Heat reduced my rat population

[Slateman]

I wander how many rats youy people have after today. I lost about 50%
Lucky for me that I find out quick enough, so I can use them as feed. I was checking on them ewery 2 hours.

 

[redline]

i lost 15 rats

 

[Slateman]

And eggs in incubator had temperature 23c for one hour before I used icebottle. I hope they are OK

 

[africancichlidau]

I didn't lose a rat, thankfully but my missus lost a Guinea Pig What are you incubating if 23 is too high Slatey?

 

[FAY]

Hey Slatey,
We lost heaps also, even though we put frozen water botles in them and all,
The mice faired worse!
Did you mean your incubator got to 33c?
Ours got to 33.5c for a while, we hope that it is OK as well!!

 

[hugsta]

I didn't loose any rats, constant refreshing of the hot water with cold seemed to help every few hours.

 

[snakelady-viper]

I change water every few hours and give them froze water bottles they seem to manage well. Didn`t loose any but mice need there frozen bottles changed more often.

 

[Sdaji]

Mine are all fine. None of them got above -30C or so, although it was about 75 degrees warmer outside the freezer.

 

[Retic]

I bought some sheets of polystyrene and stuck them on the inside of the shed and haven't lost any since. Before I did that we lost around 15% of our big breeders.

 

[steve6610]

hi all,
i know how you all feel, 2 weeks ago we lost 16 pair of rats, all had 8 babies each, we managed to freeze them, but still leaves us short for weaners, we also lost over 300 mice and babies, the sad part was we couldn't save them for food, most were to far gone, we ended up burning 2 buckets full of dead adult mice and babies, we ended up losing all our baby mice and over half of our breeders, just at the time when we needed them most, the hard part is trying to get them breeding again to supply our buyers,

cheers,
steve.....
ps. next summer we will have our air-con shed set up, we have started it already,

 

[Retic]

Although air con would be the answer if possible have a look at some simple insulation. I got some polystyrene sheets around 15 mm thick and just stuck them on with silicone, they reduced the temperature inside the rat shed by about 10 degrees. We have a cheap pedestal fan moving the air around and even though the shed is in full sun from about 8 in the morning to maybe 5 in the afternoon it is quite cool inside now.

 

[Jason]

i have been wANTING TO START BREEDING RATS AND MICE BUT MY RESON FOR NOT STARTING IS THE HEAT, CAUSE I WOULD HAVE TO keep them outside although they would be constantly in the shade. should i try and breed them and just put ice bottles in there in the heat?

 

[africancichlidau]

boa, did you do the walls as well or just the roof ?

 

[bigbing]

sorry to hear that you lost so many mice steve. where abouts in nth qld are you? we live in townsville and before christmas we had to move our rat colony inside the house where it is airconditioned. the rats just about cooked outside.

 

[Retic]

I did the roof, and the front. I also did the inside of the doors. I found the sides of the shed barely get warm even on a really hot day because they are shaded. It cost me maybe $30 as the bloke at the factory gave me most of the polystyrene free for Christmas It was probably the best thing I have done for them and although it isn't suitable for everyone if you can do it I recommend it.

 

[africancichlidau]

Thanks for that mate, now to find my polystyrene Oh yes, it's for my lizard shed, not my rats

 

[peterjohnson64]

Thankfully, all my indoor reptiles are in an airconditioned room. In fact, it is currently about 10 degrees cooler than the house so we are even sleeping out there tonight!!! Don't have any rats, just crickets and they are inside as well.

 

[Retic]

I built my reptile room out of coldroom panels but the roof was colourbond so even on an overcast day it was like a radiator and too hot to touch. I lined whole of the inside of the roof with 40mm polystyrene sheets and now the air con hardly has to work at all. Polystyrene has the most incredible insulating quality even when quite thin.

 

[peterjohnson64]

Hey and did you notice a guy called Jamie Stuart post an add to sell 1,000 frozen rats & mice today. And we thought we had it bad from the heat!!!!

 

[africancichlidau]

All my snakes are in the house but my lizards had to move out to the shed due to lack of room inside. I was going to put up another shed of the coldroom panels like you said boa but unfortunately I lost my job just before Christmas and so will have to wait a while now. The polystyrene sound like a good, cheap temporary alternative.