I would definintly recommend breeding as much of your herp food as you can - get the girls involved too...lots of neat lessons to be learned. Some would tell you not to get involved in it if you don't have a large collection, but sicne I started doing this about six months ago we haven't made a "food trip" to the pet store and at this point actually have extra food around all the time (good for you if you're thinking of helping out a local rescue what have you.) Here's what I would do in retrospect to our little experiments: Start with mealworms, - they are ridiculously easy, and your colony will expand exponentially. You cna keep all three stages in a bin with little problems, but I've found the three drawer (one of those rubbermaids) systems to work the best. MW that I'm feeding out go in one, which is emptied and cleaned once all the worms are gone, a bin that has eggs teensy babies is the second, and beetles who are laying eggs go in the third. For the other feeder insects I would reccomend roaches, since they are so much easier then those darn crickets. We do hissers, a lot of others do lobsters who need larger quantities/faster breeding. I raise mice for the class snake and one pair will reliably will give me about ten babies a month. You can freeze the babeis at the appropriate size in ziploc bags and hten thaw and feed or bring , still frozen, to your local non-profit for them to use. I prefer breeding rats, but since we have a Kingsnake I have goen back to the mice. They can stink, but if you are going to have a separate building. All in all, go for it. I enjoy raising herp food *almost* as much as my lizards!
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The Classroom Zoo is...
1:3 leopard geckos
1:0 Jackson's Chameleon
1:0 Veiled Chameleon
1:1 Bearded Dragons
0:1 Florida Kingsnake
0:1 White's Tree Frog
Hairless Mice, Roaches, Mealies, and Supers...
