slide in and out. Have a look at the Freedom Breeder rodent racks for ideas on how to make your own simpler and much cheaper racks. I made mine using 1x2 and 1x3 pine lumber and half inch hardware cloth and trays available from Freedom Breeder and pet supply internet sites. Feed large chunk adult dog food or even better feed the large chunk rodent diets from Mazuri or one of their competitors. If you feed dog food do not get the stuff that has lots of red dye (Ol"Roy brand etc)in it. The Edstrom vari-flow water valves are available from agselect.com. Their starter kit
www.agselect.com/ED/showdetl.cfm?&DID=11&Product_ID=89&CATID=12
has everything you need for three trays of rodents. Buy the expansion set listed on that same page and you have enough for 9 trays. My 26 trays produces about 60 rats per week. When the babies are small I pull a few from the larger litters to feed to smaller snakes that are stubborn about taking frozen mice. Largest litters are often over 20 babies. I let the rest of the rats grow for 3 to 5 weeks when they reach a couple ounces in weight. They grow fastest when small. I only raise them larger to be breeders and occasionally pull old breeders to feed to snakes. I have about 90 snakes and still have to sometimes buy larger rats frozen from Rodent-Pro. Some people have good luck raising mice in racks. My garage gets too cold in the winter and too hot most of the rest of the year and mice will cannibalize babies readily if given any excuse like uncomfortable temperatures. I buy frozen mice form Rodent-Pro for the smallest snakes.
....Look around that agselect website and the Freedom Breeder website for more ideas that may work for you.
Good luck,
Jeff

>>I'm thinking about raising my own rats and wanted to get info / opinions from all of you seasoned veterans. What's the best setup, number of males /females, how fast do they grow and reproduce, etc etc.
>>
>>Thanks!

Thanks Jeff,

Great info.

I agree with everything, and I raised rats for 10 years. When I decided that I was spending as much time with my rats as I was with my snakes....that was the final straw and I started letting someone else do the rodent work. I buy from Big Cheese Rodents. They have a spotless facility, located in North Texas and have great prices. I pick up a large frozen order everytime I am in the area. I cannot even produce a small rat for 70 cents, nor mediums for a buck ten ....

I would love to hear how much people spend on rodent feed and correlate this to number of rodents produced and the time they spend.... In my position, I will not go back easily... The biggest advantage is that I KNOW what MY rats eat. I would usually restrict all the feeders to organic feed, grains, fresh vegetables, and fruit scraps for at least 24 hours before I fed them to my snakes to insure full and balanced nutrition in the rats and therefore in the snake...

BHH
rainbowboas.com