Some Questions...

[Hayley411]

Okay so I've been breeding feeder mice for a little over a year now. Up until now it's been mostly for my own lizards and to sell to a couple friends. Well last week I got a call from a petstore that has bought my extras on occasion. They want me to become their mouse supplier. Now I need to increase my numbers to be producing 150+ a week. I currently have 3 racks, 16 bins total.

So I'm thinking of doing the harem method and running 1 male to 3 female each bin. With my line of mice I average about 16-18 per litter. Though I normally take the litters down to under 10 as pinks. My question and I pretty much know the answer is can the mothers really handle that many pinks? That's alot of fricken pinks if all the females pop at once. I have a bin with 48 pinks in there and they look thin, definitely way thinner than when I cull the litters down.

Also with the number of bins I have I need the male to do his job and have all the females give birth in the same week to be able to fill the order of mice. Do they normally have them on a schedule of some kind? Up until now I've rotated the buck through so was able to predict when the litter was going to be born, but can't really do that with the harem breeding.

Anyways sorry this post is so long...
~Hayley

[Shenzi Sixaxis]

Maybe you could offer a food high in fat to the females before they drop? Like peanut butter or sunflower seeds?

I'm not sure what you're asking with the male... if a female gives birth, he will mate with her a few hours later and she'll get pregnant right away, so they should pop out litters every three weeks.

[Hayley411]

Sorry I know it probaby was kind of confusing.
When I've tried the harem breeding in the past the male seemed to get bored with his three girls and it took weeks for them to get pregnant again. But if I took him out and put him in with another set of does he was chasing them and trying to mate. That's what i'm afraid of happening. But I know alot of people breed them this way and don't have a problem. I'm just going to have to give it a try and see how it all works out.

I'm picking up about 30 mice from a breeder friend of mine on tomorrow. So that should give me a good start on this little adventure.

~Hayley

[Shenzi Sixaxis]

You could try that. I should try that. Hmmm. An absence of females may make him freak out and mate with them as much as possible and might be a good thing.

[tomfromtheshade]

I've written a response to this post a few times and after I get done typing it just never looks right. Explaining stuff is sometimes not my strong suit. So, I will just tell you what I would do in your situation. If anyone wants to elaborate on it they should feel free LOL.

Build three racks using Petmate Value Line litter pans. Make these racks 10 levels high. Using 2x2s and only leaving 2" between levels (with casters) the ten level high rack will be 72" to the top of the top tub. This is perfect. Obviously, the watering system will add additional height, but that's fine.

Two of the racks will be used for breeding. You should run 1.4 mice per tub, for a total of 40 females per rack.

One of the racks will be for growing out breeders. In the growout racks you should use the top two tubs to house males, 5 per tub. Then use the bottom 8 tubs for females, 5 per tub.

Follow this rotation closely.

Rack A = breeding rack
Rack B = breeding rack
Rack C = grow out rack

At the start of this little adventure you will want to fill Rack A with 12 week old mice and let them have at it.

In the first litters you want to hold back 10.40 mice and put them in your grow out rack.

Once they reach 16 weeks old you move them into Rack B and allow them to start breeding.

Now you fill Rack C with another 10.40 replacement animals. Once these animals are 16 weeks old you use them to replace the mice in Rack A, which are now approximately 1 year old.

Under this rotation you will be replacing 12 month old animals with four month old animals on a continuous basis.

You will also need some holding racks as well, to store the weaners that you are not holding back for breeding purposes.

If you follow this plan you should be just fine. Keep in mind, my expertise is in rats...not mice, but they are very similar in terms of their production.