Yeah I took a huge shit and didnt even attempt to cover it up, so what
Yeah I took a huge shit and didnt even attempt to cover it up, so what
dang why are these pics so huge lel
I have been getting an urge to adopt a cat and you two aren't helping!
Our youngest cat Jager tries to plop down on my chest the same way he likes to lay on Astylla, and actually gets visibly angry and starts flicking his tail because I don't have boobs. But yet if I stop scratching him behind the ears and giving him pats, he'll grab my hand and pull it back over to his head. When he decides it's Jager attention time, you pretty much have to cease all activity and give him what he wants until the next shiny thing distracts him and he runs off.
oh yeah, absolutely. there was one at least semi-normal looking egg, which she promptly ate. the rest have all been slugs for sure. it's pretty normal; it would have been eye-raising/rare, but not utterly impossible, for them to have been fertile. i was checking some pics of newly laid eggs (for other species) out; and the difference is pretty stark. they really are similar to snake eggs. very plump.
she dropped #5 this morning, two more to go.
Oh wow I'm finally posting from a pc.
I'm gonna just dump all the pictures I have from start to now, as a bit has transpired. Pictures are table breaking, click thumbnails at your own risk. Idk why windows has some of these pictures orientated correctly but BG does not /shrug
I'm just starting out here. The white rat is the female, hooded the male. This bin was bin 1.0, and I ended up going through many revisions as I saw it wasn't serving my needs until I finally got it right. The smaller hooded rat you see is an extra male I had because my snake decided not to eat him. That's fortunate for him, because he became my second stud.
The bin took awhile to get right, and it served me well, but it was very shallow and that made it hard to add more to it without sacrificing leg room for the rats. I decided to upgrade and bought one of those 3 tiers plastic storage bins, an outdoor version. It's thick, and dark colored so it's been keeping cooler in the day. It also turns out that mama rat was ready to pop as I was setting them up, cause the very next day after putting them in the new bin she gave birth to 5 kittens. 4 males and 1 female. Bonus picture of daddy rat not realizing hes gotta pay for 5 babies now
The babies grew up so damn fast. By day 3 I could start to see color patterns. I ended up with 3 hooded rats and 2 "albino" ones.
Here they are week 2. Fur has started to come in, like a short stubble. Teeth are starting to come in, but still just poking out. It was a few days later when their eyes started to open, and another day or two after that before they were fully open.
This past sunday was week 3, and boy are they little fucking rats now. They're fast, and really curious. Between my handling and my dog forever sniffing the bin, they're pretty tame sans the mother who has forever been understandably skittish being knocked up back to back. At this point the original sire was fed off to my friends red tailed boa, but fucker wouldn't touch him! She kept him for 3 days but doesnt have the means to care for a rat long term cause her snake is being finicky, and I had no chance to meet up with her in the coming week, so she released the rat. FML, but man does that rat have an amazing story to tell.
Here's my dog Caius giving one of them a rodeo ride while I try to close the bin before his siblings escape. Normally Caius keeps them from escaping, and he's been pretty good with them, keeping them in the bin and pushing them back in if they try and jump out. Been pretty helpful during check ups and cleanings lol.
And some glamour shots of basically pet ready rats. They're small, but can feed themselves.
At this point, mama rat has had her first litter of kittens, they are now 23 days old and almost completely weaned, only needing milk for comfort food. That won't last long as shes also set to deliver her next litter any day now, and as you can see shes fucking bloated and ready to pop. Compared to her first litter, shes about twice as thick now as when she had the litter of 5. Timing wise from when she started to expand, I'm expecting her to birth tonight or tomorrow.
So yeah, I got a rat colony now and upgraded my enclosure and methods to the point where I only have to replace food and water every 2-3 days instead of almost daily, really saving me a lot of time and making this worth the effort to start feeding my snakes. The mama is getting a rest after this litter, and during that time her daughter will come of age around the time this next litter is ready to be weaned. I gotta decide at that point if I start running with two females pumping kittens, or just keep the one.
Don't open the spoiler for the faint of heart
Spoiler: show
Welp, there ya go BG. Thanks for reading.
good job!
And she had 8 babies!
Fucking A man...I'm currently at 13 rats atm...
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i nearly have everything set to put the fittings and lights in the big tank and set it up. i'm testing the sump for the water feature tonight, making sure there aren't any leaks.
So what happened to the rest of those eggs? Were they all slugs?
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So are the rats your pets now or is that like a sustainable farm to table type thing for your snakes?
Lmao yeah pretty much just farming rats to feed my snakes optimally. What it really boils down to is I can raise about 7-8 meals worth of rats a month from one female, and with a recent price hike in rats at the pet store, I'm going from spending about $30/month in rats to maybe profitting off them if I can sell a few extras. I have two friends with snakes that are currently buying one a month each, and that alone covers my monthly supply cost.
The worst part is just maintenance, hence why I upgraded the enclosure so I could add a larger water source and food hopper. I was going from daily checks to once every 3 days, but I'm gonna get a new auto watering system and with that I might be able to get them up to 5 days worry free. That's the dream, cause honestly they're cute but they're food, and they're fast and I just dont want the hassle of escapees lol.
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Lizards in general are a real pita sometimes lol, like a dog in a reptiles body.
I went to check on the babies and mama went fucking ham on me. She def does not want me around this litter considering her last litter is slowly disappearing week by week lmao
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i am testing out the basking lights now. i have four 38W halogens, testing surface temps with an infrared thermometer. i need 140F surface temps for the basking area.
ok the tank for my monitor lizard is nearly done. i need to mount the basking lights, and move the big bastard inside. radiant heat panel + thermostat and the LED main lighting has been tested. (love the heat panel, it's amazing. it is more expensive and it does require a thermostat but it seems well worth it. they come in a variety of sizes, check 'em out!) i had my water tank and sump pumps running for about a week, all good. today i mounted a reed mat on the back wall, so she can utilize the entire space for climbing. ran into a lot of challenges getting it done, but i can see the light at the end now.
i will mount the misting system and hook up the plumbing for the sump after i move the whole thing indoors. i don't want to shift something or bump a fitting and bone up my plumbing.
right side, tank w/ bulkheads:
Spoiler: show
sump tank, under the rack. had to make sure the bastard fit. i may still just put it on the side; less complicated and easier to service since she poops A LOT and always goes in the water.
Spoiler: show
an old 40 gallon breeder tank, used as the water feature. black roughnecks love to swim and love to soak and will sometimes sleep in the water. they also always shit in their water. this is a bad combination; she gets skin infections. hence, the filtered water/sump pump.
Spoiler: show
radiant heat panel + LED overhead lighting. the RHP is for ambient air temp, the LED bank is a 4' long panel for general illumination. i have a basking platform with four 38W halogen floodlamps and a UVB lamp for thermoregulation, just need to mount the lights (the eyebolts in the roof are for the chain the platform will hang by). i armored up the power chord and temperature probe to help protect them from her meat hooks. they should be out of the way, but, monitors are curious, powerful, and destructive so we'll see how this goes. if she gets into them, i'll put them inside PVC electrical conduit piping, which is what i'm doing for the basking lights anyway.
Spoiler: show
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>Black Kitten
Pics ASAP plz!
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Ah I see. Quite unfortunate. I love black cats.