Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How many sinaloans ans nelsons do I need before I should think about raising my own mice?

Thanks,
SushiKing

Pretty snake. As far as the raising your own rodents question....how many do you have? Where are you getting your mice currently? If you only have a handful of snakes and you are getting your mice from the petstore ($1.00 for pinks and up to $3 or more for adult mice) then I would say you should already start breeding your own mice. Or, you could buy a full years supply of frozen rodents (about .20 for pinks up to about .60 per adult if you buy in modest quantities ). I usually calculate about $25 per snake per year for frozen rodents. This should leave some extra. If you can breed your mice for cheaper than this then maybe you should breed your own. I tried raising mice and calculated that it was costing me the same to breed my own mice as it would have for me to have purchased them wholesale from a rodent breeder. There are both advantages and disadvantages to breeding your own mice.

Advantages:

1. You always have live mice (which come in handy when trying to get hatchling snakes to eat.)

2. You can more easily find the exact size mouse you are looking for.

3. I feel it is better excercise to feed live prey to your snakes.

Disadvantages:

1. They smell awful.

2. You could end up (on a small scale) spending just as much money to breed your own as you could spend buying them in quantity.

3. You have more to take care of.

4. There is a greater chance of transmitting parasites from the live mice to the snakes (unless you kill and freeze your mice).

5. There is a chance that feeding live prey could injure your snake.

I would say that if you have lots of time on your hands and like working with mice, to go ahead and breed your own. Unless you are breeding them large scale, however, you are going to be better off financially by purchasing them in bulk from a rodent breeder.