Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First off, Thanks alot for all the info; I am in the middle of converting my grandpa's old chicken coup to my new and improved snake food center.
The question I have may seem kind of strange but anyways here goes: when breeding feeders to sell to cut the cost of overhead, how does one go about disposing of them to freeze? Do you just freeze them alive or are their alternatives? thanks.
Travis.

Make a euthanizer chamber or get really good at whacking them. It may sound inhumane, but it really isn't. There are very quick and painless ways to hit the neck area at the base of the skull to cause instant death and unconsciousness simultaneously. But if you aren't good at it you can get a lot of bleeders, or even worse, a rat that is hurt but is still very much alive, scared and deffensive.

You can make a euthanizer chamber out of an old aquarium or any box that the rats can't get out of, and a c02 tank and line feed. You simply route the c02 into the leak-proof chamber and turn on the gas. The carbon dioxide gas is heavier than regular air, which is a combination of oxygen, carbon dioxide and other small percentage gases, so it will settle to the bottom of the chamber in an invisible pool. The rats simply and peacefully lay down and go to sleep and die. Not easy to watch if you are an animal lover like I am. None of this is really easy, but you learn ways to block it out most of the time. I must confess,. my conscience hits me pretty hard at times. It's very hard for me to be responsible for the deaths of the four legged variety of animals. Innocent animals really tug at my compassion. But I just look at my happy and well fed snakes and it all makes sense once again. Besides, I remind myself that they were bred for this purpose, and that the brief but content lives that they did have were only because they were created for this. So some life is better than no life at all.

Anyhow,. sorry for the tangent,.. and I hope the other relative info helps.

>>First off, Thanks alot for all the info; I am in the middle of converting my grandpa's old chicken coup to my new and improved snake food center.
>>The question I have may seem kind of strange but anyways here goes: when breeding feeders to sell to cut the cost of overhead, how does one go about disposing of them to freeze? Do you just freeze them alive or are their alternatives? thanks.
>>Travis.
-----
"I must have some terrible, deadly disease. It seems that everyone that has screwed me in the past always dies mysteriously a few years later." *Lou Cypher*

Hey Brian,
As i stated, i'm looking to put together my rodent facilities. as of right now, i have just under 50 snakes, mostly yearling and younger ball pythons. Only 2 are full grown adults as of now, but over a dozen are yearlings and will be there soon. Im just trying to decide how many breeders i'll need? what would you suggest? within 2 years i'm guessin i'll have about 40-50 breeder sized ball pythons. I would like to raise up another 20-30 females to sell as breeders each year, but yeah.
and to make it relevant: I also have a female burmese in the 5 foot range. I got her from Rob Carmichael through his brother Chris who I am so fortunate to live near. She had not been handled a lot when i got her a few months ago, but has settled down and hisses a lot less now (we named her Hissy). She has not attempted to bite me yet but I try not to give her the chance. Thanks again for all the experience shared here. I've been sitting here for about 2 hours now reading through some of the posts (a lot of yours) and I share the appreciation it seems a lot of us have for the more experience keepers. Nothing takes the place of experience, but being able to not experience some things helps a lot!
Travis.

Hi Travis,

It can be figured out with simple math, a little bit of knowledge about rat breeding, and a bit of common sense.

If you have 50 snakes, and you feed them a meal each week, you would have to produce a minimum of 200 rats per month, roughly. The average female rat can have between 6 and 16 babies (depending on age and overall size) but usually have 10 on average. They can be bred about every 6 to 8 weeks. If you want to produce a minimum of 200 rats per month, plus additional numbers to sell to elliminate overhead (food & shavings) you will need to shoot for a much larger number. Even just to ensure 200 rats you'd want to shoot for 300 based on the figures above. When you add to that the additional numbers to resale to cover overhead it can be 500 or 600 or whatever number you decide on based on your overhead costs. For now, let's set a precedent of achieving 200 minimum and you can simply double the figures for larger numbers later.

Based on worst case scenario breeding, once every 2 months, and producing an average of 10 babies per female, minus a 20% average death rate prior to weanling = 8 offspring per female every 2 months, minus 50% for mishap and bad luck (sometimes moms go nuts and eat their young or die during labor, etc),.... 100 females should EASILY produce over 200 offspring per month. Needless to say the number could be twice as much, but one thing I learned a long time ago in business is that it's wise to always underestimate production and profit and to overestimate cost and effort. You can't go wrong this way. So if you run 200 females you will certainly produce over 400 offspring per month, plenty of food for the snakes and lots to sell to elliminate overhead and make you some money too.

When you set up your rats, place the breeders in tanks (aquariums work okay if you don't mind scooping shavings) 50 females to 5 or 6 males. If you run 200 females you will only need four breeding tanks. Make sure you raise the males together so they will accept one another and will not fight. Mature males introduced to one another will often fight to the death and it can get ugly. For 200 females you will need approximately 25 maternity boxes that are a minimum of 12 by 16 inches that will accomodate 4 females each making up a total of half the breeding population. Usually it is approximately half the girls are pregnant as the other half are getting pregnant.

In addition to this you will need a tank for weanlings and "stage" tanks for the rats as they grow to larger sizes. As you have juvenile ball pythons now, I assume that you would only need these stage tanks for the offspring grown for resale.

One last note,.. females do die,.. so you will always need to set aside X number of females to be grown to replace dead or retired breeder females.

If I forgot anything (likely) or if you have any other questions, just post them and I will get right to them.

>>Hey Brian,
>> As i stated, i'm looking to put together my rodent facilities. as of right now, i have just under 50 snakes, mostly yearling and younger ball pythons. Only 2 are full grown adults as of now, but over a dozen are yearlings and will be there soon. Im just trying to decide how many breeders i'll need? what would you suggest? within 2 years i'm guessin i'll have about 40-50 breeder sized ball pythons. I would like to raise up another 20-30 females to sell as breeders each year, but yeah.
>>and to make it relevant: I also have a female burmese in the 5 foot range. I got her from Rob Carmichael through his brother Chris who I am so fortunate to live near. She had not been handled a lot when i got her a few months ago, but has settled down and hisses a lot less now (we named her Hissy). She has not attempted to bite me yet but I try not to give her the chance. Thanks again for all the experience shared here. I've been sitting here for about 2 hours now reading through some of the posts (a lot of yours) and I share the appreciation it seems a lot of us have for the more experience keepers. Nothing takes the place of experience, but being able to not experience some things helps a lot!
>>Travis.
-----
"I must have some terrible, deadly disease. It seems that everyone that has screwed me in the past always dies mysteriously a few years later." *Lou Cypher*

Do you sell live rats, breeder size or young to be raised? Thanks a lot.
Travis.
ps: where are you at? I think i would enjoy a few days vacation in your yard.BFYHS (Brian's Front Yard Herp Society)

I do, but I don't ship live. I am in Southern California (regardless of the rumors that I moved to N.E. Texas). And while I would ordinarily sell live females I am not selling any females right now as I am going through a huge expansion stage and am currently raising ALL females to be additional breeders. But you really don't have to start with many. You can go purchase 20 females and 4 unrelated males and build your colony in just a couple of months.

Example: Four unrelated rat groups, each making up 5 females and a single male. Group A. group B. group C. and group D. Within a few weeks all females should be pregnant. Within three weeks of breeding the females will birth. The period of time to weanling is between 3 and 4 weeks. Each group should have produced approximately 40 to 50 babies. This is a total of 160 to 200 babies. Roughly half will be female. That's 80 to 100 females, PLUS your original 20 adult breeders. Raise these females and 5 males from each group for an additional 3 to 4 weeks after weaning and they should be ready to breed. Pair up 25 females of each group with 5 males from another unrelated group and viola! you have your genetically sound colony. If you want to end up with more, just multiply the original number in the initial group of breeders.

>>Do you sell live rats, breeder size or young to be raised? Thanks a lot.
>>Travis.
>>ps: where are you at? I think i would enjoy a few days vacation in your yard.BFYHS (Brian's Front Yard Herp Society)
-----
"I must have some terrible, deadly disease. It seems that everyone that has screwed me in the past always dies mysteriously a few years later." *Lou Cypher*