Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am thinking about starting a small rat colony to feed my balls. Just interested in other breeders with feeder colonies input. I was interested in your opinions as to the size and ratio (males/females) of a colony in proportion to the number of snakes in the collection the colony is feeding. All input is appreciated.
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Joshua A. Mills
MySpace.com/JAMillsreptiles
www.JAMillsReptiles.com

I can't really help you, but I hope you have better luck than I did. I decided to start a small mouse colony to feed my babies because small mice are hard to find locally. I apparently bought the worst breeder mice ever to grace the face of earth. They never made a single baby. I only had them about 3 months, but I finally got fed up and just fed them off. I'll probably do it again soon, but with rats. I hope they aren't as prudish as my mice were.
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0.9.0 Ball Pythons
0.1.1 Leopard Geckos
0.0.1 Egyptian Tortoise
0.0.1 Bearded Dragons

The trick with mice is to set the colony up when they are sub adults and never change it. If you purchase random adult mice and put them together there are all sorts of chemical and other warfare that goes on (male releasing chemicals to get females to abort so he can re-breed them, females trying to castrate male).

Rats also smell a little better than mice, particularly male mice.

- How large of a collection do you have?

- How many adults, sub adults & juviniles do you have to feed

Thats important info to come up with an idea of how large you need to go or how small you can stay.

I maintain a collection of around 200 snakes. Nothing crazy, but to maintain a normal weekly feeding regimine I produce on average about 1000 rats a month and that seems to be a large enough amount for myself.

Start with that info and go from there........

JH

for you to produce 1000 rats/month?

If I assume an average of 10 babies/female and assume 2 months to produce and raise a litter to weanling size, I calculate about 200 females. Am I close?

Also, at what age do you rotate your breeder females out of the cycle?

Thanks for your input.
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Alice Cobb

I have 10 female to one male. and that seems to work for me

Right now my colony is 8 adults but I can see the 15 - 20 range in the next year or 2. I also have several hold back babies that I am wanting to get switched over to rats (pinks/fuzzies) as soon as possible so I don't have to try and switch them as adults. So any input on the size of the rat colony, Ratio males/females. Oh and how quickly they grow and mature would be greatly appreciated.
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Joshua A. Mills
MySpace.com/JAMillsreptiles
www.JAMillsReptiles.com

well i have about 70 rats with only a few males. i looking to have around 300 breeders an then go from there. look on line on how to breed them

My regiment for breeding rats is stolen from Clay Davenport, he was very helpful in getting me up and going. I have more colubrids so I have different size ratios and I breed an dfeed mice also.

I built a rack that holds 5 concrete mixing tubs purchased from Lowes (the smaller ones). The rack has a wire top with a hanging bracket that is a 1" x 1" strip. They slide in and out like drawers. I keep 1 male and 5-6 females in each container. When a female is close to having babies, I place her in the empty tub at the bottom which is the "Nursery". I keep 2 females with babies in there, when new female has her babies, I take the new om out and put her back in the breeding container. I use a female to raise 2-3 litters then cycle her out for a new mom.

Second to last rack is for the teenagers, keep them there and pull different sizes to freeze.

The hard part is water, I use water bottles because I am too cheap to buy an automatic water systems. This is time consuming when I have to fill water bottles, but I only have 3 colonies of rats and 3 colonies of mice so it isn't a big issue. Cleaning is the biggest issue. Rats create a lot of waste and amonia, so I have to clean cages every week. This is also time consuming. Figure 3-4 hours every Saturday for this operation. For food, I made a little basket and dup food in it. We also give them left over breads, candy, salads, anything to fatten them up.

Hope it helps

Let see I have 16 Ball Pythons for now always growing

Breeder mice 2.12
Breeder rats 2.12

I house 2 female per tub each male runs through 3 tub spending 18 days in each.

Until now I was feeding F/T only but as the BP collection grow it is no longer practical so this is likely to change, however I will keep several BP on F/T specially rat eaters so I don't have any overstock of rats over 65 grams which is the largest prey I feed to my adult balls.

I use homemade racks to house my rats and mice.
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Deborah
GA Ball Pythons Merchandise
www.myspace.com/gaballpythons