hell of a lot of livefood for 5 lizards

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J.J.I.A.F.W

Try to find someone with a trade account for the reps
MY lot cost £242 plus every 2 weeks and thats at trade but feeds around 300 reps

p x

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REPTILEADER
70 odd species (snakes and lizards) 80 plus morphs of corn
100 plus different morphs.
website will be running in the near future
REPTIHOPE
Reptile sanctuary for the sick and disabled 23 years experience
BRITISH REPTILE AND AMPHIBIAN SOCIETY
Show 4th July 2009 booking tables now 50 already sold PM to book.

our bills on animal feed are shocking.. and far out weigh what i spend on us the humans.. in fact the animals all have much better diets than we do!

i use, for starters, about 12 kilos of chopped fresh veggie and fruit a week.. on top of that, 4 large tubs of cottage cheese, 4 large pots of natural yogurt, several whole chickens, around 60-70 chicks a week, about 7 cans of tuna, around 20 eggs, 12 large cans of dog food, 10 cans of cat food, a box of cat biscuit, about 10 kilo of dog biscuit.. about 50 kilo of rodent feed.. a couple of pots of baby food, 200 or so crickets, 200g or so mealworms, 50 or so large locusts.. a few scoops of rabbit food.. and enough chicken feed for 3 layers, 1 cock and 22 meat birds.

i don't feed most of the snakes weekly, but per full feed i get through around 80 prey items.. ranging from about 10 pinks.. up to 7 or so ex large rats..

the rodents and carnivores (skunks, meerkats, ferrets, dogs & cats) also get a fair amount of extras.. my favourite haunt of a saturday night is Asda reduced isles.. picked up 13 spit roast chickens for £1.20 each last weekend.. ok so it took me a few hours to strip them fully down, but that gave me enough meat for two weeks , most of which is frozen and thawed as needed. the chicken carcass's then all go into the rats, multi's and mice.

sainsburys on a wednesday night, around 7pm for a store that shuts at 9pm is also bargain bonanza time.. i paid £3.85 for an entire small trolleys worth of bakery products.. from doughnuts to loaves.. bagels to danish pastries.. all of which (bar some of the sweet things) will get distributed through the rodents and chooks.

i also picked up things like packs of reduced meat and fish, all adds to a varied diet for the creatures..

this was the bakery raid weds... sad mare i am, taking pics, lol



N

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I got a tonne of veg for Ichi from Tesco's the other week reduced to 10p per pack

Thank heaven's my food bill is now drastically smaller as Ichi lives more or less on the same diet as me - veg, chicken, tuna and dairy

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last spring was a mare, snuff refused to eat anything bar flipping mealies for a few months.. and yes i know its not ideal, trust me, i was not happy about it either.. and nor was my credit card..lol..

thank god this spring she has stayed eating more varied proteins.. chicken is on, some veggies, yogurt and cottage cheese too (and despite what some say, cottage cheese is part of diet plans recommended by skunk keepers worldwide... 2-3 spoons of it a week is not going to kill a healthy 3 kilo animal)

asda do two pots for £1.50 at the moment, which is not too bad.. me i cannot stand the stuff..

breeding feeder rodents can be an answer to feed bills yes, but you have to take into account how many snakes you have, and how many rodents a week you will need. from what i have seen over the last few years, unless you have enough rodents to warrant buying bulk food and bedding, or enough storage space to buy wholesale, the costs for the small producer are a lot higher then you realise.

my last feed bill was £67. that was 3 bales of straw, 2 bales of shavings, one sack dog biscuit, one sack rabbit food, one sack mixed grain, one sack sow and weaner pellet, one sack rolled oats and one sack flaked maize

bedding that will last me a month, maybe more on the straw.. feed that will last me about 2-3 weeks, depending on what else i add

things like
cooked grains - lentils, split peas, pearl barley etc
cornflake (29p a box at sainsbury's)
bakery items
chicken carcass'
meats/fish/kitchen scraps/eggs
noodles 8p a pack - sainsbury again lol
pasta 19p for 500g, cooks up to a kilo, bargain

different species get different bits, the gerbils get more grains, the rats more protein etc etc.


the space and time the feeder rodents take up needs to be taken into account also. you can't just have one tank of mice.. i would say you need at least 1 main, and 2 or more rearing tanks. to feed an adult corn you need a 6 month+ mouse.. in the time it takes the first litter to get that size, you will have had another 3-4 to deal with too.. you ideally need to split litters sex wise to grow on, other wise the growers will get pregnant themselves.. the older the mice get, the less welcome newcomers to the tank are - generally, not all are like this, but its best to have spare tanks just in case.. for one corn you need to produce - on most peoples schedules - 52 adult mice a year.. thats actually harder to do with a small set up than many might think. if you have a shed, or garage, you will need to heat in winter or they will stop breeding, and feeding and cleaning non breeding rodents is a total waste of time if they are there to make babies for dinners. so take into account where they will live, how it will be heated and lit, and the amount of time it will take to care for them.

and then of course, there is the kill. not for everyone, there is no doubt you do have blood on your hands by the end of it.. literally or metaphorically..or both ! & some souls are too gentle to wish this upon themselves..

personally i prefer it to buying in. especially when i know most of the frozen comes from out of the UK, where i have no idea how its kept, fed, maintained, killed, transported in terms of time and number of times its refrozen.. etc etc etc..


N

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Yeah I know all about food in Spring and season lmao

Ichi has been a right pain (as you know) what I have not had to buy in veggies (other than brocolli) I have shelled out on tuna fish as that has been pretty much all she would eat.

I managed to get some blended veggies in with her tuna though and she is kicking back into full swing now and eating anything and everything

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yeah i had to do that with snuff last year.. blended veggies with a mealworm topping... bloody fussy cow of a skunk that she was *grins*

N

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That is a lot of food admittedly, but then in reality, roughly £75 per week. I don't know how many animals total you are feeding, but have you got a local grocers in a market nearby on a weekday or perhaps a Sunday. You might find that this will reduce down the fruit/veg or perhaps check out local farmers - especially for the likes of Kale - l am not sure what your local produce is in Suffolk, but in Lincolnshire we do have a lot of brassica farmers, perhaps you should find out what your local community is growing?

Farmers who have bird covers on their lands tend to grow kale, but it does not tend to freeze that well, where as the others can. But if you find a market you might be able to reduce that down.

Your culture bill does seem excessively high at £99 which is a third of your overall monthly bill.

You could save your millet bill slightly, by buying a box at £16.50 but it will last for six months. One box will last you four months, and there is a reduction already.

Can you not ask your local merchants if they can pallet drop you a 14 load or a 26 load? They will award you discount on that, but l think you can afford to shop around. Most merchants willd rop price if your total exceeds £100 - £150, so yes, a bit more outlay to begin with, but with the longetivity on dry foods, a saving in the end. [Plus you can order split pallets]

And are Honeybrook the cheapest?

Is KKK still not operational in Suffolk, or would the likes of Camzoo be nearer, do they do deliveries to that neck of the woods? I take it you buy your frozen in 3 month loads?

Best of luck with your shopping around.

I used to spend almost £800 pcm on the commercial operation, £400 of that monthly was fruit and veg, but l cut a great deal with my local market grocers.

The other £400 was dry food.

So l do understand your terrors, especially when you add it all up, lol.

R

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Got me worried - but worked it out on average daily consumption, which may go up as well as down

so - Per Day:

• beardie: 24-30 crickets + 6-8 locusts
• agamas: 15 crickets + 6-8 locusts
• fat tail gecko: 12-15 crickets a day depending on size
• picta gecko: 10-12 crickets again depending on size

these add up to 61-72 crickets Per Day x 30 = 1830-2160 Per Month = around 4 bags of 500 crickets

and 12-16 locusts Per Day x 30 = 360-480 Per Month = around 4 bags of 100 locusts

Amazing but true!!! Anyway I'm going to stop the locusts now, and when my roach colony gets going in a couple of months then hopefully I can reduce the crickets bought in too

Also the mealworms are not for the reptiles but the owls and chickens - but not absolutely necessary so I'm going to harden myself to their little squawks and cut them out too....

The frozen mice - well the owls eat 2 each a day that's 60 a month EACH, and I haven't found these mice better priced than at Honeybrook, 20p each - £14 delivery for the lot so I get perhaps 3 bags of 50 at a time. Money availability is a problem, don't have much available in one go

The fruit & veg is currently offered (and eaten) to everyone daily but again I'm going to toughen up and they'll only have it Mondays, Weds and Fridays. Don't think they're exactly going to suffer through that.

I only buy fruit & veg on a weekly basis, and the rest throughout the month as it goes... I'm going to see if my local animal feed place will do me a discount if I buy a months worth at a time (can't afford more than that in one go), that's for the birdseed and chicken feed. The price of millet on my list is based on using 1/3 of a box costing £16.50, which works out at only £5.50 a month so can't get that down any more.

So hopefully I'll cut the livefoods down to maybe 1 bag of crickets in time. And perhaps half the amount of fruit & veg...

Thanks for bearing with me through this thinking out loud - been a very useful exercise for me, putting this all down in black & white and getting your feedback on it too

thanks everyone

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My Aminules..........1 beardie - The Fonz - brilliant!!1 female red headed rock agama - Alice - beootiful1 female blue spiny swift - Thelma1 sudanese plated lizard - Gerry 1 baby beardie - dob:Aug08 - Jack - just booootiful!!
40 approx cage/aviary birds: canaries to small parrots6 assorted bantam hens1 serama cock4 large fowl chickens1 chocolate labrador2 ex racer greyhounds2 black goldenretrXnew zealand huntaways1 rescued handreared bunny1 rescued russian hamster

can you not feed the owls chicks as well as mice??

i pay £2.50 for 50 chicks at the moment, so normally £10 worth will last me not far off a month if kara gets mice/rat/gerbil a couple of times a week and chicks the rest (kara being the kestrel)

N

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