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Rodent Racks and Feed

R

raiquee

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Hey guys :)

I am thinking of buying a rodent rack. I bred rats for pets as well as feeders, and all these 10 gallons just aren't worth it anymore! So i have a few questions.

What do you guys think of kreaturekeeper rodent racks? They seem to be the cheapest for one level, offer food bin and a "water system" does anyone know how this watering system works with this particular brand? I don't see them explain it. Is it bottles or automatic? Is it from the faucet or a resivior (sp?) I perfer it to be the latter, like i giant tank i just fill with water when it gets low that shoots it through the tubing. Is this even possible? :)

Also what is the best feed to fed feeder rats? I feed my PET rats a good quality dog food, but i know it is not ideal to give to feeder rats because of feeding them to the snakes. So please give me your insight, and a link if possible.

Here is the link to the rat racks

http://kreaturekeeper.com/kreaturekeeper/ratracks.htm

Please let me know! Thanks a ton!
 
Those steeel powder...

coated racks look great, however I couldn't afford one so I built one out of wood. It appears that this rack used edstrom vari-flow valves. They have a small activator bar that opens a diaphram and lets water through when the mouse/rat licks it. These run off of tubes from either a pressure regulator that you can attach to a faucet (expensive, only for large scale), the other option is a bucket hooked to it that will gravity feed the lines,these can also be equiped with a float system which will keep the bucket full. You probably wont need this with just one rack, my bucket lasts more than a week with 26 breeding colonies of mice.

As for food, I have always used rodent block. I tried some inexpensive rodent block for a few months with poor success, and have recently switched to Harlan breeder with %9 fat. The regular breeder block has 4-5%fat which some people use with sucess, however with the %9 fat the mice produce bigger litters (8-20 with an average of 12) the pinks fatten up quick and can be weaned sooner. It is a little more expensive and hard to get in small quantities. I think Mazuri rodent block has 6.5% fat and I may switch to that if the Harlan stretches my budget too much.

www.harlan.com
www.mazuri.com
 
wood racks, inexpensive but there are drawbacks!

Many people choose to use wood racks as the raw materials are readily available and more people are able to work with it as opposed to cutting and welding steel and access to a powder coating facility.
However the savings may not become apparent until you entire collection dies off due to viruses and or bacteria surviving and spreading due to thier abilit to survive at a below surface level due to the porosity and moisture holding property of wood. And you certainly don't want to paint or stain it thus causing a toxicity issue.
I will disclose that I manufacture and market rodent racks, but mainly due to the unfortunate experiences of wood racks and inability to have other building provide exactly what I needed.
Hope this is helpful, and I would be glad to pass on any info I can to tnyone interested.

Neal MaxiMouse Rodent racks
[email protected]
 
The rack itself is made of wood and the rodents are in tubs, I really don't see how the wood would absorb moisture. The wood never comes in touch with the moisture (urine, feces etc). If the animals were kept "on" wood, I would agree, but not in the rack style. Example of mine below, they work great.

100_0660.jpg
 
And I hope they continue to, but cages flood, bedding is dropped, animals escape and deficate. I'm not saying wood is horrible, just that coated steel or plastic or any inert material is superior. Why wouldn't reserch facilities use wood if it wasn't an issue of concern?
 
co9reptiles said:
I'm not saying wood is horrible, just that coated steel or plastic or any inert material is superior.
Click to expand...

Oh really, thats not what you said in your first post.

co9reptiles said:
However the savings may not become apparent until you entire collection dies off due to viruses and or bacteria surviving and spreading due to thier abilit to survive at a below surface level due to the porosity and moisture holding property of wood. And you certainly don't want to paint or stain it thus causing a toxicity issue.
Click to expand...

To say that this will happen, is a stretch to say the least. I don't have a problem with you trying to sell your cages, but do it by posting an ad in the classifieds. Don't spread BS about the animals dying off from their wood racks.
 
raiquee said:
What do you guys think of kreaturekeeper rodent racks? They seem to be the cheapest for one level, offer food bin and a "water system"
Click to expand...

ARS Caging is cheaper than KreatureKeeper. ARS gets $250 for a single level and KK gets $314.
http://www.arscaging.com/htm/onlineordering.html

As far as the wood racks eventually killing your rodent colony, bull. I wouldn't even attempt to estimate how many people keep their rodents in wooden racks, but I would feel safe in saying it was FAR more than the number of people using powder coated racks. The average person just doesn't have or doesn't want to put down anywhere from $1500 to $3000 for a rack to breed rodents in.
I won't say that it can't happen, I can see how it is possible, but if it were anything remotely commonplace, we would hear about it.
You are far more likely to decimate your colony by randomly adding new breeding stock and bringing in a disease that way. Powder coated racks can't protect you from that.

I would love to use powder coated racks myself. I like their precision, and durability. However it would cost me in the neighborhood of $5000 just to replace my wood racks with the equivalent in powder coated. Can I justify that cost? Absolutely not.
My entire rodent colony could die off half a dozen times and I'd still be saving a lot of money. In the years I've been using wood racks though, I have yet to see the first problem, so I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I agree with Bill, if you want to sell your racks do so. If they're of equal quality to the ones already posted, I'm sure they are a fine product. Just don't do it by trying to promote some idea that using anything but the high dollar commercial racks will lead to nothing but apocolyptic decimation of our rodent colonies.
 
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