Should I separate?

[Beardedragon]

I have a male mouse that has gone wild with the Lady's, and I'm

almost sure they will all have their baby's around a short period

of time. Now, my question is, how or should i separate them? I do

not have the supply's to separate 9 different mice( I'm going to

have around two or three spare tubs) Pretty much what is going

to happen is I'm going to have to remove everyone expect for

the male, which is a little unreasonable to me. These are mice so

i know one back to back breeding is not going to hurt them. I

know cannibalism might be a problem but so far i have not dealt a

whole litter being ate( and ive kept a few litters been kept

together) and the ones i have been ate were more than likely

stress related from being moved into a new home away from the

pet store. Do you think i should keep them together, and only separate

ones that will give birth a few days after the ones that look

like they are about to pop?

[cassandra]

A couple of options:

- separate out groups of 2 to 3 females to house together who will give birth at the same, leaving the male alone.

- feed off the male so you have one more tub to do the above and grow up a male stud from one of the babies.

I tried to keep a 1.2 group together when one of the mommas gave birth. The babies were nommed instantly. Right now, I keep my male is a shoebox size kritter keeper type tub and introduce ladies to him. When they're a few days from giving birth, I move them into their own enclosure to give birth, with one exception when I have 2 preggers in my grow tub. In that case, I fed or froze off the rest of the growers and left the 2 preggers to have birth and raise their young together, which they did fine. I haven't had babies nommed in a while. =)

[Beardedragon]

The only problem is see with feeding off the male is finding another good breeder. I have one male already waiting to replace him( but i first want to see if he breeds) so i could feed him off, but next time im not so sure. Granted i will get around 80 or so babys to raise up i do not need them all to get pregnant right away again. Today or tomorrow im going to walmart to pick up a few more tubs to raise the babys in. For all i know 5 of them might have babys together, could that lead to problems?

[MarkS]

I never separate my mice. Ever. Once I set up a colony of mice they stay together until I retire the entire colony together. The mothers and the father all help out in caring for all of the babies. I've found cannibalism to only be a problem if the mice aren't getting enough food or water, or if they are nervous about their surroundings. For the first, just make sure they get food and water everyday, if they run out of water, even for an hour they can start eating babies. For the second, keep your nose out of their cages at any other time, don't clean as often, and keep them in the dark.

Mice really aren't as tough as a lot of people make them out to be, but people tend to over think and over work the whole process. Often with mice, doing less is better.

[Beardedragon]

Ok, so do you do back to back breeding through out their whole lives? I think i might try keeping them all together once, and see how it gos. Will the non pregnant/ still pregnant bother other mice babys?

Leaveing them alone is not a problem, they are in our heated/ cooled barn so the only time im in there is when i have to deal with our dogs( once in the morning and once at night) for about 30 minutes. When they are out it is pitch black in there with nothing to bother them.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

What I do is that I house female per pair (sisters) and have the male rotating through the different pairs.

The males rotates through 3 tubs each spending 2 weeks at the time in each tub, by the time they come back to tub 1 the babies are ready to be weaned and the mothers are ready to be bred again.

Females are never seperated they stay together from breeding to nursing.

I never had any issue this way.

[MarkS]

Ok, so do you do back to back breeding through out their whole lives? I think i might try keeping them all together once, and see how it gos. Will the non pregnant/ still pregnant bother other mice babys?

Like I said, I keep them all together, all the time. I pull out the baby mice when they've been weaned. I do cull out the extras though so the tub doesn't get over crowded. Generally no more then 10-12 babies per litter depending on the number of litters. With my tubs I used to have 1.3 adults per tub, but I've found that I actually get better results with 1.2 adults. (my tubs are small and can get overcrowded easily) so I never have more then 20 babies per tub which I thin down to a dozen when they reach large fuzzy-small hopper size (2 1/2-3 weeks) The Adults are always a constant. I put them together when they are young adults of about 6 weeks, then they are never separated until I retire them together when they are about 6-7 months

Mark

[Argentra]

I keep my trios together all the time. Once the babies are weaned, I plop them into grow out tubs. Simple, no problems with baby-eating (I feed them Science Diet Senior dog kibble along with their blocks), and the dads are really good babysitters.

Also, my girls seem to be able to 'fend him off' until they are ready to breed again, since I've had at least a week or two pause between weaning and another litter.

If I were you, I'd keep that male. A good, strong breeder male mouse is a blessing to find.