Anybody make money raising feeder rodents/bugs?

My wife and I use to have a rodent breeding facility in Allentown, PA. 1,000 sf of wall to wall rodents. We could not fill the demand. We had a partner so it ended us closing. He would sell off our breeders when we were short on mice. We would probably still be doing it if we didn't have a partner. #1 important thing is get a good exhaust fan and DE-humidifier. If you can get a place under ground you will be better off. Breeders in hot states can't keep them breeding or alive if it's a hot summer.

Decided to get out of it because the wife and mother-in-law complained about the stench of the male mice. It's hard to believe how much a single male mouse smells up his living areas, lol. I actually went from 2 to as much as 60. Managed to sell some to the pet store and other places before shutting down. Was told rats were less smelly but wife had made up her mind. Also kept some litters together far too long and the brothers would end up chewing off each other's family jewels...rather nasty. Turns out the pet store would only take entire litters not singles or females only, etc.

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Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

I could not tell you how many thousands of mice and rats we had at a time. We changed every pan every day and had the largest exhaust fan you can get for a ventilation system. It still stank so bad probably about a 7 on a scale of 10. We had 2 humidifiers going would empty (4) 5 gallon buckets from them every day. After all that you would have moist clothing from all the humidity from there breathing. Really nasty till you get use to it.

I have a rat colony. At times I've had over 500 rats at a time, and if I clean bins every 5 days, you wouldn't know there was a rodent around.

I like the concrete mixing bins better than the cat litter pans, so I'm getting rid my litterpan rack. I'm also cutting down my colony to one 5 bin rack of concrete tubs. With a 'grow-out' tank to hold the ones that are feeders, that should supply my own snakes.

You can make some money raising rodents, but you need to do so in a larger scale. Otherwise the stores want more than you can supply. The rodent breeders tend to come and go in cycles. There will be lots of breeders and the market gets saturated and some breeders start undercutting the prices and then people quit, then there isn't ENOUGH supply and people start breeding and then the cycle begins again.

I've done mice and hated them. Mice seem to kill babies and each other. I've also done the African Soft fur rodents, hated them too. They will almost ALWAYS kill and EAT the first litter. I do really LOVE the black-and-tan mice color, but I just want a rat in that color!

My rats were religiously culled for biting and for killing babies. I can pick up any rat, and pull babies off moms without worry of bites from rats. I have some pet rats, and OldMan rat was a colony breeder, who was simply so friendly he would jump out of his rack when I opened it and sit on my shoulder while I did the cleaning in the room. Then he'd get back in the bin, get some scratches and I'd close it up and leave. When he looked like he was about to die from old age, I 'rewarded' him by bringing him up to the pet cage to hang out with two pet females. I thought since he was at LEAST 3 years old, he'd probably be too old to breed and even die within a week or so. That was around 2-3 years ago! He's still going strong, still hanging out with one of those girls and a handful of other pet rats and still loves attention.

I also used concrete tubs for rats but they wont work for mice if you top feed. So I used the kitty litter pans for mice and no more than 3 females per male. We never left males with pregnant females because that's when they start eating each other (when done on large scale).

I stopped doing mice a few years back. Still do the rats. Your right about it going in cycles. Breeders get all up in arms about their customers wanting to breed their own rats...no big deal really~ you can happily sell them a group of females and a male, tell them where to buy all their supplies and how to get going and be a great guy....and four months his wife/sister/mother/neighbor..... someone will make him get rid of them~ or he'll realize himself how very much work it is for a pretty slim profit margin and then he'll thank you for your help and sell you his used equipment cheap.

Back in my school days, I made a killing breeding rats. Pet shops paid $2 a pop for pets, $1 for snacks. I was doing research on rat genetics and attempting to create a new "color". In doing so, the school supplied me with as many rats as I needed (At one point I had about 100) and as I bred them, if I didn't approve of the color or did not think they'd be beneficial, off to the pet stores I'd go. LOL Not sure if I would recommend it though. Gestation period for rats is 21 days , which is about the same as mice.

That's exactly the problem. Too much gas too quickly and they suffocate. Introduced slowly and they just pass out. Too many people try and flood the box with gas to kill them quickly. If you're patient it's a very humane ending.

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Avondale, AZ