to bread or not to bread (feeder mice/rats)

i am considering breeding feeder mice/rats for own reptiles and possible sale to others reptile owners who need them. i was wondering if there was anyone in eastern ohio or western pa who would be intrested in buying feeders. i havent done much research on this yet if anyone has info could you send it to me or point me to it. this project will not be large scale basically just feeders for my reptiles and sell the xtras i dont need.

well i think the mice would be tasty for my monitor and balls but ofcourse not me . is there any other reason you would not recomend breeding them.

Now Sara You know you enjoy a good stuffed Mouse and breading is a main
ingredient.
But if you are going to deep fry a good batter is better than breading any day.
LMAO

Paul,
On a small scale, to supply your own needs, breeding your own rodents can make sense. However, it's easy to get drawn into it too far which creates it's own set of issues.

Pros:

Convenience - if done correctly, you will always have a ready supply of feeders.

Quality - You alone will be responsible for the quality of the food for your reptiles.


Cons:

Additional work - Depending on the number of pans that you set up, maintaining the rodents can become time consuming. You generally need to clean every 5 days or so depending on how you set them up.

Smell - Even with properly maintained pans, there is definitely a smell associated with rodent breeding.


The Wash:

Dependant upon the size operation, your money savings for rodents should not be a major determining factor in your decision to proceed. You'll need to factor in the equipment, the food, the bedding, and your time.

A small operation will not yield a big production of rodents.

A larger operation will require much more time and money to maintain - not to mention space. In most cases, this time, space, and money can be better spent on additional reptiles, which is what you want to work with in the first place. Allotting that time and space to a reptile breeding project will normally yield more money via the sale of the offspring, then you will ever save on your food bill.

My opinion of course.

Good luck.

I agree with Mike. I thought at one time of doing this also but discarded the idea because the amount of work was more than the return I would get. I keep a couple guinea pigs as pets right now and I do have to keep the bedding and so on changed frequently or the cage area will smell. I decided that the cost of frozen rodents was worth, to me, the savings in effort but more important in time.

It is possible though that at a certain point a large commercial reptile venture would find that raising their own rodents would give a better return than purchasing, especially if they have employees doing other things that could also help out with the rodent chores.

Originally Posted by Ginger Ambrose

Now Sara You know you enjoy a good stuffed Mouse and breading is a main ingredient.

Breading isn't an ingredient, it's a preparation. The food to be cooked is coated with a liquid (water, egg, etc) to aid adherence and then rolled in bread crumbs or similar prior to cooking. Think "breaded veal cutlet".

Breaded mice are fine, if they're properly butchered and then baked.

BrEEding mice is a more appropriate topic for the venue.

:

My BF talks about Sautéing the rats, so why not bread them first.
I am breeding rats and mice. Only have 2 female/1 male rats and 3 female/1 male mice. I plan on keeping it small, as I really have no place to house alot of rodents and at this time there should be enough offspring from these guys to provide what I need other than for my larger pythons and savannah monitor. For that I will just have to either go to the Columbus swap and buy frozen or have them shipped.

Ingrid

generaly how many offspring do rats/mice have

I got back into raising my own feeders out of necessity. When you are breeding ball pythons you don't have much choice.
When I raised a few feeders years ago it was 10 gallon tanks and water bottles. I gave that up quickly and when I decided I was going to start rodent colonies again I was going to do it properly.
I now have a seperate building for the rodents away from the house. It's 8x10 I believe, insulated and heated, with covered interior walls. All the rodents are kept in racks with food hoppers and automatic watering systems.
I've currently got around 60 or 70 breeder female rats. I don't know how many mice really, I've cut back on that colony due to over production.
They consume about 10 pounds of food per day and 2 hours a week or so maintenance.

However you do it, you definately do not want to raise rodents in any quantities in the house. You cannot stop the smell no matter what you do, particularly with mice. Before I put up the heated building I tried to winter my mice in the house. I cleaned the pans every three days and within two weeks the smell had permeated the house.

I didn't plan on saving money, let alone make any, but I do sell a few extras along the way which offsets the food bill. Considering the start up costs to do it the way I did, it would take a pretty good while to actually start saving money.
After a few years of it though I wouldn't be without my rodents. It's just so convenient. All sizes of feeders available all the time, live, prekilled, or frozen.
That's worth more to me than anything else about it.
I found myself going to the freezer less and less. Thawing rats now just seems a bother when I can take a tub out to the building and bring them in fresh.

Litter sizes vary depending on the bloodlines. Certain strains are bred for large litters. My mice have 15-18 with 22 being the record as far as I know. The rats normally have 12-15 the first few litters then start to taper off at which point they are retired to the boa cages.
Some strains of colored mice may only have 6-8 babies at a time.

Originally Posted by Ginger Ambrose

Now Sara You know you enjoy a good stuffed Mouse and breading is a main
ingredient.
But if you are going to deep fry a good batter is better than breading any day.
LMAO

but Breading in the Oven makes em very crispy and delicious! especially with franks hot sauce!