Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was wondering if there was anyone who could answer some questions about rodents...I breed my own rats/mice for my ball collection in freedom breeder racks. I have never had a problem with the snakes consuming them but I am always worried if mammal parasites can cross over to the snakes and if I should be cleaning up the rats periodically because I do occasionally introduce rodents from various sources to increase breeding.If I should be deparasiting my rodents is there a product out there to do so,that is also safe for my snakes? Occasionally my rats get "scabby" looking and decreased fur,is this from over breeding,scuffling with the male or is this a sign they are unhealthy? Recently i bought a large supply of live rodents that looked o.k. untill I got them home and they generally did not gain any weight and got emaciated and eventually died a slow death.Couldnt help thinking maybe they would pass on something to my breeders. I noticed the guy was feeding them only dog food. Mine are fed lab blocks and kept very clean with fresh water,I will even throw in fesh veggies fruit. Any rodent education much appreciated!

as a general rule, I never add new blood to my rodent colony. The risk of introducing a parsite that can kill off my entire colony is too high. If and when I need new breeders I just hold back a few from each litter and raise them up. We just did a major expansion (went from 20 groups to 40 breeding groups) and planned way in advance for this by holding back 80 females and chose the best and biggest 60 for the new breeders. we are planning on cycling out some older breeders in about 4 months and the females to replace them are already set aside. this process always allows us to have ready to breed females replacing older breeders that will start to have a decrease in production before the decrease is substantial.

Our set-up is 4 racks that are 5 levels high of 10 tubs. We rotate one male to 5 tubs. He get's moved to a new tub every 2 weeks. Each breeder tub has 3 females in it. This gives us roughly 700 rats per month of which we sell off alot to pay for the food and put some spending cash in our pockets.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Like Josh said, its not a good idea to introduce new rodents to an established colony. Raise the babies for breeders.

The scabby & loss of fur sounds like it could be from mites, lice or too much protein in their diet. Mites are host-specific, meaning: rat mites won't host on snakes, or vice-versa. However, that's not to say that they can't transmit diseases to the snakes when ingested.

Freezing rodents for 1 - 2 weeks before using them can kill most diseases, mites, and such, but not all. In other words, its not a guarantee.

Check out these links for some rodent health info: RMCA.org and RatGuide

Take care!
Mike
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It is said that 1 out of every 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Think of your 3 closest friends, if they're normal, then it's you.