With a projected 200 kingsnake cages to start with, securing the food source is probably the most important first step in my business plan. Before I even began to hunt for my breeder snakes, I wanted to have a primary and secondary food source in place.

Kingsnakes and milk snakes are ravenous feeders that will eat a variety of prey items, from rodents to reptiles, so that makes it relatively easy to find a food source. Availability, price and delivery can make this a costly proposition, however, especially on a commercial scale.

When I started as a hobbyist, finding a feeder mouse or two wasn't difficult, but finding enough to feed 20 or more animals on a regular basis was problematic. To feed a collection of size you invariably had to start your own mouse colony.

Today, a hobbyist or breeder can choose from a variety of sources, from individually-wrapped frozen feeders at the chain pet stores Petco and PetSmart, or bulk frozen feeders from a local pet shop. Frozen feeders are almost always available in bulk at the many reptile expos that occur across the country every year as well, supplied by the dozens of local breeders. And feeder mice are also available in uncounted places on the internet, from massive breeders like RodentPro, Mice Direct, and Big Cheese Rodents, to smaller local breeders advertising in kingsnake.com's classifieds. Frozen feeder mice are even available on Amazon.com!

If you want to save yourself space, convenience, labor, smell, and a variety of other issues, hazards, and problems, buying frozen feeder mice is really your best option.

If, on the other hand, you plan on starting and building a massive colony of breeder snakes as we are, the costs of buying frozen feeders can be daunting. With an estimated 200 colubrid snakes consuming a minimum of 1 mouse a week, 40 weeks a year, we will need to have on hand 8,000 feeder mice over a year's time. So in our case, our best option is to start our own mouse colony.