Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm currently breeding and freezing my rats for my 20 snake collection. My current rat colony is only 2.12 which does pretty well when freezing at my convevience. I'm seriously wanting to switch to live rats for the convenience of feeding the snakes. While easier on the side of the rat breeding the task of unthawing and feeding is starting to get a little daunting. If possible I would like to switch to live, but I don't know if it would be worth it if I really had to increase the time I spent on the rat breeding. Can anyone tell me roughly how large of a rat colony I would have to have to feed 20 ball pythons live rats?
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I have heard 1 female per snake.
So...not much more for your current collection.

I keep 5 males in a black rack. 1 male per tub. I put 3 females with 1 male than 5 days later I add 3 females to another male. 5 days later I add 3 females to another male. Than 5 days later I add 3 females to another male. I run this cycle and once the 3 females have spent 20 days with a male they come out and the females go individually into a birthing rack. The male that the 3 females came out of gets 5 days off and than the whole cycle begins again. This cycle allows me to have all sizes of rats at all times for feedings. I also try feeding on a 5 day cycle and it works really well. After feeding the snakes any rat above 50 grams gets euthanized and frozen or the rats are held back for future breeders. This cycle will feed a 30 to 40 snake collection very well. I find this is a little heavy with females but females die giving birth and they don't always give big litters and sometimes they don't even get pregnant. I have played with the numbers for years and I find this cycle to be really good as a minimum rat breeding system.

Good Luck,
Bill
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I always went with a ratio of one breeding female rat per snake. This always allowed me to have the proper feeders for my collection
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Josh & Krysty Hutto

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

I don't know about rat breeding but I would recomend killing the rats before feeding them to the snakes for safety. It would only take a few seconds per rat and not having to worry about your snakes getting bit or chewed on would be worth the effort. If your snakes allready eat FT then they should have no problem with pre-killed.

A
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as long as your rats are well fed and watered and spend less than an hour in your snakes tub( you don't have to watch the whole time but I would not recommend going far til you've at least made sure the rat is not harming the snake)they should be fine. just make sure to cull any rats that you see eating others. that is not a behavior you want. whenever I pick up rats because my production isn't keeping up I always make sure to keep the rats for a day to feed them and water them.
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After reading all the responses. I'm seriously considering this. If one female rat per snake could do it, which I truly believe should be the case because that would be roughly 10 rats per snake per month minus five weeks raising time to get them weaned and away from the mother so she can breed again. So that's still ten rats per snake per 2/mo. I don't see any reason at all I couldnt hand a few more rats.
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1.0 Spider Ball Python
1.0 Albino Ball Python
0.1 Pastel Ball Python
0.3 Het for Albino Ball Python
0.1 Pinstripe Ball Python
0.1 Bumble Bee Ball Python
1.0 Hypo Ball Python
1.0 Lesser Ball Python
0.1 Mojave Ball Python
0.2 Het for Piebald Ball Python
0.1 Normal Ball Python
0.2 Het for Axanthic Ball Python
0.1 Axanthic Ball Python