Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am soon to be getting started on breeding my own rats. My question is about the size of the rats i should start with. I know my snakes 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?

Glad to see you made it over here there is a lot of good people on here that breed their own feeders. Lots of good Info here. One thing I will ask is how many snakes are you feeding and what is the average size of food?

Here is my rack and I plan to build 2 more with income tax.
I have 3 to 1 in each some more some less. Plus I have a number of other cages with rats hence the 2 new racks.

And here is a view of it in use.

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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"

I forgot to say one of the reasons we started breeding rats.
Chrissy me other half fell in love with 2 of the rats that were food. One of those are now retired and the other died and became food.
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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"

Well right now i have two ball pythons a normal female (allthough i beleive she is a wc ltc and her color is really dark she could be a faded adult axanthic but i doubt it)she is eating med rats. And i have a 100% het albino male that has been tied up with her for 2 weeks now so i will be having some babies soon and i am getting 4 hets in march most likely they will be in the 300gram range ish maybe lol. I was also wondering if anyone on here has plans for a good rodent rack? i am going to be building a cb 70 rack for my balls soon (i have a boaphile hatchling rack). Do med rats stay med or do they grow into larges? i mean is it like a differnt breed or just not as big yet? I really know nothing about rats other than my snakes eat them lol so i need all the info i can get.

Go to a frozen rodent selling site, they will have pics of all the sizes and some times the age they are for the size classification. They are just like snakes start out small all the way to very big as rats go.
Phil

I love the pics of the babies. Is that Aspen I see in there? Nice rack, I like the locking block.. and the peanuts cool. I am using compressed wood pellets and a hand full of carefresh for the moms that look like they are going to pop.. its amazing how big of a nest they make out of a little bit of carefresh its like they tease it up into a fro or something. As for the original question, I started when I bought some large females for $3 bucks from a pet store that I could see where allready preger they both had 12 pups. So you have to stager your breading so every week you have some the size you need them and the rest grow up for your bigger snakes. In your case planned mating is the way to go. I do it differant, I do harems 1male 5female and I don't care about when just as long as they are productive.

Phil

Yes it is aspen. That was one of the first litters in that rack. I am planning on building 2 more racks. They do love penuts.
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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"