My Maintenance/Care Procedures

I'll go ahead and post here first, even though my collection isn't huge. I currently have 6 snakes (colubrids and small boids), 9 amphibians (frogs, toads, salamanders), a couple of tarantulas, 2 leopard geckos, and a large colony of dubia roaches.

TIME:
Daily, I spend about 1 hour checking for poop, handling critters, changing water as needed, etc.

Every 2 days, I spend about 30 minutes, in addition to the hour, feeding frogs.

Twice per week (Sunday and Wednesday), I spend about 2 hours changing everyone's water all at once, feed the other amphibians
who don't eat every other day, and feeding the tarantulas and geckos.

Once per week (Sundays), in addition to the 2 hours I spend on everyone else, I spend an additional hour feeding the snakes.

On average, I spend about 1.7 hours per day on herp maintenance and husbandry.

MONEY:
I spend about $100 every 4 months on rodents for the snakes and pixie frog.

I spend about $50 every 4 months on crickets.

Every year, I spend about $250 on vet visits. Sometimes more, if a herp gets sick. One thing that ticks me off royally is when
someone refuses to take a sick animal to the vet because they don't want to pay. You are responsible for the life and care of
that animal, just like you would be responsible for a human baby. If you can't handle that, don't have pets! Just because there
are no strict laws forcing you to get proper vet care, doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.

I also spend an additional $300 or so per year on caging, water dishes, substrate, etc.

So yearly, with my small to mid-sized collection, I spend about $1000 per year on just maintenance and medical expenses. Think
about that before you start collecting animals withour regard to what they may cost you over time. It really adds up.

With just 2 monitor lizards I spend about 30 minutes per day cleaning water dishes and spot cleaning poop. Every other day the ackie gets fed and 2 to 3 times a week the savannah gets fed. That adds at least another 30 minutes to those days. Once a week I spend another 30 minutes cleaning the cricket cage out. As far as money goes, I spend around 15 dollars a week on food. That includes two different sizes of mice, raw ground turkey, crickets, and superworms. I spend around 30 dollars a year on substrate.

Now I've read through everyone's posts. Y'all are making me feel guilty! I've been spending a lot more time on other things than I have on snakes lately.

Probably a 30 minute average, but it's variable. Sometimes a lot longer--like if EVERYONE poops in a 2 day span (which with 38 snakes...still happens on occasions and MAN does it smell then) I may be in my shed for 2+ hours cleaning and watering and changing substrates out. usually each tub/small cage takes me 5 minutes to totally redo. The big retic cages though....hah, no, those take 20-30 minutes each.

Feed's pretty basic--pull rodents out when I'm home from work, feed before I go to bed, check the next morning. It takes *hours* to thaw them all but I'm not actually in the room the whole time.

Of course this doesn't count entering information into iHerp to track feeding and stuff.

edit: today was about 1.5 hours. the boa pooped, a retic pooped, total substrate change on 2/3 of the colubrids and it's a feed day for the colubrids and small snakes. No bites this time though

if EVERYONE poops in a 2 day span (which with 38 snakes...still happens on occasions and MAN does it smell then)

Yes, and when pretty much everyone gets fed the same day (except for somebody in shed or being finicky), pooping the same day is bound to happen sometimes! I'm feeling fortunate that I don't have that many snakes! More power to you!

Congrats on not getting tagged this time--that's really nice when you have big snakes!