Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Here is a pic of some racks that my friend and I built. It was our second attempt and they turned out pretty good. The first attempt we tried to use an outdoor paint in order to seal the particle board since we didn't want to spend a lot on melamine. After days of drying I could still smell fumes so I scrapped the whole thing. For the second attempt we were able to get some laminate scraps for free and we laminated the whole thing. Thanks Dave for the idea. This is loosely based on your picture. Each of these racks holds 5 Sterlite 1960s. I have a piece of 11" flexwatt slid into two slots in the back of each shelf to heat each Sterlite 1960.

And here is a wonderful pic of a nice plate of snake chow thawing. I was wondering how all of you with many many snakes go about thawing a bunch of rodents at one time. I actually added some reflectux around these guys and cranked the heating bulb up to 150 and they thawed out pretty quick.

I thaw all of my feeders in a big rubbermaid tub full of hot water. I usually have one rabbit, two large rats, two medium rats, 4 rat pups/weanlings, and an assortment of pinkie mice and rats....

Good looking racks and a couple of questions.

Did you add runnners on the shelves to make a recess for the heat tape? Looks a lot easier than the way I did it.....route out a recess. Also, have you thought of relocating the thermostats to the sides and stack the units? Could get twice as manay inn the same floor space.

I cheat when it comes to thawing out meals.....

I don't freeze them it the first place. So far I've been able to keep up with my needs by raising my own rodents and buying the occasional rabbit.

My rodent "farm" in the garage. Two racks I bought used, I believe them to be early model maxi mice racks but not sure. On the left is mostly mice with a few used for rats. On the right is strictly rat breeding/raising.

This is a rack I recently built around the home depot large mortar tubs. It's for rat growout, At ~4 1/2 weeks old, any that have not already been "harvested" are seperated by sex and tossed into this rack and allowed to get bigger until I need them. I was running 3 litters/week, wasn't enough, I've recently gone to 5 litters/week and going to increase that to 6 this week. Need to fill up the growout rack. BRB feeding season is upon me!!

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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

I'll post a pic of the back because it's hard to describe how I installed the flexwatt. Cool rodent farm! How cold can it get before it's too cold to have a rodent farm in your garage? I'd love to set one up in my garage but I live in Colorado.

Not really sure but below freezing in the garage would definately be too low. F/T don't really grow or produce.

I live in sunny CA and it rarely goes below freezing outside and of course the garage is warmer.
-----
Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Broncos are comming on so I'll have to get that pic to you tomorrow.