Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I want to start breeding rats and/or mice to help offset the cost of feeding. The question is, using 20g long tanks how many would be necessary to produce around 50+ sm.-med. rats per month? I am feeding balls, carpets, dumeril's, and a red tail....here are some of the balls.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Joe

Hey Joe, 50 rats/month is around 1 litter / week.

Two ways to get there, have colonies with a total of 4 or 5 active female breeders.

or

have one or two breeding cage and introduce females for impregnation as you want to start litters.

I do the latter and call it cycle breeding and it works great for me. With cycle breeding you can closely control the volume you produce and when you produce them.

I believe colony breeding works better for larger volume setups. Then the statistical anomolies where for example all the moms in one colony produce babies the same week are cancelled out by another colony not producing any.

For cycle breeding 1 litter per week you would need at a minimum:

1 or 2 breeding cages ( I'd say two so you don't lose all production if one male stops producing)
1 birthing cage
3 raise up cages (assuming you wqant 3 1/2 week old feeders)
1 female breeder raise up cage
1 male breeder raise up cae

The "breeder raise up" cages could also be used for raising up larger feeders.

Each week on cleaning day, remove the female that was introduced three weeks ago and introduce a new female.

Before I upgraded to a rack system I bred rats in standard 10 gallon aquarium's that I shortened to 1/2 height and made lids for. That size worked really well for one litter / cage.

>>I want to start breeding rats and/or mice to help offset the cost of feeding. The question is, using 20g long tanks how many would be necessary to produce around 50 sm.-med. rats per month? I am feeding balls, carpets, dumeril's, and a red tail....here are some of the balls.
>>
>>Thanks in advance for any help.
>>
>>Joe
>>
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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:
12.24 BRB
11.13 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats