breeding rats

[fantapants]

it really depends on how many rats you need to have every week for food. i have about 24 snakes that need different sized rats every week. i have a colony of 14 females and 2 males and i still need to buy some frozen rats in every week. if you want to provide GOOD quality food for your rats then yes, it costs on the outlay AND in the maintenance.....but you rap the rewards via the food that you breed yourself. but when you start to overbreed your females , quality will be compromised. if you have less than ten snakes.....buy frozen food in bulk and save money that way. but i actually enjoy breeding rats as food. i even keep a few back and sell them on as pets as they are all well socialised and cute as hell!

[Majestic Morphs]

Breeding rodents can be more work than keeping your snakes...

[saxon]

Originally Posted by phil7870

that would work out expensive doin it that way or would it ?

Yes it does, a bit more than feeding pellets or pig feed, but I want to know what goes into my snake food, some are also pets and shown as well, I beleive that even feeders should be treated with respect and given the best before ther poor things are humanely culled.

[phil7870]

could you feed something for example like pig feed and mix other stuf into it to make it better ? if so what would i mix to make it better ?

[jack_rep]

im currently just feeding some high quality guinie pig mix. works out cheap but having a bit of trouble getting the new females up to weight as fast as I would expect.

trying to add suplementation to encourage growth.

Cheap feeds are a false economy as they reduce the productivity in the long term.

[rachel132002]

I keep my rats in racks like this


They eat Dr. Johns Silver Medal dog biscuits which is around £8.60 for a 25kg sack i think and they are on Hunters wood shavings which is about £8-9 a sack but lasts forever.

They are culled with one of these bad boys


I had the basic zapper but it didn't do good for big rats and then i broke it like a tit so i upgraded.

Runs on 4 x D batteries and you get roughly 40 zaps.

Rat goes in, gets a shock and is kaput but the device continues for a further 2mins to make doubley sure but i'm sure they're dead as soon as they touch the plate.

[phil7870]

where did you get that

[phil7870]

which rat zapper is better ?

[rachel132002]

Got it from Ebay and this is the better one, the little blue one is good but doesn't guarantee big sizes whereas i put some 350g ex breeders in last night and boom dead before they knew what happened.

[Savanna]

Handy set up Rachel

I went a guys the other day and he had exactly the same set up. As soon as I saw it I asked where he kept his royals which made him smile and relax. It's a racking thing lol