Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When only 20% of your animals eat frozen and your monthly grocery bill for the Balls far surpasses your own .. We also feed off close to 200 live rats a week and then un top of that close to 100 or so mice. This is what my freezer looks like plus i have another in the garage for the overflow that never fits lol... Where do I put the Ice Cream ?

WARNING BALL PYTHONS ARE ADDICTING ......

Kim
N.A.R.C

WOW thats alot of feeders lol. It's funny I had 3 mouse fuzzies in my freezer in the garage and 5 weaned rats and my friend saw them and thought I had alot....hehe

Lol.... I try not to show any one our freezer, they may think we are weird ...lol...Luckly i have a human freezer in our house, the snakes have their own freezer in the snake room
I have caught myself putting ice coffee in the snakes freezer to keep it cool when i am working...ahhh dedication ....
Kim

Not quite as much as yours but I had to start putting a warning label on my snake chow due to the reaction from guests/family members when they went looking for goodies...

~jenny
-----
"The python has, and I fib no fibs,
318 pairs of ribs.
In stating this I place reliance
On a seance with one who died for science
This figure is sworn to and attested,
He counted them while being digested."
~Ogden Nash

jenny.thegreenes.org

"If you're happy and you know it,
Bomb Iraq!
If you cannot find Osama,
Bomb Iraq!
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq!

LOL.... That is great i should put a warning lable across my whole freezer...I use to accidentally leave rodents in my mothers freezer, that never went over to well...
Kim

Yeah, when relatives come to visit I have to wait til everyone's gone sight seeing or something to start feeding. My grandmother has never forgiven Cindy (my oldest ball at 15 yrs) for living so long!

~jenny
-----
"The python has, and I fib no fibs,
318 pairs of ribs.
In stating this I place reliance
On a seance with one who died for science
This figure is sworn to and attested,
He counted them while being digested."
~Ogden Nash

jenny.thegreenes.org

"If you're happy and you know it,
Bomb Iraq!
If you cannot find Osama,
Bomb Iraq!
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq!

when you are suffering from freezer envy.

Jeff

envy...lol... I had to lug all of them down two flights of stairs and an obstacle corse of doors and misc junk...lol... I think the last shipment weighed 600lbs... Thank god we only get them once a month and not once a week...You could come over and help whenever you want if that would help
Kim

Did you mean 600lbs. Where are you ordering from and I hope they are close enough for you to pick up. Can't imagine what that shipping bill would be.

Thanks again, Jeff

Lol...yeah 600lbs, we actually have a friend in upper state NY that we go and get them from. I always pick up never ship, like you said way tooo exspensive. We go to enough shows were we can meet up with people almost every weekend, or at least 2 times a month.
Kim

I feel your pain!!!
I don't know what I would do if I was buying feeders instead of raising them, although I do have 3 freezers crammed full in the garage now. Still, over $30 a day just for rat food really ads up at the end of the month.
My wife has always suspected I was nutz, now I am starting to think she may be right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I never did have a death wish so I never tried to stash any "critters" in the home fridge. New morphs are costly enough, but even a super cinnamon lavender albino would be way cheaper than a new wife after 34 years!!!!!!!!!
Grant

I'm sure your wife appreciates the sentiment... ahahahahaha...

~jenny
-----
"The python has, and I fib no fibs,
318 pairs of ribs.
In stating this I place reliance
On a seance with one who died for science
This figure is sworn to and attested,
He counted them while being digested."
~Ogden Nash

jenny.thegreenes.org

"If you're happy and you know it,
Bomb Iraq!
If you cannot find Osama,
Bomb Iraq!
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq!

holy jesus! thats amazing. how long have you been at this? is this your full time job? i have four snakes half off feed and im going i just cant see how people can care for that many snakes and feeding and cleaning and everything else? when your feeding live do you just drop the rat in and then after a short time remove if not eaten? can you tell me a little on your live feeding techniques? i applaud you and how you manage such a collection. thanks for your input.

My husband to be and I actulally met in the "pet/reptile" industry, it started out with just a few balls and over the last 5 years escalated into quite an obsession. Our first year breeding we had 7 clutches and now this year we should be having close to 100. We have an issue with not being able to sell the offspring...lol... and they add up ..

As for jobs, we both work full time jobs which adds to the chaos. Nights are always long and mornings come very early. We are probally in the snake rooms at a min of 40 hours a week, so it is equivalent to a full time job. We just recently hired someone to help, b/c after this season the 2 of us wont be able to juggle everything by ourselves.

We also breed our own rats b.c buying them can be sooooo expensive. That also takes alot of time out of the day also, i think we have around 1k breeders or so. And as some one mentioned rat food is not cheap...

Feeding live, we have some animals that take pre killed and i prefer b.c i know at that moment that they take it that i dont have to go back in the cage. As for all the animals that eat live, we go through and put a live rodent in each cage then we attach a colored clothes pin to the fronts of the bins (green for mice---red for rats----blue for pre killed --) That kind of thing so we know which cages to go back through. Feeding days fall on Mondays Thursdays and Fridays. It takes a few cycles to get through everyone. We try to feed micce one day rats the others, but it gets mixed up often. After all the live rodents are in cages we shut the lights off and go into another room to work for a little while, normally an hour or so, then we will come back and pull anything that hast eaten, if it hasnt eaten it gets a normal colored clothes pin so it can be recorded later.

Sorry this ended up so long...lol.... If you have any other questions or if there is anything we can help you with please feel free.
Kim
N.A.R.C

Kim thanks for that great clothes pin idea if you dont mind i think i will steal and use that one.
Chrissy
-----
5.9.0 ball python
2.1.0 columbian boa
1.0.0 rat snake (alabastered)
1.1.1 corn snake
0.1.0 Chuckwalla (Jamie)
1.1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.0.1 crested gecko
1.0.0 leopord gecko
4.0.0 Quaker parrot
1.0.0 Landseer Newfoundland (Mac)
Brian n Chrissy

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

Have a blast ... : it works great for us.. We also use a similar idea for breeding season, the Males have tags that get placed on the females cage so i can find them later .. hehehe... I have a tendacy of forgetting which one i put where sometimes at 2 in the morning things can be blurry.. But it also works great for breeding cycles.
Thanks Kim

wow i still cant believe you have that size collection. im a little paranoid when i feed live that i stay than and the rats every moves but judging the way you feed maybe i should calm down and leave the rats in there tubs and not worry so much? will you have any pieds for sale? and if you do i would like to buy one and a het but i would really want to buy it from you where it is already eating p/k by just leaving the dead rat in there tub. can that be arranged? i wish i live closer to where you are i would work for you for free. (lol) thanks for your help as always.