Transcript
Intro
hey good morning everybody this video is going to cover a couple different style rodent pins one of which i've shown in the past and another one is kind of new i purchased a couple of these so i wanted to kind of go over the differences pros and cons just you know an overall comparison compared to the typical lab style cages i'm going to go over some food how it relates to this style watering and kind of just some overall tips and advice and care especially if you're you know wondering about african softwares or or specifics in terms of diet for rodents in general so this cage here i already have this one kind of set up minus the water bottle um this is a different style this is kind of a similar style in terms of how you know you have a lid that's attached to a bin um in this case the tub or the bin style is based around the v35 or the vision 35 so this is the same exact tub that i showed off not too long ago in a snake video uh mostly for the for the males that i use so this is based around the same exact tub and obviously the the lid here is going to be from the same company same manufacturer which is vision so they make a lot of racks they make rodent racks and now they're kind of getting into more of this style lid which is basically more like a lab style that you that you would typically see in previous
Lab style
videos that i showed off with a lab style so the previous style here is you have your bin you have your wire lid that sits on top you have your little slot or opening for your water bottle and then basically the way these work is sometimes they have this little separator sometimes they don't this just kind of separates the water bottle from where you put the food so if you were using this style water bottle it would sit in here it sits at an angle the water obviously feeds down to the little nozzle and your food your little food reservoir would sit here and the way that these are designed is obviously the spacing is large enough so the rodents can eat through and get whatever food you put there the food stays off the floor it's not getting buried it's not getting urinated on and these are actually kind of built recessed down that way uh the smaller rodents or just the rodents in general are able to access the food and the other thing that it actually provides is if you put the food flat here you're going to have a lot of issues where the food is coming off the edges you know the rodents are going to push it around and what you're going to see is you're going to wake up in the morning or you're going to see throughout the day that there's going to be food scattered all over the floor and that's so much food where it's intended to be so this style i've covered a lot this is a very basic and popular style that you see pretty much all over
New style
so now i'm going to kind of focus on this new style from vision concept is the same um style wise it's just a little bit different this is um completely stainless steel so that's kind of one thing that i was attracted to about it as you can tell with a side by side the v35s are going to be slightly larger so this one is relatively an inch inch and a half wider and then in terms of the length it's roughly an inch longer so and i'll just kind of put this one up here for comparison so the footprint here you're going to kind of get maybe even three inches wider inch inch and a half longer so it's a larger bin not anything drastic but it is larger so something just to keep in mind style concept is very much similar you have your grid here or just kind of like your your cutouts for your air circulation or or whatnot pretty typical these are kind of just uh you know their own little style their own little design okay coming back to the food hopper um
Food hopper
as you can tell i have some food up here now which i'm going to cover the slots for these are a lot smaller in width compared to the your typical wire style so a couple things with this is one most people that breed rodents are going to use a a missouri or a lab black style like this and i actually brought a couple just variations but this style one of the cool things is with these slots being not as wide you're able to use a variety of food and this is going to kind of hold it better compared to the wire so if you use typical lab lock missouri 6f missouri rodent breeder anything like that this no issues at all right this is more for let's say you don't have access to that food maybe it's pricey where you live the shipping charges are outrageous this style is going to provide a little bit more variation in terms of what you can use so i'm just going to kind of give you a breakdown and these are just a couple
Food products
that i use in general in terms of food products so over here in the top left this is your typical missouri lab block style they kind of come here in a block obviously the rodents it sits on top of the cloth the rodents nibble at the exposed areas and it's pretty common it's it's pretty much a staple throughout the rodent breeding and you know in that community so uh that's your missouri six f or your rodent block or your lab block okay coming through here this is like a basic kibble so this kibble here i try to look for anything that's natural no red dyes anything like that look at the ingredient list you know some kibbles you know in in terms of kibble just means kind of like a dry food some kibbles are just as expensive or more expensive as a missouri so this is just a kibble why would somebody want to use a kibble as i mentioned there's a couple options let's say you just don't have access to this you know you live in an area or a location that is difficult to find there's nothing wrong with using a higher end kibble you just want to make sure that you research the ingredients make sure they're not containing those dyes and another reason let's say for african saufers okay african software's as i've mentioned previously are going to require a higher amount of protein compared to your typical mice and rats so one of the most common things that people come across or see or you know have questions about is how come my rodents or my mothers or the males they're eating the babies right they get a nice litter and then you have less less and before you know it the whole litter is gone or you catch the rodents in the act of eating it well there's a lot of variations a lot of you know situations why that can happen it could be stress environment and so on but specifically you want to make sure especially if you're breeding soft furs or where you do see that where they're cannibalizing the litters check the protein content most missouri or most lab blocks are going to be 16 to 18 percent where you can find some kibbles you know 19 21 23 even up to 30 percent protein and for african sufferers that's going to be you know ins extremely important because they require a different diet okay so moving on you know once you get kind of to those higher protein foods what do you notice happens is a lot of times the sizes the pellets whatever you'd like to refer to as those sizes kind of get smaller so your typical lab block and then here is more of a a cat or you know this is a smaller size dog kibble and this specific one i use this very sparsely this one i think is up in the 30 percent proteins percentages so if i try to take this kibble for example onto this style um it's going to fall right through you're going to waste a lot of food yes they're going to be able to eat it yes it might stay up there but it's going to fall through so if you're breeding mice or rats and you use a lab block it's not a big deal but if you are looking for variations with the food this style here is going to be able to hold it a lot better so i put some on here just so you're able to see it and as you can tell it sits there it's not falling through even if it gets shifted sideways a little bit like so it's going to hold really nice where if i took this same piece and i try to do this on this style it's going to go right through okay so in terms of what this will accept in food the length of these they're still long enough where the rodents are able to access any style food but it's really the width in this case which was really thought out and really designed nicely moving on to just some other styles this here is more of like a hog feed most hog feeds are going to be very similar to what i mentioned previously with the other style foods the big difference is most of these come in a pelleted form instead of a block or a larger kibble so this also is able to sit on here especially when you blend it in with the other food it's going to sit up there kind of get held up by other foods you don't have to really worry about it okay in terms of supplementation i do like to sprinkle in some oatmeal from time to time especially for the for the grow outs and the little ones and then one of the things that i've been pushing for and telling people a lot is mealworms are extremely high in protein and especially with african softwares especially with the line that i'm using they absolutely love these things so anytime you're able to kind of give them a supplementation especially with these meal worms you could just put them right on top but this is a great way to supplement higher amounts of protein in your rodents diet if you if you see fit if you're having any issues but they absolutely love these i posted a video um yesterday with one and as you can tell right away they're going for it i mean they absolutely love those things so this is a real easy way to supplement a higher protein in their diet you can typically find these you know at any store some people breed them but they usually you know the ones i use are dried already and there's a couple places online that you can get them fairly cheap especially if you go to uh farm supply stores or stuff like that so just a kind of a breakdown of different variations in the diet and with these six in general they all fit um you're able to access and use different style foods instead of just your typical plain lab block over and over and over again um a couple of things before i can open this up and show you around yes you can modify these so if you take a hardware cloth or something else and put it on top yes you can modify it to hold the the different foods so always keep that in mind do it yourself projects modifications are always something i i enjoy i always love to see other people's ideas so i'm not saying this cannot do this or that i'm just kind of giving you the base foundation of what it's you know intended to do in the design all right so back to these new cages as i mentioned vision product stainless steel throughout and i use the clear bins for these vision also makes a a flat gray obviously the the clear and the cool thing is the way that these are set is they kind of have like a little hideout here in the back which i'm going to open up in a second but other than that it's just your basic it sits on top it's got an overlap throughout the side in the back and in the rear it does have just a little double clip here and here and that just kind of grabs the lip of the bin uh in my opinion these are heavy enough especially when you add the food in the water bottle that you don't have to worry about them pushing these lids up they're heavy enough on their own no rodents are gonna push that up um rats you know you might have a little bit different but overall these are fairly heavy okay over here to the right you have your basic little hole through for your water bottle so if you want to use this style it's going to sit if you want to use a larger style glass same kind of tip style once again this will sit just like so so this will probably you know accept all different styles you can even put if you want a automatic you know like the water nozzles and you hook it up to a water reservoir you can put it there you can put it through the slots on the top so a lot of options with water okay food as i've already went over and covered sits right there on top i threw a bunch of different variations on here just so you can guys see how it sits and hold in terms of what i've been noticing this food about this size if it's not filled all the way this will hold for at least a week especially with african softwares rats obviously might be a little less mice probably even a longer time that it's going to last so opening this up it's fairly simple just like most just going to lift it here and i'm just going to kind of push this to the back
Spacing
i'll take it off just so you guys can kind of see the inside but in terms of spacing i have uh three females and one male in this bin so they have plenty of space and then obviously they're growing up a nice little litter here i don't know the exact count but you got some over here hanging out so just kind of give you an overview of the spacing plenty of space in there no stress at all they're able to roam around and these guys are about four weeks old going on five weeks i think so typically what i do is once they're about in this stage their eyes are open they're starting to run around they're starting to eat on their own i will separate them and move them to a bigger bigger bin same style you know they got the lid and the bin i've actually using some of the vision v70s and they tend to run around in there they're low enough which i'll cover in a different video so this style bin as i mentioned completely smooth just like most of the vision tubs there's nothing to chew no sharp edges no corners so there's nothing that the rodents are going to be able to get a hole of and start to start to chomp on and make a nice hole in i've had these i purchased a couple of these um i've been running these for like a week week and a half now and this just sits on top
Review
the little hooks will kind of grab in the back and it closes up so i've been running these for about a week just kind of test them out one of the things that attracted me obviously besides the the food hopper the stainless steel the construction overall i just like that it fit these bins because i have a lot of these bins i keep a lot of backups and i really like these bins they're a great size for reptiles and rodents so when vision came out with this lid to kind of encompass that bin i was all over it i ordered a couple of these right away they came in the packaging the shipping everything was great in terms of negatives you know they are going to be a little bit more pricey so the lid itself if you if you purchase them as an individual i think they run around sixty dollars and in terms of a lab style like this these complete with the lid and bin you know i've seen them from forty dollars to sixty dollars also difference is the sixty dollars for this only covers the lid it does not cover the bin so if you're looking to get the complete setup the bin i think they run around ten or eleven dollars uh shipping shipping is a little high for these lids i think the shipping is 40 no matter what so if you are thinking about purchasing some and you know you have an idea that you want to purchase one or you might want to purchase more in the future whether you purchase one or if you purchase 10 you know the shipping is going to be 40 so just something to kind of keep in mind similar to when you order a snake rack you know you kind of want to take advantage of the shipping at the at the one time so i did order a couple and so far i'm loving the size the design food hopper as i mentioned has been worth the money by itself just waking up and you don't have to really worry about it and then what really attracted me to it was using being able to use the different variations in food and you don't have to worry about that food going to waste so my perspective the way i kind of looked at it was if i'm able to use all these different foods that i wanted to use and i don't have to do any modifications i don't have to worry about it you know i'm not wasting food you know stuff like this is not falling through the grid or through the hardware cloth you know that alone by itself is going to pay itself back just with the amount of food that's not being wasted the time the convenience so just my perspective on it obviously what you're going to use is going to depend on your goals your needs your requirements something like this if you have access to missouri 6f a lab block larger size kibble you're pretty much good to go um if you are somebody that breeds suffers you like that supplementation with the higher percent protein something like this could be this specifically something similar or maybe this just kind of opens up your mind to you know a different style design measurements this will work for you also um i obviously didn't have to purchase any of the bins i had a bunch so for me it was just the lids and before i kind of sign off here i'll just kind of give you guys one more look hopefully i answered all your questions
Outro
especially for just this topic but remember to keep in mind if you are seeing that cannibalism if you are seeing you know mothers or whatever eating their babies obviously one check that environment make sure they're not stressed make sure it's not too hot make sure it's not too cold they have access to nice clean water every single day and as you can tell a lot of these as i've mentioned african software's these are not skittish they're not aggressive they're not mean you know just kind of hanging out lids been off i'm not messing with them um you know petting them whatever i've never had an i've never had an issue i can touch the babies they're not going to come after me all those miscon you know misconcepts about you can't touch the babies they'll bite you a lot of that just deals with stress factors obviously you want to minimize interacting especially when they just have their litters of course they're going to be a little a little on edge but in terms of food especially with african saucers make sure you're getting them that higher protein you know 16 percent for african software's yes it is doable but you really want to shoot for that you know 19 even up into 20 percentages i've been doing that for the longest time even 10 years ago when i when i first started breeding these guys i haven't had any issues no allergies you know no visibles things like that so my experience obviously everybody's different lines are different but hopefully you guys enjoyed the video i kind of covered hopefully everything in terms of you know differences pros cons very similar in terms of style design setup but the difference is obviously we talked about and i will try to list all the exact foods that i use and where i get them from in a description so hopefully that'll help you guys out until then thanks a lot for checking out the video thanks for all the interactions the support on various social media sites instagram and and whatnot i'll talk with you guys all later and always feel free to contact me i'm here to help i'm here to give back to the community that's helped me so until then take it easy guys i appreciate it be safe talk with you all soon