Which is better to breed for snakes?

Question

i have a few snakes and i am seriously considering breeding food for them. i currently feed mice, but what would be best for my pets: mice, hamsters, or gerbils? i'm not really worried about producing too many offspring because i have a few friends with carnivorous reptiles as pets and they would be happy to ease my load of food.

Answer 1

Ok, well, for one, what kind of snakes do you have. And two, I would look in to breeding better if I was you. Each mouse litter has about 12 offspring, but you would need to be feeding your snake about once a week, so you would need at least 10-20 breeder females, because you would need to have a litter once a week to make sure you have the correct size at feeding time.

This is about 50 baby rodents a month. Do you have THAT many friends with that many reptiles?

And you can't just feed the reptiles more, overfeeding is VERY bad and causes snakes to grow at an increased rate. Sure, they get bigger faster, but they have horrible health problems and die real young.

I would really just recomend buying feeders from pet stores near you.

But, I would either say mice if it is a small snake like a corn or a garter, but if in the future it will get big enough to eat rats, you need to start feeding it rats as soon as possible. Plus rat pups are healthier then mice

EDIT: I would do rats, simply because your python will eventually get big enough to eat rats, and like I said, transitioning snakes from mice to rats can be very hard to do and its best done as soon as possible.  Mice not only have a different smell then rats, but they have a much stronger smell, and when snakes are use to this, they sometimes refuse to go after rats. Otherwise, your corn and king are perfectly fine with just mice, and it doesn't matter with the tarantulas or nile because they eat pinkies (unless your nile is bigger. Ours is 6 inches so still only eats pinkies)

Answer 2

mice and rats are much better for snakes, but which one of those, depends on the snake.

Answer 3

depends on the snakes, some like mice, gerbils, rats, never really fed any hamsters to mine,