Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey, just a bit of a query, im pretty new to snakes but have 1.3 BRBs at the moment, and hoping to get into the hypo and anerys soon. I live in finland, and well, rodents arent cheap!!! At the moment i only have one room in my house available for the boas due to the girlfriend, i want to start breeding my own mice and rats, as we dont have a rodentpro.com or anything like that. My question is, do any of you guys house you rodent colonies in the same room as your snakes? and if so does this cause any problems? ie i dont want the snakes, always fired up as they sense that food is close by!!!! ideas?? problems?? any ideas?
Also if the rodent breeding goes ok, what does fresh killed mean to you guys? is it a wack on the back of the head? or what are the techniques?

hope someone can help me with my questions, sorry there a few, but as i said im pretty new to all this

cheers
dave

Hey Dave, nice to see you found the forum. Hey, I recognize "Brick1" from the discusion last night. I was only able to stay for a short time but thought it was going well. How did you find it?

As far as breeding rodents inside goes. I did it in college for a few months. I kept two cages of mice in my bedroom, where all of my snakes were. I did not find that the snakes cared. I had a friend who was breeding rats and mice in his living room and keeping the snakes in his bedroom.

Here's the thing, rodents stink. I swear to god, my friends clothes ALWAYS smelled like rats. His home absolutely stunk. Even though I only had two small cages, I had to clean them constantly to keep the smell down. Even so, my roommate complained.

I wouldn't recommend it because of the smell. Do you have access to a frozen rodent supplier in Finland?
-----
Mike Lockwood
www.tooscaley.com

Dave,
....It is the males that make most of the foul odor. Mice smell ten times worse than rats. I used to buy mice from a couple who raised mice inside an apartment. The smell was awful. Definitely go with rats rather than mice. If you pull the males and feed them off to snakes early and clean very often you might be able to keep them inside. I used to raise my rodents on pine shaving substrate in my garage and HAD to clean every 3 or 4 days. Since switching to pine pellets for substrate I clean once a week. The pine pellets degrade down to sawdust as they absorb urine and do cause some dust problem in the garage. With one male and two female rats you could probably produce way more babies than you need and can share with friends. Did I mention that you will need to clean often? Like every other day.
Good luck,
Jeff

>>Hey Dave, nice to see you found the forum. Hey, I recognize "Brick1" from the discusion last night. I was only able to stay for a short time but thought it was going well. How did you find it?
>>
>>As far as breeding rodents inside goes. I did it in college for a few months. I kept two cages of mice in my bedroom, where all of my snakes were. I did not find that the snakes cared. I had a friend who was breeding rats and mice in his living room and keeping the snakes in his bedroom.
>>
>>Here's the thing, rodents stink. I swear to god, my friends clothes ALWAYS smelled like rats. His home absolutely stunk. Even though I only had two small cages, I had to clean them constantly to keep the smell down. Even so, my roommate complained.
>>
>>I wouldn't recommend it because of the smell. Do you have access to a frozen rodent supplier in Finland?
>>-----
>>Mike Lockwood
>>www.tooscaley.com

so i cant speak for everyone but i think the most common method is a good whack on the back of the head... for mice a good flick with my finger works, but for the bigger rats i upgrade and use the back edge of a bowie knife (big heavy chunk of metal).

another way i found that works that i have used in the past is to put the rat in a plastic bag, and with a couple quick spinns slam it down on a table or the floor.

ive also been told that you can pin a rat down with a pen buy the neck and yank the tail really hard and quick to seprate and break its neck. ive never had good luck with that because i couldnt seem to pin the thing down long enough. but there are a few diff ways that i have heard.
-----
-Stephen-

0.1 soon to be wifey (hopefully)
1.0 rotwiler/chow (Boomer-wifey's pooch)
1.0 norm corn (Jake aka grumpy old terdhead)
0.1 col redtail boa (Dixie-my baby girl)
0.1 ball python (Bella- wifey's baby girl)

hopeful for not to distant future:
--brazillian rainbow boas 1 female for sure
2 or 3? maybe a breeding pair?
-- bearded dragon for the wifey my list got to big...

more distant future hopefuls
1 or 2 of each maybe a breeding pair?
--anery boa (ooooh)
--jungle carpet python (love to have 1 or 2)
--dumeril boa (ahhhh)

slightly more wishful thinking
--hypo br rainbow boa (love em)
--anery br rainbow boa (oooh even better!!)
--motely boa (gorgeous!!)