Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Last order from Rodentpro was $480 and thats only good for about 3 months, so the $283 for this rack was well worth it.....

20 concrete mixing tubs going with 1.3 groups, you can see from the pic I'm gaining experince. The first rack that I thought was great is now ok (the one on the front left), but will be probably scrapped for parts before to long to make room for my new improved design.... I also removed the larger tubs from my second design (back left in the pic) that I thought would be great for raising the little guys up in, but they cannot reach the food or water and its more of a pain to clean.

Just thought I'd share, forum's been a bit slugish....

thats a nice set up.

how many snakes are you feeding off 20 breeding colonies??

I have 9 rat and 5 mice breeding colonies, and seperate big tubs to hold weanlings/small, med/large rats, and adult mice.

this feeds my snakes with many extra (I sell them to the local store).

TomChambers

Actualy, the new rack alone will have 20 colonies going, All 3 racks together have 40 colonies and 3 holding tubs.

I've added 41 balls to my collection since August with 5 more 50% het albino females on the way now. So I'm up to 52 balls, 2 boa's, two bloods and this guys....

The game plan is to hopefully have a 80 balls up to breeding size within two years so that I can breed balls fulltime and be able to stay home and raise our still none existant children without having to send them off to day care and have somelse raise them....

Juno my 11 month old 4 foot black throat.

What projects will you have out of the 52 balls? What do the 52 consist of? Can you post pics of your ball setup and what instructions did you follow for the rat rack? I myself have 1.1 het albino poss het snow boas That wont seem to breed and 1. het albino ball and .2 norm females hope to get alot more balls.

I've got a male albino, a very nice banded het albino male, 5 100% het albino females, 5 50% het albino females. A male and female pastel. 3 Granite males along with 3 females, 7 normal males and the rest are females of different size and ages. I'll be looking to pic up a male spider from someone's 05 clutches and maybe some ghosts or pieds.

The rat racks, I got my orginal ideas looking at other "home made" rat racks. They are very easy to build, I use 2x2's to first build screened tops, I then use a 1x2 and a 1x3 to make the drawer functions (I can post better detailed pic's if there is something exactly you want to look at) I may be adding another rack and if I do, I'm going to take pictures of the entire process and I'll post step by step instuctions on the website that I'm currently building.

The python racks are made of melomine (spelled completely wrong sorry) Again, these were a matter of trial and error. Here is a pic of them after first being built awhile ago, these two are now full and I'm currently working on building a 4th rack.

yup if your working alone that will sure fill up your day.

I am similarly holding back all offspring for a few years, and might have to expand next year, but for now I'm good.
I actually cut my colonies down last year, as they were too much time and producing way more than I needed. It's a thankless job.

Good luck with the future plans.

TomChambers

My wife is more than fine with snakes, monitors and even rats. She wont help cleaning the snakes yet as she is abit jumpy since being bit a few weeks ago and I won't let her help with the rats as once she see's the babies, they become pets rather than food....

Tell me honestly - do they stink? That's been my major concern about starting a breeding colony. How much time per week (or per day, ect.) does it take to maintain the colony that you have?
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

I orginally had the small rack in an extra front bedroom when we first moved to Florida in June as it was very hot out in the garage and they stunk in the house even cleaned every 3 days with only 8 colonies. Since I've moved them into the garage and removed the 8 glass windows from the garage door and installed two fans they are not bad at all. I change all bedding once every 5 or 6 days and this takes almost 3 hours. I then only check on them every other day for food and water. Much better than my estimated $3k a year rodent pro bill plus I have several guys that just will not eat frozen so I'd still end up spending another $500 or $600 a year on live food as well.

Rats are tolerable, but mice smell awful.
Even right after cleaning every tank they still stink up a room.

TomChambers

but no matter what~ they are still going to smell like rats! I guess if I had to describe the smell of clean rats I'd say it smells like wood shavings and animal (not bad~ sniff your dog~ he smells like an animal~ and so do you when you forget underarm charm!) The mice just reak though~ no matter how clean you keep them.

I keep 10 bins of mice, 10 of rats (gonna expand soon too) I clean tubs every 5 days (used to be every 7~ but that was not often enough) The mice smell rank within a day of cleaning them. The rats are usually fine until day 4~ tubs with less pups in it are still fine on day 5~ tubs with lots of pups NEED to be cleaned by day 5! (I just switched litter brand and this new stuff seems to be dryer to start with~ so even the very full tubs were not bad on day 5 this last week) I use dish soap and water to clean the tubs~ every 5 or 6 months I clean everything with Simple Green just because it makes me feel like I'm getting it cleaner.

Just wanted to add my .02 cents~
BTW~ Nice racks! I build mine very simiair~ but I find it easier to build them one tub in width rather than the 3 I think I saw on yours. I also use wheels. Makes it easier for me to move them by myself when I need too (I keep them in a spare room outside during the summer for the AC, and in the garage in the winter to give the room time to "Defunk"

~ that was the first rack I built~ since then I added a 5 tub to it and auto water.
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Cheryl Marchek
AKA JM
Check out my website at:
The Red Dragons Den

what temps do your garage get and is it an attached garage?

My problem is that I live in the northeast and have a garage not attached to the house. Until I insulate it and build a small room they won't make it through the winter.
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0.2 Normal Adult ball pythons
0.2 Normal Adult ball pythons (on breeding loan)
0.1 Sub-adult
1.0 Normal ball python
1.1 Bell Line Pastel Ball pythons
1.0 Adult Het Albino Ball Python
1.0 Het Pied Ball Python
1.0 Het Carmel Ball Python
1.0 66% Het pied Ball python
0.2 50% Het albino Ball Pythons

I just move to FL, right now my temps are around 62 at night and up to 84 in the day. I don't know how this summer will go, I'm prepaired to enclose the racks and insolate if I have to and then run an air conditioner. I hope to be able to just open the door and run several fans and call it a day. We will see if the neibors complain or not, wife had to get the house in snootyville...

Sorry to anyone who is upset this thread got off of balls, but its still fun and educational, so get over it lol....

And since we are off topic already, here is a pic of a boa eating....

I live in southern California~ we are high 70s to low 80s daytime right now~ not sure of night temps~ hasn't killed my tomato plant yet so can't be into frost zone! Rats do great in the winter in the garage here. Summer time is MUCH too hot. We get well over a hundred for all of the summer. Rats won't breed if it's too hot~ over 90 or 95~ they die if it gets much hotter than that. I had them in the house in 03~ but that became unacceptable~ smelled too much~ and the ducts would pic up the smell from the spare room and distribute it throughout the house!!

I am lucky~ I have a litte out door room ~ it's nicer than a storage shed~ but only in looks~ it had no insulation~ and electrical costs to run AC in in CA were a big concern. After a lot of debate~ I went ahead and insulated the roof in the room (would like to insulate the walls~ but whoever built it put up dry wall with NO insulation!! So that will be a major project)

So~ during the summer I'm using a small portable swamp cooler (check home depot in the spring) and a couple fans. It's a pain the neck~ I have to fill the cooler with water every morning (and I drop blocks of blue ice in the water on really hot days) but it does seem to work~ is much cheaper than actual AC~ The nature of a swamp cooler leaves it desirable to leave an exterior window open which is nice for getting the smell out~ and moving them between that room and the garage each season keeps either one from getting too funky in smell!
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Cheryl Marchek
AKA JM
Check out my website at:
The Red Dragons Den

The racks look great. I use the same type tubs as well I only have 1 rack with 4 tubs for now. First of the year I plan to make a rack with 15 tubs in it. I usually have 1 or 2 males for 20 -32 females. It has been working great so far. The male rats smile all the time. LOL

I keep my rats inside for now. We keep it cool in side 62 and under year round. I have noticed the rats smell bad if its gets really warm. Or over crowded. We change tbs as needed. If we have a lot of rats we change every two days. This does not really give them a chance to smell.

Mice do stink it helps to keep males mice to a minimum.Great post thanks for sharing your set up with us.

>>Last order from Rodentpro was $480 and thats only good for about 3 months, so the $283 for this rack was well worth it.....
>>
>>20 concrete mixing tubs going with 1.3 groups, you can see from the pic I'm gaining experince. The first rack that I thought was great is now ok (the one on the front left), but will be probably scrapped for parts before to long to make room for my new improved design.... I also removed the larger tubs from my second design (back left in the pic) that I thought would be great for raising the little guys up in, but they cannot reach the food or water and its more of a pain to clean.
>>
>>Just thought I'd share, forum's been a bit slugish....
>>
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Thomas Jones
aligatorhunter@earthlink.net

how do you rotate your males with your females, (time frames) and do you have any delays in production with them being reintroduced all the time?

Last pic that I have to show the newest rack design, 5 levels high, 4 tubs wide, water system should be here tomorrow and fresh rat blood next week....

i put the male in one tub for a week then switch. Sometimes a week and a half. I have no delays I just change my male every 3 months or so.
>>how do you rotate your males with your females, (time frames) and do you have any delays in production with them being reintroduced all the time?
>>
>>
>>
>>Last pic that I have to show the newest rack design, 5 levels high, 4 tubs wide, water system should be here tomorrow and fresh rat blood next week....
>>
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Thomas Jones
aligatorhunter@earthlink.net