Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have a good method to figure out how many adult breeder female rats to have on hand in order to feed say 10, 20, 30 etc. adult snakes?

This is assuming that you are feeding a couple small rats to each adult per week.

Thanks!

Are you feeding frozen? Because that's easy, you just kill them and freeze them for when you need them, but if you want to do live it's much more difficult to always have the perfect sized food item for each snake.

There's no obvious ratio because rats can be as unpredictable as ball pythons when it comes to breeding. Some females will only breed 3 or 4 times (with 2 months between each birth) and then they never get pregnant again, others will have babies every 4 weeks for a year if you let her. One female may only have litters of 8, and her sister could have 15 every time. Sometimes during the year, not one single rat will get pregnant for a month (for me usually in the late summer). For 30 ball pythons you'd need at least about 15 adult breeders and then just adjust the number depending on their fertility.

30 (ball pythons) X 4 (weeks in a month)= 120 feedings
15 (rat breeders) X 10 (average litter size)= 150 rats born

The above equation assumes that every rat will give birth every month, but not only is that unlikely, it's also very unhealthy for the mom (just like breeding a skinny ball python every year). So your real number will probably be lower and account also for shed cycles and picky feeders among your ball pythons.

Hope some of this was helpful...
~kasey

I've got like 40 breeding females and I feed off around 50 smalls a week. I have 45 balls to feed, various sizes but for the most part 75% adults. I usually get too many rats and then just sell off the surplus to a local pet shop for cash or trade toward supplies. Once they get too big they also go to surplus as I rotate my breeders out every 6-8 months.

Good luck!

Steve