I'm just curious how many people grow their own snake food? I have a Ball Python, a Garter snake (currently brumating) & 2 Corn Snakes, and with the recent addition of the corns, I realized that my feeding bill was getting higher than it would cost me to raise my own. So last weekend I purchased a CritterTrail house, one male and two female mice and I'm now anxiously awaiting my first litter (in approx 3 weeks ) Anyway, mostly I was just curious how many people have gone this route, but I also have a couple of questions: 1) Obviously pinkies are newborns. What age are fuzzies, hoppers, weanlings? 2) I feed my ball python 2 fuzzies a week & the corns a pinkie each every five days. I figured 2-3 female mice would be sufficient to keep me in food, but I'm just guessing. Any input?
Good luck on your new venture. Raising rodents is stinky and time consuming but it is more cost effective if you have a lot of carnivores. As far as the mouse breakdown, this is what I go by: Pinkies: Newborns, no fur, eyes closed, fully dependent on mother. Fuzzies: New fur growth, eyes barely or just opened (may be closed in younger fuzzies), dependent on mother. Hoppers: Full fur growth, eyes open, extremely active, still partially dependent on mother, just starting to wean. Weanlings: Just weaned off of mother, not quite full size, almost completely independent. Really, in most cases there isn't much difference in size between hoppers and weanlings. By the time a snake is ready to change up from hoppers, they can usually take an adult mouse. But some people also catagorize differently so these definitions may change somewhat from person to person. Sometimes it's hard to find frozen feeders that are hoppers or weanlings, so we've just opted to offer extra fuzzies, or whatever is necessary in that case. 2-3 females would probably be enough, but if you need a 2 pinkies every week I would keep the females all on different bredding schedules, or be prepared to have to freeze you pinkies before they get too big. You will find that the more breeding females you have, the easier it is get the size baby you need, but...you'll also end up with many more adults than necessary in the end. It's a lot of planning and work. Honestly, with such a small collection, it may be more beneficial to just buy the mice as you need them. Unless you know someone else that has herps that can help with the surplus animals. But really, if you freeze some of the babies, allow others to develop further, etc. you may be able to get the right breeding pattern down. Like I said, it's a lot of work. Hopefully someone else can give you more specific info. Good Luck!
I prefer to go by weight rather than development. You could have runts in litters that are as fully developed as the rest, just much smaller for their age. Going with weight usually gives you a more accurate measure. www.rodentpro.com has the weights listed that they use to classify the difference sizes of rodent (pinky, peach fuzzy, fuzzy, pup, etc.)
You feed a ball python pink mice? A hatchling ball python should be fed much larger like atleats a pink rat or hopper mice. How old is your python? I used to breed mice for my colubrids, but I hated the smell. Only did that a few times and moved on to Rodentpro
