#Rodent #Breeding #Setup
Well i am at our facility and this is our future rodent breeding room obviously it’s pretty empty right now and i still have to sweep it out but guess what just arrived our new roadie pretty wrecks since we are opening up a retail store over on that side of the building
We are expanding our rodent breeding so that we can supply feeders for our customers so we bought a few freedom breeder rodep racks because we’ve heard great things about them and i think i just heard them come in they are here oh my gosh she’s backing up right now
Ah the freedom breeder racks are here oh there they are we won’t have to deal with wooden racks anymore are you excited yeah i’m very excited to have them here yes thank you here they are oh they are beautiful oh yeah we could turn on lights yeah there they are
That is cool so we’ve got a rat rack rat rack rat rack and then one mouse rack that we purchased i was not expecting them to be fully assembled no neither was i this is awesome i thought we’re gonna spend all day putting them together but they’re
They’re ready to go yep now we just gotta take them off put them on wheels and i can’t wait to unwrap them bring them over but before we unwrap those beautiful racks we should probably finish prepping the rodent room for them so ed is sweeping up which is the first thing
We have to do and then a friend of ours who also breeds rats recommended that we put some sort of lining at the bottom of the wall to prevent any escapees which are inevitable sometimes you have one that jumps out so you have to catch and put it back
But protecting the wall is very important so they don’t chew through it but unfortunately if you can believe it there aren’t many options when it comes to rodent proof trim for walls so we are improvising and we bought roof flashing and that should work
We’re done take a look i mean you saw it on the hyperlapse but look now it’s fancy like a kick plate all the way around look kick kick kick you’re testing it out yeah thanks to our friend mandy who helped us install it yep we’re good to go
It’s very secure i think any gaps are filled so there should be no chance of if a rodent escapes that they will be able to chew in the wall yeah i think we’re ready to go open the uh racks yeah let’s go see the racks oh rodent breeding racks
This is so exciting satisfying things it is very satisfying you’re right pop oh my gosh well should we get them out so we can uh play around with the It’s drawers pretty like this is super heavy duty yeah oh it’s not going anywhere no look at all the bins are perfect and we’ve got the water line now we won’t have to like take out water bottles and fill those up individually oh they’re all connected to one
Water reservoir which will go to the top uh like a five gallon bucket right and then the water will just be gravity fed down to all of the nozzles you might have to take one of the ceiling tiles off though in order to fit it in order to spit a
Bucket up high enough that these are still getting pressure but we’ll figure that out do you think this is going to fit through the door over there um i’m going to try should i just go really hard yeah just as fast as you can because then if it’s too tall that’ll help push
It through although this rack might just break the door i don’t know oh yeah yeah perfect like a glove i like i’m just smooth right yeah it silently glides should we get the other ones sure oh look at this jessie included the uh other type of nozzle so we can show the
Difference between oh nice that’s awesome and i think he sent the shirt for us all right look at this freedom reader shirt it fits perfectly thank you jesse look at the back i think freedom breeder and cocoa blocks oh no it so we have just one more wreck to move into that room
Then we just have to wheel them in yeah Oh it’s so pretty they’re all the same and locking caster wheels wait uh-oh did we not get cast locking caster wheels on this one no we didn’t oh we put it on backwards oh no so we had to take this whole thing down turn it around now
Yeah i think we do all right i guess we should get to work all right now the caster wheels are the locking casters around the front i’m glad we didn’t screw that up on all of them yeah i’m glad we didn’t like set up the water first and then notice it was on
Backwards yeah that would have not been great they look so nice yeah they’re huge yeah look how tall they are taller than us yeah like emily’s six or six you’re six eleven no i’m five eleven it’s a five eleven so she’s just about six feet which i think comes to about here
Yeah it goes all the way up here that’s awesome so where is the mouse rack gonna go well if we have three rat racks and then mouse right there yeah we could try that that is so cool there’s so many rodent racks in the rodent room this is like
Our dream for this room so now we have to figure out since all of the water nozzles are going to be gravity fed where you put a reservoir at the top and then gravity pulls the water down into each nozzle which then goes into each bin which is really slick here how
A freedom breeder set it up the only thing though is we need room for the reservoir up there so we will have to figure out water reservoirs that’ll be maybe tomorrow’s project and i guess before we wrap up for today because we’re going to come back tomorrow to move all the rats in
Can you explain how the nozzles work because freedom breeder offers two different types of nozzles for their racks they offer a spring-loaded one which if we open it up you’ll see a spring in here there we go there’s a spring this one comes with a little rubber washer inside then
This little guy the pin that seals with that rubber washer and then a spring and then when all works together the rodent comes up and pushes on this and pushes away from that rubber washer allowing a little bit of water to come out so that’s the spring loaded one spring-loaded one
This is the diaphragm version where the rodent there’s a pin that goes through and the rodent actually moves the pin around which then exposes one of those three holes and then the water trickles through so out of the two we were told to do the diaphragm because i think
They get clogged less so what do you got there this is a food funnel what this helps with is feeding the rodents so the food sits in the hopper up here but it’s kind of hard to refill food with only this much of a gap and the
Reason why the food is up here is so that it uh prevents food from accumulating in the bedding below and it provides so it keeps it cleaner but it also provides enrichment for the rodents inside because they have to work at pulling and chewing the food through
This kind of grate but it is difficult to refill all of the pellets up here with only that much space so the food funnel fits on like this and then you just take your scoop of food you drop it in and it slides right into the hopper and then you just take this
And move it to the next level so the first thing you have to do once the racks are in place is start setting up the water line freedom breeder ships these so you can individually take off each shelf as you saw me and emily do
But then you need to hook the water line to each one of the water lines that runs across so they send extra hose with the bottom one that you just hook up to the first one and then cut then continue all the way up so then you can hook up the water source
To the entire system we’re just gonna do a five gallon bucket on top they all have a bulkhead put into them and then a reducer down to a quarter inch barb end currently i’m doing a leak test to make sure that nothing is gonna leak once we put it in the room
Okay we have set up the racks we have set up reservoirs we have flushed out the tubes and we’ve checked the nipples to make sure that they’re all working so we’re going to come back tomorrow and hopefully there aren’t any leaks yup ah the big reveal any leaks
Oh uh these two might be leaking okay not bad so we just have to tighten those and everything else is okay i mean i haven’t got to the mouse rack yet but those two are good okay we had just a couple that leaked just barely overnight while we were gone
So that’s not too bad so we’re just gonna tighten up those nozzles and then let those sit for another night to make sure that they are not leaking anymore and so we’ll fill the other ones we actually have all of our rodents with us today in various boxes from actually mostly
Fan mail boxes that we were able to reuse because we’re always always trying to recycle so we’re going to start putting these all in the bins and i definitely forgot to pack our food scoop oh are we going to use that sure that’ll work perfect oh that’ll work out great All right now that we have betty in there and food the next thing we want to add or the last thing before putting all the rodents in who they are trying to escape hi cutie hi aren’t you a sweetie yeah we’ll take you out soon we’re going to add enrichment
So we have caves for each of the rat bins and we also have some like shredded confetti paper for the mice to play around with and i love using or recycling i suppose cheyenne’s old bird toys that she’s done with so i’m gonna piece this apart and
Spread it out amongst several bins we also have treats for everybody and two toys because a rodent’s front and sizers never stop growing their entire life so they need chew toys in order to keep them whittled down to an appropriate length some of the treats are actually whole
Nuts because that’ll really give their incisors something to chew at and then they get a nice little tasty reward on the inside and i brought one saucer just to see if it’s going to work with the bins i’m not sure if it is but it’d be kind of cool
If it did if not though we have tons of other things for them to play with anyway so we’re gonna put all those in and then we finally get to add the rodents oh you are so cute or a boy that is a girl here you go
You’ve got funfetti and a chew toy and a cave oh you’re so cute go have fun here’s aydah big chunky lady who’s ready who’s already pregnant there you go smaller lady oh you get two girlfriends okay have fun and here’s another little girl here you go you’ve got a really pretty collar one
That’ll match pregnant-wise look at you two you’re so cute you’re so sweet yes you are oh oh and she’s got black eyes too she’s really pretty okay we need a boyfriend for them yep here we go here’s a nice boy for them hi cutie you’re adorable here you go there’s your friends
New ladies with a tan hide too have fun i’ll quit oogling and we’ll just keep going okay just kidding i want to show one more bin set up because look at this beautiful boy oh i’ve been working hard to get some cool colors while we’ve been breeding at home and
He is a beautiful male okay here you go let’s get you some ladies these can be his ladies oh oh she’s pretty oh that one’s pretty too look at you they’re gonna make some pretty babies yeah they’re gonna be feeders but why not have fun with pretty colors while you’re doing it
Okay and now we’re on to rats so i figured we’d show you some of the individuals that we have or the fur types and colors that we breed this is a patchwork hairless red this is one of our girls she’s a younger female so newer to breeding and we’re going to put this
Beautiful rex girl with her the rex fur mutation kind of gives their fur a crinkly look so if you look back here see all the crinkle crinkly texture in the fur and this is also a dumbo too which means that she has really big ears like dumbo the
Elephant and she’s a blazed actually she has that white line on her face so this is a blaze so she’s got all sorts going on with her next to go in are a couple of girls this is a blue girl of ours hi sweetie oh i know there’s a
Lot going on here you go look at her isn’t she beautiful there we go and then they come with babies look at all those little babies oh my goodness there’s some really cute colors in here set you in i think my favorite is probably this little one with the silver face
Yeah and more babies here you go mama here you can have your babies back and then other mama here are your pinkies yeah here you go bring them in go take care of them next crawling out is a siamese here you go going in and we have a double rex that’s going to
Go in here and then finally here’s one of our breeder males his name is hey you peed on me because uh well don’t ask this one belongs to our fruit well is partially claimed by one of our friends so he’s forever a breeder for us and he’s extra spoiled and loved yeah so
Our plan for these is as you can see we don’t really have that many males and that’s because we’re going to rotate the mail throughout the bins so that they aren’t too crowded because we really only want a max of two females in there but a male still has to temporarily be
In there to do his job so we’re going to move everybody in all right the rats are mostly set up and the mice are mostly set up for the rats we ran out of these hides but they just came from the dollar tree so we’re gonna get a few more of those
Get some more chew toys for this side because we ran out so we’ll and grab some of those later today and for the mice we ran out of hides as well but they really like this nesting material we found so we’re going to buy a bunch more of that so they have that
Enrichment and they can make little nests out of it too we’re going to get some chew toys yeah you love that stuff don’t you it’s so much fun but there’s a couple that don’t have it just because we we ran out we didn’t bring enough so
We’re gonna go get some of that and figure out what to do for a cave for the mice it needs to be the perfect size to fit in one of these bins we figured it out each one of these bins now has a hut for the back
And we have some crinkle paper for nesting material and each bin also has some sort of a chew stick or chew toy to keep those incisors whittled down and that should be all that they need oh you’re already using it that’s adorable i actually used a soldering pin to melt open the opening
Instead of like scissors that would leave behind jagged edges i don’t want them to get poked by it so we did that for them and uh yeah i think they’re good to go hi aren’t you sweet do you want a nut have a pecan you’re welcome would whoever’s in here
Like some papaya there you go and oh you get choices what are you gonna pick yep she took the papaya good here do you want some papaya you go model boy yeah you’re so pretty there you go you’ve got some papaya and your babies i’ve actually been
Working the last couple of years on a nice strong line of good parenting mice because you know some mice are just terrible parents and they eat their babies so this is actually really cool to see all that selective breeding of ours actually paying off because after the stress of a move
She was already on top nursing them that’s a good mama good job guys oh and in case you’re not familiar with how rodent racks work the food and water are both of course accessible from inside of the bin basically the mice will chew through the
Grate let’s see if i can push this in here uh there you go there you can see it the food actually has a grate below it so that they can reach up with their hands and with their teeth and it actually provides enrichment for them to eat their food through that grate
It also prevents the food from getting poop on it because it’s elevated above and then they just chew pieces off into their bin and their water is actually connected to this five gallon bucket at the top which runs down a water line and then shoots off for each level and
As we were showing you earlier each line has a little offshoot with that nozzle or nipple that leads into the enclosure itself and then all the rodent has to do to get water is just lick the nozzle and water comes out oh my goodness look at these
Babies oh you are such a cute little rat i know a lot of you are probably thinking that these bins are too small for rats to live in and for pet rats you are absolutely correct rats are very smart animals they’re very social animals and in pet setups they need a multi-level cage
Stimulation and buddies that they can get along with and play with but realistically though if we set up pairs of rats in multi-level cages we could probably fit like 10 of them in this room and we honestly wouldn’t be able to produce enough rats to feed our own reptiles let alone
Provide feeders for customers that enter our store so as much as we hate keeping rats in this size of bin it’s a necessary evil in order to feed the demand of hungry snake mouths in the reptile community it’s unfortunate because rats are very smart animals like i was saying before and
They’re very interactive animals and they make wonderful pets they just are also a perfect diet for many medium and large snakes but although we can’t provide a multi-level cage we can ensure they have a complete diet we currently feed tech lad pellets which is a top of the line lap block that
Makes sure they get everything they need we also supplement with treats such as banana chips and nuts in the shell too actually because then it gives them something to chew on and a tasty reward inside which is a form of enrichment we can also make sure that they have enrichment in other
Forms such as each one of these bins for both rats and mice they all have some sort of hide they have chews wooden chews because their front incisors will keep growing their entire life so by having something to chew on it keeps them mentally stimulated and grinds down their teeth to an
Appropriate level you chewing on yours sorry i didn’t mean to interrupt my head babies they had babies in some of the bins we can have like tubes or other cardboard toys in there for them to crawl through or crawl on and we can make sure by breeding our own rodents that
They all have very clean quarters that’s actually why we went with the freedom breeder racks is because they use stainless steel which is very easy to clean and disinfect a lot of the big breeders of rodents out there that supply them online get a lot of their rodents from third parties too
Which is kind of scary to think about because you hope they get the control subjects from laboratories but who knows really which ones they’re getting so that’s actually another reason why we wanted to start breeding our own rodents plus a lot of the big breeders
Keep like four or five adults in a bin this size which i personally think is just pushing it too far yeah they are social so you don’t want to just keep one in a bin this size you want at least two but having more than two
I think is just too much so even for breeding our plan is to rotate a male around several bins so he’s not in there for very long just long enough to get the deed done but then that gives the girls as much space as possible otherwise
So although their bins may not be the largest there’s no economical way to keep up with demand in the reptile world there are a lot of snakes out there that need to eat however young rats love to play like these guys even even older rats they do yeah those guys
Those two girls are wrestling right now so i think we need to get one more rack we got another rag look at how big these bins are so these are gonna be for our grow out rats basically once they are weaned and they don’t need to be with mom anymore
We can give mom her space by moving the babies into these bins where they have tons of room to play hi guys how are you doing you having fun they’ve got two toys and a hut and things to play with they’ve got each other to play with and
Wrestle with they actually have a couple black-eyed whites which i’m pretty excited about right now yeah you’re very sweet uh yeah so i’m glad we got this second rack it did take seven months to get it but that’s because of covid causing a lot of backordered stuff right now
So i don’t blame freedom breeder and it was definitely worth the wait i really like this rack but again it’s been seven months so we’ve had all these wrecks since january actually and i love them just as much as day one easy to take care of it is it really is
I wasn’t sure and i still with this one we’ve had this for a week now and i wasn’t sure if i was gonna like the white rack it’ll show every mess but it shows every mess so we can keep it clean that’s true it’s currently small rats up top going
Down to jumbos on the bottom yeah we’ve got them organized by size they seem to really be liking the space and then it opens up their parents bins too so this is really a win-win situation i mean again yes they are feeder animals but we want them to be as happy as possible
While they’re here yeah another new thing we’ve implemented in this room since filming last is an air purifier and like a heavy duty one because of all the rodents in this room this is the levoit core 400s it’s one of their newest models and we’ve done little shout outs to
Levoit in the past because we really like their products and this is another really good one it actually can hook up via wi-fi to your alexa or google assistant and it has a laser dust sensor that will tell you how many dust particles are in the air
And it’ll on auto mode adjust its fan speed accordingly to keep the room as clean as possible and this is probably the most sophisticated air purifier i’ve ever had and it definitely helps keep the dust and odor down in this room because now i mean it’s been seven months since we filmed
The first part of this video and the entire room was full now of rodents and we were noticing that the dust was starting to accumulate even with the fan and the ceiling to create that negative pressure so this has been a lifesaver so what’s the 10 mean
And the blue circles that had anything to do with it yeah so the ring of lights changes color based off of what your air quality is blue means it’s very clean green is i think pretty clean orange is not so clean and red is really bad air quality so
The a here means it’s on auto and it would crank up the fan if the air quality was like in the red or the orange or whatnot that’s like parts per million yeah yeah from what i understand the nine is parts per million for
A cubic meter oh cool yeah you can set a timer you can turn the display on and off turn it up all the way i take it yeah you can manually adjust this fan speed yourself they call this turbo mode turbo mode yeah when it’s on full blast
Makes sense and it’s uh easy enough to clean too you just like twist the top you pull the lid off and then you vacuum the cartridge and put the lid back on oh nice so it’s not a replaceable cartridge you can replace it like every six to eight months like a uvb bulb
But you can just vacuum it in between nice yeah and there’s carbon in the cartridge and that’s what helps with um odor control too cool so yeah i really like the filter and we love the white products so we’ll put a link to their contact info in the description below and one
More thing that’s new in this room since january is we now breed african soft furs these are neither a rat nor a mouse they are an entirely different species of rodent altogether but this is what ball pythons naturally eat in africa so if you have a picky eater or ball
Python that just doesn’t want to eat anything people have really good success with feeding african sophos and these are community breeders it’s been found that if they’re kept in small groups they just don’t thrive so you have to keep like six or seven of them together and they
Will take care of each other’s babies it’s like completely different than mice yeah there’s actually a mom taking care of like all the babies right there she’s doing so well yeah she’s like i have to take care of like 20 babies right here and then apparently a mom took these babies and
Decided yeah they need to be away from her yeah they trade babies all the time and yeah now this is something that is actually pretty popular in our in our shop so i’m glad that we’re breeding these and they’re they’ve been interesting to learn about you should pull one of those pinkies out
Oh yeah that’s right okay so in this hand is a pinky mouse we’re all pretty familiar with what a pinky mouse looks like they’re called a pinky because they have no fur and therefore their skin is pink they look pink here is a pinky african software
They’re fuzzy ah it’s so weird they come out as fuzzies yeah it’s so strange yet they take forever to grow that’s why software’s are usually a little more expensive than mice and rats honestly they take so long to grow but they’re really interesting animals yeah they do really well they
Like a lot of times if you were to take this pinky out and get too much scent on it the parent mouse will kill all the other babies yes but now they’re suffering shoppers you can pretty much throw new ones in there they’ll adopt them they’re great parents yeah so there you
Have it a lot of you have been asking us to show our rodent breeding setup and we used to have wooden racks in our garage that we weren’t super excited about so we decided to wait to show you all until we had new professional wrecks and i couldn’t
Be happier with the freedom breeder racks that we got if anyone is interested in a freedom breeder rack they also make snake racks too by the way just go to freedombreeder.com i’ll also put a link to them in the description below i have some cute babies here too
These are cute little blue racks this one’s a little actually they’re both dumbo rex babies oh i love rats i mean yeah they are feeders but they’re so cute at the same time but we also breed like special ones so in case one of them wants to go home as a pet or
Something like that or a feeder we do breed for color and mothering instinct and personality so a lot of our babies would hypothetically make really good pets too not just feeders but anyway i hope you all enjoyed today’s video i know it was one we put off for a while
Because first off we were also worried that people would be upset that we’re breeding animals to be food for reptiles but i think everyone at this point realizes it’s the circle of life i hope people understand anyway so this is kind of a tough subject for
Us to talk about but we’ll see how it goes thanks everybody for watching thank you to our wonderful patreon backers as well and we’ll see you next time cute little babies You
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