Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I can't decide if i want to breed my own rodents or if i want to try and find a good rodent dealer. I know i will save money breeding them myself but i dont know if i have the time to breed them. I think i can but im not sure. Not only that but i dont have any idea how to breed rodents. I mean they mutiply when in urban enviroments like houses and crap like that but i figure there has got to be more to it than that. So do you people here breed or buy? Any helpful breeding information will be great weather it be info from you or a link to a site or whatever.

I breed my own personally. I breed mice and rats. All i can tell you is male mice stink badly. When my males have sone thier job I feed them off. It depends on how many your feeding.The rats I find to be better parents. I currently have 5 adult mice 4 females and 1 male. The produced 25 babies first time around . All females are again preg so will see. Then again I had 2 female Rats and 1 male and they produced 24 babies first time around. Both females are preg again. I also freeze the food at what size I need. So Im stocking up for when everyone decides to eat again.
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1.0 Het for pied
0.1 Het for Pied
1.5 normal balls
1.1 bearded dragons
1.3 kids
1.0 husband
To many little critters list

Well i origanlly was planning on breeding my own but there is so much i dont know about it. I have right now two bp's a normal female eating med rats a het albino male eating small rats. but i just bred them two and i am going to keep the 50þmales from this clutch *still hasnt layed her eggs* also i am getting four more hets a pair of het albino and a pair of het pied. I was told you can not keep males together because theywill eat eachother is this true? I also seen somewhere (i think on kingsnake) that if you leave a male with too many females they will bite his ahh lets just say unit off. Do they need certain temps? Where can i get there food and how often do they breed?

I wouldnt keep to many males 1 is enough for every 3 females for rats. Like I said I dont keep the males after he is done I just get a new one. The can breed a few days after giving birth.I wouldnt reccomend it. Female mice will gang up on males and do alot of harm
to them. Also I have were some females will take other females babies and kill them. For my mice I seperate each female to there own container when I see they are preg. I have had alot more success with that. I also started with small hoppers and grew them up, I found anything I bought that was adult and tried to breed either they just didnt get preg or only had a few babies. Now Everything I have I know how old they are and how many times they have had babies. I would say start with rats if that is what you mostly feed. Get young ones You can usualy handle them easier also. My females are very friendly. Even when I take the babies.
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1.0 Het for pied
0.1 Het for Pied
1.5 normal balls
1.1 bearded dragons
1.3 kids
1.0 husband
To many little critters list

Is about the size of the rats i should start with. I know they are eating md and sm rats but do i have to buy med and sm rats or is that just a age group and all rats get to be a jumbo or whatever the biggest is? What do you recomend? Should i get them from my local petstore or is there a better source?

It's funny that you posted this..

I asked myself that same question about one month ago.

Just about 30 min ago I saw one of my pregos deliever 7 babies...pretty exciting stuff. I chose to breed my own rodents for two reasons.
-Save Money (aside from the initial investment of about $50)
-This will allow me to add another angle to keeping/breeding snakes.
Give it a shot man....it's fun

Nick
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Nick

Nick
What did you need to buy to get your project rolling?

Sleepa

First of all - ya gotta like the critters - I know they're just food - but trust me you'll end up putting more time into your rodent colony than you do your snakes - so you gotta like em.

Mice stink to high heaven - they are also not very good at being communal - they will eat their offspring, castrate males, gang up on new comers, etc. etc. Once you establish the colony they will breed readily - but it could take several months and it's as likely that you'll have to try another group or more as your first group aren't gellin. Very frustrating!

Rats are fairly communal and get along well with their cage mates - the only "problem" you might have is if one of the moms has an obsessive habit of stealing all the babies. They will usually share nursery duty but once in a while you'll get a mom that wants to try to nurse 40 pups and you'll have to separate her. Otherwise rats are ok.

Oh yeah - mice bite all the time and you really have to piss of a rat for it to bite you.

Even a small set up - is lots of cleaning lots of stink. Ya gotta like the little beasties.
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Tosha

I agree with Tosha. Mice stink, bite and are hard to get a colony started. Rats are good and we like them. We have been breeding them for about a year.
There is a forum on ks that is for this and there is a lot of people there that will help you get started if you want.

forums.kingsnake.com/forum.php?catid=9
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2.3.0 ball python (gondor, aragorn, arwen,`eowyn)
1.0.0 100% het pied (frodo)
1.0.0 Blond Pastel
1.1.0 columbian boa (squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
1.1.0 corn snake (baby)
0.1.0 Chuckwalla (Jamie)
0.0.1 Bearded Dragon
2.0.0 Quaker parrot (Woody)(Liam)
1.0.0 Landseer Newfoundland (Mac/Newfy)
0.0.5 whites tree frog (trevor, kirmet)
0.0.5 pacific green tree frogs
3.2.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

"snakes are kind of like potato chips, you cant have just one"

Nice i had no clue about this page thank you alot

hey no problem I go there a lot to see whats new and get Ideas for my breeding projects just search back through and I am sure you will see your something you want to learn more about.
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2.3.0 ball python (gondor, aragorn, arwen,`eowyn)
1.0.0 100% het pied (frodo)
1.0.0 Blond Pastel
1.1.0 columbian boa (squiggles)
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
1.1.0 corn snake (baby)
0.1.0 Chuckwalla (Jamie)
0.0.1 Bearded Dragon
2.0.0 Quaker parrot (Woody)(Liam)
1.0.0 Landseer Newfoundland (Mac/Newfy)
0.0.5 whites tree frog (trevor, kirmet)
0.0.5 pacific green tree frogs
3.2.0 cats (rockie, bs, brownie, lerrado, kole)
1.3.0 kids (dilyen, dakota, chyanne, sierra)
Brian n Chrissy

"snakes are kind of like potato chips, you cant have just one"

When I got My rats I got them from a pet store and I got then Just as they were starting to come off the mother. They are very friendly and have never bit. Mice will bite. Unfortantly I have a few that will only eat mice so I keep a small group.It is true the mice took a few months to establish and they are alot more work.
Best of luck If oyu need any other help let me know.
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1.0 Het for pied
0.1 Het for Pied
1.5 normal balls
1.1 bearded dragons
1.3 kids
1.0 husband
To many little critters list

We breed our own rats and mice, after doing the math we found that we save close to 25k a year by breeding our own. We rent a place to keep the rodents and as long as they are maintained readily they do very well. Always make sure nursing mothers have water or you can lose alot of the offspring. We use lab cages they work great and our easy and light to move, much better then any glass tank. I only use the lab cages for nursing mother rats, we keep colonies of about 2 males and 10-12 females per draw. We keep them in a large system similar to freedom breeder but it was hand made. ARS also has some nice racks if you eventually are looking to buy. For large colonies watering systems are the best it cuts down on the work of filling up 100s of bottles, agselect.com is a great website to get any parts for watering systems. We also breed our own mice we keep 2 males and 10 females per lab cage, they all nurse the babies together and as they become weened they are pulled. It sounds as if you could just breed a few to get started and then grow if you need to, you will notice that certain "types" of mothers have different personalities, cinnamon rats are a little more aggressive with their babies, red eyed tan and whites are normally very good. Dumbos are also very friendly ...lol... After working with them for years you actually end up breeding color morph colonies.

We sell our extras to pet stores and local breeders which helps pay for rent and food. If you have a feed or grain store near you, you should be able to pick up bails of shavings fairly cheap. Also Lab grade food works the best for rodents, some people feed dog food but we have found that not only does it make the animals smell worse but it also slows production way down. If you can breed snakes this should be a walk in the park for you
If you have any questions you can always email me exoticreps@aol.com Hope you can use any of this info...
Kim

i didnt know that rats dont really bite so easily? all though ive been breeding them for months i must say they never tried biting me. also didnt know mice were biters more than rats? thats why i love ks you learn something new everyday. is that a fact that mice tend to bite more than rats? if so im glad thats what im only feeding my balls. thanks.

I've breed rodents off and on for 16 yrs. Here is the issues you face:

1 smell, no matter how clean you keep these guys your going to have. if you use carefresh beding it keeps some smell down and you might be able to cheat and skip one cleaning a week.

2 time, as long as the cages are not over crowded you can water and feed once a day. ex. 10 gal tank 5-6 females one male(a ten gallon can hold more but I'm looking at all the babies you'll get from these adults to the 2-3 week old mice will start drinking some on their own mice and rats are weaned at 3wks.

3 cleaning, this is done 2-3 times a week.

I do not use tanks for the miceI use sterlite contaners that have a lid that locks down. I drilled holes in it and I put the water ottle on the outside so they only have access to the spout. I have been doing it for a year and no escapes or chew outs. I then have them on shelves. The rats I have in a 55 gallon tank just the females and the babies till they are of age.The moouse clean up is easy I have ten containers that I rotate. The big tank is alot longer but with just females it isnt to awful.I make my food And it last for about two months. I combine sunflower seeds. corn, and pellets and a high quality dog foog. Babies are plump and mother look great.
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1.0 Het for pied
0.1 Het for Pied
1.5 normal balls
1.1 bearded dragons
1.3 kids
1.0 husband
To many little critters list

I just started breeding rats six months ago and now I get about 100 pups a month. I don't need to talk about the about the smell and maintenance and repeat what has already been posted. I bought 2 rat levels from the Mouse Emporium. They are similar to the racks ARS makes. I didn't buy all my rats at once. I bought them each week as I needed them. With 2 levels and 8 bins, I leapfrog a male to the next bin each week. I started with just one male and didn't get the best results. Playing leapfrog every week with 2 males nearly doubled my results. You also need to try to even out the number of pups every week and adjust the population to fit your needs. My smallest litter has been a single pup and my largest was 19 so the numbers will always flux each week. A rat's first litter is usually small so be prepared for an explosion of pups the second time through. Breeding rats is a lot of work but it is easy. This is just what works for the needs of the snakes in my collection. Once you get started, you’ll find what works for you. I wish you the best of luck.

-Allan

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1.0 Type II Anery Red-tail Boa
2.3 Het Anery(Type II) Dwarf Boas
1.0 Bralilian Rainbow Boa
1.2 Normal Ball Pythons
3.2 Het. Pied Ball Pythons
0.1 Spider Ball Python
1.0 Lemon Pastel Ball python
1.1 Bearded Dragons
X.X Rats for breeding and food
1.0 Bird (Conure)
0.1 Wife

Open to any ideas on how I can convince my wife to allow me to buy another herp.

I breed my own. They really stink, and I would not reccommend it for inside your house, although I did that for many years, much to the dismay of my wife.

I have a fair sized breeding colony of mice (about 100 breeders) and rats (about 28 breeders) and it only takes me about 2 hours a week to clean/feed all of them. If you have a moderately sized collection of snakes, I think it is much easier to breed rodents, but if you only have a few snakes, then I wouldn't go to the trouble.

Good luck,
Justin
AAR

I have been breeding rats for 3 years. I bred mice for a year, but the stink of it was too much. When I started breeding rats I kept them in a spare bedroom, eventually we moved them to our attached garage. People claimed that they could smell the rats when they pulled into our driveway (and I changed bedding daily). Like the other posters said...it is not worth the trouble of breeding rodents if you do not have a lot of snakes to feed. If they all eat larger food items you will have to have extra space to grow them out. Eventhough we have a lot of snakes, we buy in bulk now. I keep a couple of pairs of rats to use for school (I am a teacher), but no more mass breeding!

Good luck!
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Thanks,
Amy
www.myboids.4t.com
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2.17 Normal ball pythons
1.0 Pastel ball pythons
1.0 Plains Garter
0.1 Normal Kenyan Sand Boa
2.0 Anery Kenyan Sand Boa
1.0 Mid-Baja Rosy Boa
0.1 Leucistic Texas Rat
1.2 Dumeril's Boa
My list is too long, so I'll stop here!

Rodentpro.com cheap, and good. and if you want to breed them yourself just put 'em in some cool room and leave 'em. make sure they're a male and female. i had mine have babys once and i gave 'em to a friend. they like 3 cenemeters when they're born. i don't think the bp will eat 'em that small.