Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Pardon my ignorance, I've never attempted setting up a rat colony before.

1-Has anyone used Equine Fresh as a bedding? Does it work? Pros and cons to it?

2-How many people feed out rodent pellets and how many people feed out dog food with similar nutritional content, and has anyone noticed any significant differences between the two?

Sorry to post these on here, I know there's a feeder forum, but this forum gets more traffic and I know a good chunk of you guys breed your own feeder rodents.

I used some senior dog food for awhile until I could find lab blocks. The dog food was okay but I started using Zeiglers 18-6 for $26./50lb bag and noticed much better growth rates and would never go back to dog food. What size colony do you have or plan to have?

I'm going to start off with either 3.6 or 3.9 and adjust down the road so production meets my demand. At the moment I'm still searching for someone who sells the lab blocks, so for now I'm going to be using a dog food that has comporable protein and fat mazuri rodent food. I'm going to have to look into zeiglers.

Look in to your local feed barn for horses and livestock if they don't have a bag on hand im sure they can order you some high fat rat, mazuri or zeiglers. I won't do dog chow because my mothers get to skinny and my babies don't grow as fast or as big And then there's the greasy coats and the smell yuck.
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1.0 Sunrise (sshhh)
1.0 orange ghost mojave
1.0 Het pied
1.0 Hypo
1.0 Spider Het Hypo
0.1 orange ghost mojave
0.1 mojave (best looking one ever! thanks Jeff Luman)
0.1 Pastel Het ghost
0.1 Hypo
0.1 mojave
0.4 Het nerd Orange Hypo
0.2 poss Het nerd Orange Hypo
0.1 poss Het albino
0.1 het pied
0.1 Bell Jungle
0.6 normal breeders
0.1 black pastel (unproven)
0.1 Tiger ball (unproven)
0.1 genetic reduced pattern
0.1 black back
0.1 mojave (best looking one ever! thanks Jeff Luman)
0.1 Pastel Het ghost
1.0 posslble salmon boa
0.1 BCI 8.5 ft
1.0 (creamcicle?) (okatee?) digging in to his genetics . . .
1.0 snow corn
1.0 anery motley
0.1 anery motley
0.1 ghost motley corn
0.1 lavendar het hypo
0.1 miami het hypo
0.1 coral snow
0.1 miami
0.1 sunglow
0.1 candy cane
0.1 love line okatee
0.1 blue tail monitor
2.2 felines aka boa food ;o
And I am not gonna count all those rats . . .

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Ive been breeding rats about 6-7 months now. I started with 4 females and 1 male. I was feeding a cereal and seeds mix i made up along with some dog food. They seemed ok on this but wasted alot as was in dishes. As my numbers grew i have now switched to mazuri rodent breeder 6F 50# and made wire feeders so basically no waste. They do very well on this. I aldo keep dog food avail as well now as they enjoy and adds some protein to the mothers, plus the blocks last longer. 50# lasts me about 3-6 weeks depending my cycling and how much dog food they eat. Surprisingly there favorite is aldi's brand dog food. I use pine shavings (just switched over from aspen due to cost) and no problems. I also breed hairless and dumbos for pets to pay for the feeders
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GOOSEBALLS

lamina1982@hotmail.com

I use equine fresh with my rats and it works great to keep the smell down.

As far as dog food goes I only feed Mazuri and I haven't had any real nutrition related problems. I do get some feeders ocassionaly from a guy who feeds dog food and their crap smells HORRIBLE!
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Ball Pythons:
2.10 Normals, 1.1 pastels, 1.0 spider, 1.0 cinnamon, 0.1 100% het ghost, 0.1 pinstripe, 1.0 albino.
Bloods:
0.1 Marter line Red, 1.0 Het T albino Red.
Colubrids:
1.1 Western Hognose, 0.0.1 Tri-colored hognose, 1.0 Albino Cal Kings.
Corns:
1.0 Anery het opal, 0.1 ghost, 1.1 motley snows, 0.1 motley het snow and 1.0 bloodred.