Well... rats

( Cant think of a good title for this) But, I want to try rats again.

Twice I have failed at it but I think it was because of the stores I got the rats at. My mice are doing great but shortly I am upping my collection to around 11 and I do not want to have wait as long as it takes mice to get to size as the snakes will need* takes breath*, so, rats are going to be a better choice. My problem is size though, im not sure what I will do with retired breeders, and space is limited until I can get a rat rack up and running. Until then 50g totes will be their homes. Will that be good enough? I have the room for about 5 of the totes. Thats it for now, im sure that i'll have a few questions later! Thank you:cool:

Pick up a RedTail Boa, pretty docile and will be glad to get rid of the big rats for you! LOL

Find a snake breeder, or a show around your area, they should have rats or know of someone that does. The 50s should work.

Fat Boy hit it on the head. Rats grow so fast you can quickly become over-run. I did. And it may be harder than you think to get rid of adult rats. But, my biggest problem with breeding rats was that I became way to attached to the babies to feed them off. Just too darn cute. I'm back to mice again.

My colony is doing better. I had one bad apple in my colony and I got rid of her quick. Most of my breeders came from reptile stores or plain petstores.

And I agree with the boa idea. I plan on getting a columbian red-tail boa so I have somewhere for my retired breeders and unused feeders to go.

id love to get an albino boa, but id still have to wait for it to grow, and right now I do not have the space for one.

I just take the big ones that are getting old (around 2 yrs) and put them in a closed container like rubbermaid. I hook up a CO2 tank with a hose and gas them. Then it's into the freezer. Some of my really big girls can pound them down. My son inlaw has a red tail boa so he gets a few once in a while.
I feed live, all my surplus rats go into the freezer too. I keep them in groups of 1.3. When I get to many I cut back by removing the males for a while.

You have to manage your breeding.

Look at the "sticky" section for a breeding plan so you get roughly the number of rats you need each week (you will have about a 2 week window before the rats get too big)
Find a petstore that will take any extras (or other snake breeders)
Feed off the males first (so any females that get to big can be used as breeders)
Adpot retired breeders to pet stores or via Craigslist as pets. (until you RTB is big enough).

Just a few ideas hope they help.

You can also look around your area for a reptile rescue or a raptor rescue organization, even a herp club of some sort. They may be quite happy to take your larger rats as a donation to a good cause. :)

DUde build a little rack like i did

my other female is looking pregnant now, and i also saw them mating:D