Rat rack, the first!

Given the price of feeding a large number of reptiles, we have decided to breed ALL our food.  ALL.  so, Derek found us this awesome site with step by step instructions for building a rat rack on it.  It's arb reptiles.  There is a lot of great info there, and we are already thinking of what project to tackle next! 

We ordered some of the correct size bins from home hardware.  Derek spend hours at several stores trying find what we needed.  the hardest and most expensive part was the hardware cloth(which isn't cloth at all) and the bins.  Now you remember a previous post mentioning that we went on vacation to Wetaskiwin Alberta.  The bins we ordered had a sticker on them stating that they were shopped to Grand Forks form Wetaskiwin!  LOL  I was going to take a picture of the label, but I forgot.  I will have to add it later.

Over the last week we managed to collect all the materials needed, as well as all the tools needed.  The table saw we got is very....ghetto.  lol  It is basically a black and Decker skill saw mounted upsidown on a makeshift table.  It did the trick though!

 I forgot to bring the camera to snap pics of the whole process, but I have a picture of the finished product.  Here is a picture of Derek putting the food and water in for the rats. 

We have 2 males and 3 females so far.  we are getting another female in a week, we just have to wait until she is finished nursing her babies.  We have a big bag of dog food for them to eat, and we managed to get a great deal of water dispensers for the rats.  Here is a full picture of the rat rack. 

We only have rats in 2 of the bins to start, but we hope they are getting busy!  More rats the better!  Of course, it will take a while before we have a well established colony.  There is quite a call for it in Grand Forks.  The more we talk about out breeding project, the more reptile owners we discover.  People are beginning to approach me at work and ask about our feeders and reptiles.  We literally have a line up of people wanting to buy snakes rats mice and geckos.  Also, we have had requests for specific reptiles. 

These are the rats.  Aren't they cute?  They are a skittish bunch, Maybe they smell the snakes. lol  They are pretty happy about the food, the first thing they did was pig out. It didn't take them long at all to figure out the food and water situation!    Anyway, I am very excited about this breeding season.  Thankfully rodents don't have to wait till a certain season to breed.  If there is a season going on, they'll get funky! lol! 

Anyway, that is all I have for now, I will see about some more pictures in better light tomorrow. 


Stay frosty!