Need all the Advice i can get

[ryanisgothic]

I have decided to start breeding mice due to the price and distance i have to go to aquire my feeders. Im keeping my mice on a mixture of pine pellets and a little kiln dried pine for nesting purposes. Im feeding a dog food named Doggie bag from TSC, it has 18% protein and 6% crude fat, im gonna see how it works out. Right now i have a 1.3 group, the male and one of the females arent breeding size yet but are close, and for the other two females i think one of them i bought pregnant and the other might be pregnant. Now for the questions.

1. How many mice would you recommend putting is these style tubs?
(http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sterilite-...t-of-4/8282896)

2. Do seperate your females from the males/ give them rest in between litters?

3. Do you cull babies to more managable number for the moms to care for?


Any advice is welcome, ive come here to educate myself so i can have a clean healthy feeders for my animals. Im sure ill have more questions down the road, and thanks in advance.

[tomfromtheshade]

Anyone who is considering breeding rodents should just build a rack.

The medium Petmate litter pans (16" x 12" x 4") is really perfect for 1.2 mice.

Doggy Bag dog food is what I feed to my rats exclusively. Mice might need a little more fat if you are keeping them together all the time.

I wouldn't separate them. Just let them keep breeding. Try to keep track of when the babies are born and you can pull them at 28 days or when the next litter is born, whichever is sooner.

Also, I wouldn't cull any babies off the bat. If you have a small scale breeding operation you can check all of your tubs every day. You can pull the small, weak looking babies and feed them to something. The smaller weaker babies will die and will be eaten by the mom. Its better to feed them off before that happens.

When you build a rack for mice remember to use 1/4" hardware cloth.

[ryanisgothic]

Thank you for your answer. A couple more questions now.

1. I have three ball pythons as of right now, how many females would i need to have 7 adults per week?

2. How many tub rack should i build? And an average cost?

3. Is it worth breeding mice over rats? Since rats grow to the size of an adult mouse in 3 or so weeks.

[BAMReptiles]

if you are feeding balls, youre better off breeding rats

[Jeremy78]

For feeding three snakes I would say you would need about 5.10 mice. That would give you about 80-100 babies a month. If you have a bad month with breeding you can freeze em as they grow up.

Cost of a mouse rack is cheap! I built my whole rack for 25 dollars and 14 of it was for the hardware cloth. It's a 15 tub rack using dollar store bins.

With only 3 snakes mice will take up much less space then rats and be much more manageable.

[BAMReptiles]

not really, for 3 snakes you would only need maybe 3-5 female rats and 1 male. that can easily be held in 1 tub. plus the rats would be up to size in a fraction of the time. id still say go with rats.