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gebils???

T

thermo man

tom
Hi,
Thought i would check here first before breeding.
Ive had mice but they smell rather a lot and am concidering buying some gerbils to use as breeders to feed my snakes,as they dont smell so much!!
Does anyone know if gerbils could cause any sort of problems?
Thanks... :shrugs:
 
Not that I know of,feeder wise they should be
fine but they do go into breeding strikes for months.
Why not try multi-mammary mice aka Natal rats.They
are profuse breeders and there is very little if not no
smell.
Heres a little info .http://goto.glocalnet.net/natal/care.htm
 

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I'm breeding with plain old feeder rats from the pet store, much less smell than mice, they produce more often (I've had three litters of rats from three females and zero litters of mice from four females.) Some of my mice are pregnant, and I'm trying to stick it out until they pop because I have two little snakes that can barely eat the smallest mouse peach fuzzies I have in the freezer, so hopefully once the mice pop and their babies grow a little that will be enough to get them until they can eat what my other snakes are eating and the mice can be black rat snake food.
 
I second the natal rat suggestion. I breed them myself and since they got started I've since gotten rid of all the smelly mice.
They breed fast and stay much smaller than rats. A large adult corn should be able to get down adult natal rats, which you certainly can't say for domestic rats.

Plus they might be much easier to find in your part of the world than in the US, where they can no longer be imported.
 
The mouse smell is not bad, for the first few hours after a bedding change. I find to keep my mice cage smelling the way it should it would need to be changed every single day. That's a lot of aspen.

I've never been able to find where I could get natal rats, I know a lot of people have them. I don't know if I can get them at a reptile show or not, I don't even know if it's legal to sell them.
 
I did more research and it is legal to own, buy and sell them just not to IMPORT them into the US. They;re pretty common in Florida, in fact my source got his originally from a breeder in Florida.

As for the gerbils, I've heard they are good for problem feeders, but the snakes also might not take normal mice or rats after eating gerbils for a while. I imagine that could be true for natal rats as well, which is why I try to mix it up with rats, mice and natal rats.
 
I'm happy with the 2.5 regular old feeder rats. Maybe I'll look into natal rats more when my females are getting too old to produce. I might see some for sale at Daytona this year. I hope anyway.
 
Actually, domestic rats are much easier to deal with. Natal rats don't like being handled, they are very strong jumpers, and some are very nasty aggressive biters.

My domestic rats ended up as pets though, and it's much easier to feed off the nasty natal rats. Plus the size thing can be a problem when domestic rats get too big.
 
Flagg said:
I did more research and it is legal to own, buy and sell them just not to IMPORT them into the US. They;re pretty common in Florida, in fact my source got his originally from a breeder in Florida.

As for the gerbils, I've heard they are good for problem feeders, but the snakes also might not take normal mice or rats after eating gerbils for a while. I imagine that could be true for natal rats as well, which is why I try to mix it up with rats, mice and natal rats.
Click to expand...

Any reason why they have been banned?
 
All African rodents are banned from imports by the FDA and CDC due to a monkey pox scare from 2003.
 
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