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At what point do you have more than you can take care of?

Chip

Chip

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒ&
As I probably say every third post, I own a pet shop and have a modest collection of animals at home. Lately, I can barely keep up with every animal cage, bird cage, and aquarium in my shop. By the time I get the thing that was cleaned last clean; the first one I did is needing it again. I know there are folks here with collections as big as mine (including my store), and I work 70 hours a week on mine! Granted, roughly half of that time is spent with customers, placing orders, paying bills, and such... Just wondering if anyone here has gotten their collections to the point they couldn't keep up with them? Far and away, the snakes are the easiest, but even those have gotten overwhelming after hatching season. I'd love to hear your tales of scaling back (no pun intended) or getting buried trying to get everything taken care of. It'll make me feel a little better!
 
Chip, I can kind of feel your pain! I don't have a pet shop, but sometimes I feel like I do. With the mice, hamster, all the fish tanks, three dogs, two kids and six snakes...something just HAS to go. I'm currently trying to re-home the kids, but people just don't like that "re-homing fee" on Craigslist, so I may have to change my ad. ;)

I'm currently trying to rehome all my fish. I just don't have the time or patience to put into breeding/keeping that I had even a year ago. I wish you lived closer to me, I'd come in with a rolly-cooler of fish for you!
 
The only days where it feels like its too much to me is on days when I'm sick, have a massive headache, or just feel like being lazy. I will be the first to admit, there are times when I'm very lazy with my animals, but overall, they are very well cared for. Granted, I only have 32 snakes. I don't have a couple hundred. Hatchling season this year is going to be very stressful for me, because I plan on having quite a few clutches, and I will be in school (and hopefully have a job by then). From what I'm gathering now, it's going to pretty much have to be a set schedule. Feedings for certain snakes on certain days, cleaning days scheduled, etc. There have been a couple of times when I've been very close to selling my whole collection. And every time it was the death of a snake that made me feel that way. The thing I learned from my experiences is to always have hope. It's never really as bad as you think it is, and seeing little pippy heads is one of the most rewarding sights in the hobby.
 
LBoz said:
I'm currently trying to re-home the kids, but people just don't like that "re-homing fee" on Craigslist, so I may have to change my ad. ;)
Click to expand...

I have found that if you throw in their college fund you'll have more takers.:dancer:
Terri
 
Well, at one hour, or so, per feeding, I don't feel too put out. If it took two hours to feed and clean everyone, I might...That is with the adults being fed every Saturday or Sunday, and an equal number of babies on a five day schedule. The birds and Isabel are negligible. The dog...not so sure, yet.
 
I find that whenever the snakes keep me up until 2am in the morning caring for them a few nights a week or when entire weekends are consumed with their care.... that's when it's time to cut back.
 
I think it varies by person, some people seem to handle having hundreds of hatchlings and dozens of pairings year after year, when for me five clutches is about my breaking point. The days when caring for everything seems like a chore are counteracted by the good experiences - that special keeper pippy, or just getting a difficult one to finally take a f/t.. those little moments of triumph.
I think having the responsibility and obligation to care for these animals whether I feel like it or not gives me structure, like something to get up for every day. I am dealing with a long bout of joblessness and it gets depressing. Just having something to do - cages to clean, pinkies to thaw - is extremely helpful.
Aside from the snakes I have gotten into raising my own rodents and they are a lot more work! But also fun.
 
I had to cut back this year quite a bit, but I'm also facing grad school. Having upwards of 100+ snakes was manageable for a while, but I wasn't in school. I work 12 hour shifts, and only work 3 days a week so a large collection is fairly manageable if there isn't anything else to fill my schedule. I've cut back to only 30 some odd favorites, and thankfully, they've been easy to manage. The biggest difference is that I really don't have too many daily feeders left. The other thing that helped is that I kept most of my larger snakes. If there's no room to add more, it curbs the itch. Taking care of larger snakes sometimes equals caring for more than one small reptile. Plus, it helps to stave off empty nest syndrome :)
 
When I found out that I was pregnant & so incredibly, easily exhausted. That did it for me. :p

(And yeah, I can hear the comments now..."you think you're exhausted now?! just wait 'til the baby is here!!!" Oh, believe me...I've already thought of that & more! :p)
 
It's not really your snakes that are the problem, it's your system.
If you have a good system, the work doesn't seem to take as long, and it's much more enjoyable.
Switching from homemade racks to ARS helped me a lot of time. Deli cup holders are WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY faster than bowls.
Racks that are too tight also slow things way down.
Thermostats on racks are a godsend. Imagine trying to dial in all those temps with a lamp dimmer!!!!!
Oh, the horror!!
I can imagine that with 1000 hatchlings ANY system gets strained to it's breaking point. That's a lot of mouths to feed.
 
I have gone through the “too much” feeling a couple of times. About 3 years ago my wife and I decided to sell all the snakes. I actually posted many of them and the sales started to come in. Then I’d say “hay honey there is a guy here making an offer on the Mandarin Ratsnakes.” And she would say, “Oh do we really want to sell them?” Each time we go through that phase we change our minds before they are all sold, but we always end up selling some we wish we hadn’t.

I’m lucky in that my wife is into snakes as much as I am and we share the chores. I tend the mice and she tends the snakes. We have a lot of animals but we have gotten very efficient at taking care of them.

I have my mice set up in racks with auto water and food hoppers. If I needed to I could leave them for a month and they would be ok. Very smelly but ok. It takes me two or three hours, once a week to clean all the tubs and kill and freeze whatever size of mice I am collecting at the time.
 
Yes I have a Chamber-O-Death. I keep charts that tell me what my weekly consumption is for each of the sizes of mice. I have a chart that I keep a current inventory of the freezer. And I have a chart that combines the two to tell me how many weeks supply of each size I have on hand. I check the charts and see what sizes I need to harvest before I start to clean. Then as I clean the tubs, the mice that are in the size groups I need go into the Chamber-O-Death. By the time I have cleaned all the tubs, every one is dead and I package them and put them in the freezer.
 
Bro, I wasn't trying to sound uppity! I haven't always used it. I whacked and bagged a lot of mice in the bad ol' days. It was horrible. I should've rubbed two brain cells together and realized you are Wade and prwoduce "wodents." Mea culpa...
 
where i'm at is good for me...i can't imagine having 50+ snakes


i'd bee up several nights a week holding,cleaning, watering,feeding if i had that many but with 33 i can manage and still get enough sleep.


i feed using the muson plan for all my colubrids and my boas and pythons get fed every 7-10 days...and if if a couple of the groups meet on the same day i make one group wait a day longer....been working very well for me.

i do plan on getting a couple more this year but only ones that'll go with morphs i hope to produce and one that i've been wanting for a couple years...then i'm cutting myself off...atleast for awhile cause i don't want to be overwelmed.
 
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