Should I Breed? How Many to Breed?

awesome post good comparison but when buying frozen rats or mice you have to take into account the shipping which is expensive due to the dryice and added weight so personally i think breeding your own would be more cost effective and you get more rat for your buck than spending it on shipping.

Also what kind of dog food are you guys useing?

so if i have 3 snakes 2 of which eat mouse sized rats and one snake that eats small rats, would a 4:1 ratio of females to males rat set up work?

Wondering how many litters you get out of a female before she is replaced?

Thanks for hte chart. very helpful

Incredible thread, thank you for posting this. I began jotting notes to figure how many breeders I would need then decided to see what kind of threads were out there and you answered my questions to the "T". But here's a question that wasn't addressed from what I can find. I currently house my rats that are left over from over purchasing in kitty litter. I had an issue with the urine odor and the kitty litter works incredibly well for the smell and the rats do fine until the following feed schedule. So my question is do you think the kitty litter will pose health issues in breeding colonies.

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Originally Posted by hovafl

Incredible thread, thank you for posting this. I began jotting notes to figure how many breeders I would need then decided to see what kind of threads were out there and you answered my questions to the "T". But here's a question that wasn't addressed from what I can find. I currently house my rats that are left over from over purchasing in kitty litter. I had an issue with the urine odor and the kitty litter works incredibly well for the smell and the rats do fine until the following feed schedule. So my question is do you think the kitty litter will pose health issues in breeding colonies.

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Kitty litter is one of the worst choices.

I am looking into starting a colony as there is no one selling feeders in my area. I have experience breeding feeders from when I worked at a zoo, they housed them all in one fishtank and I feel like that would be cruel, especially as my main selling point is the fact I will keep all humanly and am a Veterinarian Technician (I am in Canada, its a different type of technician then USA), back to my original reason for response...

If I was to have

1 for vacation
2 for growing, M and F
1 cage for non breeding f (large)
2 cages for breeding

so 6 tanks total with 12 females and 2 males would that be enough? would I need more cages?



http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...ngCalendar.jpg

Correction

2 for growing, M and F
1 cage for non breeding f (large)
2 cages for breeding (males always in one)
1-2 cages for nursing

Quote:

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Originally Posted by katio92

I am looking into starting a colony as there is no one selling feeders in my area. I have experience breeding feeders from when I worked at a zoo, they housed them all in one fishtank and I feel like that would be cruel, especially as my main selling point is the fact I will keep all humanly and am a Veterinarian Technician (I am in Canada, its a different type of technician then USA), back to my original reason for response...

If I was to have

1 for vacation
2 for growing, M and F
1 cage for non breeding f (large)
2 cages for breeding

so 6 tanks total with 12 females and 2 males would that be enough? would I need more cages?



http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...ngCalendar.jpg

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The spreadsheet link on page one no longer works, can anyone repost it?
Thanks,
Steve

Just curious, does this work for mice as well or? Need some for my corns and so I'm trying to plan these out as well, and so I'm curious if this work or if anyone knows of a proper one for mice? Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rakshasi

I agree, this was a very helpful post.


Currently, my mind is a tad foggy, but later when it's cleared some, I'm going to attempt figuring out how I can make it so that I have fuzzy-sized rat babies each week. And, I do believe this is going to help me out in the long-run. Thanks for posting this!

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The time table should be the same, you're just harvesting the feeders at a different time. If I'm reading this right, once you have the system fully running, you should have several litters of different sizes at any given time and be able to collect them at whatever size you need them.