Clovis
Pirate
Okay, so I'm not big on the whole Rack System for housing thing... each snake in my collection is a pet, whether I plan to breed and them and make money (or try to reimburse myself with my investment anyhow, maybe break even on upkeep) or not, and so I have a series of Vivs, currently working on a uniform rack-style viv stack to save space and make display easier. That's not what I wanted to talk about, but the other day my wife was thinking about racks and what people use for their rack systems... and had a thought.
We where using critter keepers for feed boxes, and since they are expensive, we rotated our snakes, and it took usually 3-4 hours to feed them all.
We went down to our local Big Lots store and picked up a stack of 15qt tupperware bins, and a few shoebox size ones for our little babies, and labeled them (lids, too). Now, each of our snakes has their own feedbox, which helps keep cross-contamination down. Also, this means I thaw my mice, put them in the appropriate boxes, and start transporting snakes. By the time I had everyone in their boxes my first 3 where finished. It took a total of one hour and 10 minutes to feed every snake in my home (13) and give them time to settle. The last 20 minutes of which was my Japanese Blue Rat, who every year in summer gets picky and only takes small meals, as he believes if he holds out long enough I'll give him a quail.
I just thought I'd share this revelation. The total cost was just over $60, less than 3 large critter keepers, and it saves on space and time, and sanitation. I was pretty proud. The wife has thoughts like this pretty often, and I wanted to share my pride with everyone else.
We where using critter keepers for feed boxes, and since they are expensive, we rotated our snakes, and it took usually 3-4 hours to feed them all.
We went down to our local Big Lots store and picked up a stack of 15qt tupperware bins, and a few shoebox size ones for our little babies, and labeled them (lids, too). Now, each of our snakes has their own feedbox, which helps keep cross-contamination down. Also, this means I thaw my mice, put them in the appropriate boxes, and start transporting snakes. By the time I had everyone in their boxes my first 3 where finished. It took a total of one hour and 10 minutes to feed every snake in my home (13) and give them time to settle. The last 20 minutes of which was my Japanese Blue Rat, who every year in summer gets picky and only takes small meals, as he believes if he holds out long enough I'll give him a quail.
I just thought I'd share this revelation. The total cost was just over $60, less than 3 large critter keepers, and it saves on space and time, and sanitation. I was pretty proud. The wife has thoughts like this pretty often, and I wanted to share my pride with everyone else.
