What variety of rat for feeder?

[J.Bissell]

What variety of Rat is best to feed Ball Pythons? I am probably going to start breeding my own for feeders, because they are rather expensive where I am, and I don't do F/T. I may be over thinking things, but just wondering if there's some major difference between the varieties that is important for feeders.

Josh

[tigerlily]

I don't know too much about rat varieties, but you may want to start off with some research. You want to find a good source to start your colony off with, so you don't encounter babies with megacolon (which is lethal).

Here's a good place to start. http://www.afrma.org/rmindex.htm

[Hennek]

Don't get hairless rats unless you want your snakes to get the Hershey Squirts.

[Hennek]

Just out of curiousity, why don't you "do" F/T?

[J.Bissell]

Awesome, thanks for the replies! Yeah I'll do plenty of research. :D I've already got the care end down, just what type.

I'll avoid the hairless at all costs... lol, that wouldn't be happy.

I don't do F/T because snakes take live every time for me. Almost never have to worry about rejections, or worry about enticing the snake to eat. I just had my first rejection, ironically, this week. And it was the snake with the best feeding response. There have been times that the rat didn't hit the floor of her cage, literally. But according to the previous owner, she goes on food strike occasionally, but I'm not worried, she's got plenty of meat on her... ;)

The only reason I see not to feed live would be convenience, and fear of a snake injury. But snake injury I don't buy into. I can see how leaving the snake unattended with a rat could be dangerous, but if the rat is taken out after being rejected, and if it is properly sized I don't see any problem.

I've never had a problem with live. The guy at 8ball feeds only live, and he feeds hundreds of rats a week. He's never had problems either.

Hope that answers the why. :D Sorry about the long reply... Just tryin to cover all my reasons.

J. Biz

[littleindiangirl]

Depending on how many snakes you have, it will either be cost efficient to raise your own, or you will end up spending more breeding your own rats.

With the price of gas and corn going up, the price of rat food is going up tremendously as well. (ok not tremendously, but it does hurt when you get up in numbers)


If you only need a few rats every week, I recommend ASF's or mice. They never grow too big and are prolific breeders.

Domestic rats are great too, and are ready to be fed off when weaned!

However, if you have less than 10 snakes, you may find that you wont be able to avoid FT rats because of their incredible growth rate. These suckers will be too large in one week!

If you have snakes that eat FT, it will be much easier to breed your own and get maximum efficiency out of what you spend. You can make a CO2 chamber that will quickly gass the rats, then bag and freeze! Easy as pie!

Trust me, it does take a bit of money to raise your own rats. If you only have a few snakes, just to get one litter a week, your looking at possibly 10-12 female rats easily. They need to be fed properly, given proper bedding and housed in a secure cage to achieve maximum results.

The sad fact is most people house rats on pine, leave them in very hot or very cold places, feed them dog food and breed back to back. Then they say their rats are doing great! I can't believe they have ever seen a fully healthy rat. :cool:

Domestic Rats for all the greatness, are subject to genetic and also contagious diseases. They need high quality rat food for balanced diets to breed and produce in high numbers, and they also can be easily stressed and become sick from primary and secondary infections.

Ectoparasites are a problem if not taken care of immediately, megacolon is a BIG problem with geneticly inherited patterns. Mycoplasma is virtually infecting every rat (besides those found in highly controlled labs), scarring their lungs and weakening their immune system as they age. There are literally dozens of crippling viruses and bacteria that will kill entire colonies...

So yes, this was a long message to say think about it long and hard. Raising any feeders takes time and money.

On the flip side, I absolutely adore raising rats and am proud to say I have very large litters of very healthy and chubby rats. It is easy to do this!! Getting off of the feed store bill and being completely dependent on your own colony is one of the greatest feelings of accomplishment in the world.

If your really serious about this, I know of several threads outlining costs and breeding schemes to help you figure out the appropriate species of feeder and numbers. A lot of people have done the work to help others start out on the right leg. :icon_cool

[J.Bissell]

Awesome. :D Yeah, I am definitely going to have to start breeding. I'm putting it off as long as possible, but I will have 9 Ball Pythons here in another week or so, up from 3, and I will be breeding this season. So, I have a potential for many more to feed.

When I do start breeding I am going to make some nice roomy racks for the rats. I also saw a breeding schedule for rats to get a nice rat to snake ratio, it was on ball-pythons.net. I believe they had the females breeding every 12 weeks or so. So essentially 12 breeding females, then you have one litter a week. I think that was for 8 - 10 snakes. I'll definitely do more research on that end, and the care end.

Are ASF's big enough for adult bps?

Thanks for taking the time to respond. :D

Josh

[littleindiangirl]

Excellent! I personally built the medium sized concrete tub rack. I love it! I made mine only 6 tubs high (I'm short) but the actual plans were for 8. Just enough for a full 12 girl rotation including a holding tub. ;) I actually just threw together a sterilite tubs with hardware cloth as a holding tub so I can take it right into the snake room for prescenting. Works like a charm, and frees up one more tub in the rack.

I've been breeding ASF's for only 5 months, but they are quickly shooting up into favorite status. The largest the males get is around 150 grams. About the same size as a domestic male around 5 weeks of age. Females hang out around 80 grams after breeding. Just perfect for medium to even really large females.

They do take about a month after weaning to get up to size (around 50-60 grams), and some people have problems with chewers, but I have not had any problems with chewing and such. I keep the numbers light and provide things to chew and play with in the tubs. It's working well for me and a few other keepers that way.

BP.net is back up, and there is a plethora of info, as well as a large group of people willing to answers more questions too!

See ya around

[Hennek]

The only reason I see not to feed live would be convenience, and fear of a snake injury. But snake injury I don't buy into. I can see how leaving the snake unattended with a rat could be dangerous, but if the rat is taken out after being rejected, and if it is properly sized I don't see any problem.

J. Biz


I respect your opinion and I do agree that if it's not broke, don't fix it, but snake injuries do happen. Even with my limited (when compared to people like NERD, VPI, BHB, etc) experience with feeding live, I've had 2 instances where properly sized rats have drawn blood and left scars when a snake didn't strike just right. I was lucky that the rats didn't hit a vein/artery/trachea/etc. It happens more than you might expect, especially with rats larger than smalls.


Anyway, here's some pics of a rack we built (we built 2). It worked quite well, but you do have to keep your eye on it as the rats WILL chew through the concrete tubs. I was able to retard chewing by "painting" an alcoholic extract of cayenne peppers (it's great to be a chemist) onto the lip of the tubs. I do wonder that maybe just giving them something to chew on might have helped as well.

Breeding rats was quite an experience...one that I will not repeat. They smell, they chew, it seems they to try to flood their own tubs, they take up a lot of time and at the end of the day after all expenses are added up, it's not much cheaper than buying a couple of cases of frozen rats from Rodent Pro.

Littleindiangirl gave some great advice, of which one point I would like to repeat...don't feed them dog food. As an experiment we tried feeding one rack dog food (K-mart brand) and the other rack rat pellets for two months. The rats fed dog food shed more, reproduced less, and overall had a sickly appearance. Moral of the story, you get what you pay for. I wonder who would actually feed their dog that crap!

As for our breeding stock, we contacted a rather large rat breeder in our area who frequents a monthly herp show and bought a supply of medium females from him and 2 males.

We liked to rotate our males through the tubs and keep females together to co-raise the young. Some people separate the females because you will occasionally get a female who will eat/maim her own and other rats babies...she goes to rat heaven the minute she's found.

The best advice I can give, other than the dog food comment, is DON'T IMBREED! Buy your females from one place, your males from another and whenever your breeder males die or stop putting out, buy new ones...don't take males that you've produced and put them with females you've produced. We unfortunately didn't heed this advice at first and our productivity suffered.

http://gallery.pethobbyist.com/data/22018Rat_rack1-med.jpg

[J.Bissell]

Awesome, thanks for all the advice! I actually had my first rat inflicted injury last week. A small scratch on one of my sub adult BPs. The rat was probably too big for her, she took it out quickly though, I just lifted the rats head off her till it was dispatched. Thinking back on it I should have just waited and gotten a smaller rat. <sigh> Hindsight is 20/20. She is doing fine, and I put some neosporin on the scratch. Live and learn.

That is my major concern, the effort and stench in caring for rats.

On the subject on dog food, I'd never think of it. We get high quality dog food even for our dog, and then only as a supplement, cause she gets alot of our food... Spoiled dog. plenty of veggies and pasta for her. :D

[Hennek]

Awesome, thanks for all the advice! I actually had my first rat inflicted injury last week. A small scratch on one of my sub adult BPs. The rat was probably too big for her, she took it out quickly though, I just lifted the rats head off her till it was dispatched. Thinking back on it I should have just waited and gotten a smaller rat. <sigh> Hindsight is 20/20. She is doing fine, and I put some neosporin on the scratch. Live and learn.


It's always good to have a wrench/pliers on hand to crush their skulls if they manage to bite your snakes. It's a bit brutal but better to kill them quick then let the do harm to your snake.