raising mice for food question

[punyhuman07]

i was wondering if theres a link on here since i'm still kinda new where i could get info on raising mice and rats for food sources for my snakes...

i'm looking for set-up ideas and feeding where to seperate mice from each other stuff like that thanks

[Clear]

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/f...play.php?f=127 <-rats
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/f...play.php?f=128 <-mice

[truthsdeceit]

Here's my method:

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=77619

[punyhuman07]

so is it more money to raise your own with tanks food stuff like that or better to go the route of frozen thaw and the smell does that bother any one....

[truthsdeceit]

so is it more money to raise your own with tanks food stuff like that or better to go the route of frozen thaw and the smell does that bother any one....

It depends on how many mice you need and whether you can buy your supplies in bulk.

Cost:
I only have 4 snakes and spend about 12dollars a month keeping my mice and rats alive (this is on pine bedding and on lab blocks). I come out about even. It would cost me the same amount to buy frozen online. Last time I ordered frozen cost me 52 for the mice and 53 for shipping, so 95$ and the amount I bought was gonna last me 7-8months. ergo 95/8= 11.88. So yeah even. (This is not counting initial setup which was expensive, I'd say I spent over 100dollars on tubs, waterbottles, food dishes, chew toys and materials to build hoppers.)

Why I do it:
So I come out even and end up having to do more work to keep up with them. But I enjoy it and like watching the birth cycle, I also feel better because I know where my feeders are coming from and that they're fresh. Mice kept in the freezer for 7-8months are not near as nutrious as a mouse I hand fed and killed fresh for my snakes.

Production:
I currently have 8 female mice and 1 male (the post i gave you was before I got things perfect) and also keep 4 rats. With my current setup I acutually produce more mice than I need but I feed them off when they are young and feed several smaller sized items at a feeding instead of one large mouse. I end up with about 20pups every 2 1/2 weeks.
I acctually am not breeding my rats at this time they're just pets so some of the cost of keeping isn't being replaced.

Smell:
I keep my mice in tubs which minimized the amount of smell and change bedding every 3-4 days. Very important to buy bedding in bulk cause you go through a lot. Cleaning often is really the only way to keep the smell down. My mice are 2-3 to a tub or mothers plus an entire litter. I try very hard not to let overcrowding occur because then the smell grows expontieally. Another thing to think about is I only keep one male breeder. Males smell worse so since I only have one my mice dont' smell as bad.

Hope that helps,
feel free to keep asking Q's

[punyhuman07]

do you keep them in the same room with the snakes and are you useing plastic tubs cause i would be afraid of them chewing through it so one male for 4 girls i could handle that i going to be breeding and i trying to think of my cost and stuff like that....

[punyhuman07]

also i got alot of questins but where is god place to buy the starting mice petco petsmart kind of places i also want to know do feed your snakes the live mice or do you pre-kill...

[truthsdeceit]

do you keep them in the same room with the snakes and are you useing plastic tubs cause i would be afraid of them chewing through it so one male for 4 girls i could handle that i going to be breeding and i trying to think of my cost and stuff like that....

I do keep them in the same room as the snakes, I live in a one bedroom apartment and don't want to keep animals in my bedroom so they all inhabit the living room. There are pics of my setup in my gallery.
Here: http://www.ball-pythons.net/gallery/...imageuser=9958

I've rearranged since then. Moving my snakes to a seperate shelf. I'm at work right now but if you're interested I'll post some pics when I get home tonight around 7pm.
Mice have trouble chewing flat surfaces (I'm not saying it doesn't happen it's just unlikely) so as long as they can't get their mouths around an edge you don't have to worry. I've only had one issue which was when a water bottle fell out of it's hole and they chewed the hole open. I caught it in time though and no one escaped.

As far as breeding goes, my setup is way elaborate for how many I actually need. You could just buy one large tub and throw 1male and 3girls in and wait. They'd produce more mice than you could dream of, 3litters every 3weeks (i.e. 3girls + 3week gestation and back to back pregnacy). Keeping them together all the time is the colonie method and works fine. It's also cheaper cause you only need one tub, one water botter, ect..

also i got alot of questins but where is god place to buy the starting mice petco petsmart kind of places i also want to know do feed your snakes the live mice or do you pre-kill...

I got most of my mice from petco, it's a fine way to start. I also got a few off craigslist (people with acidental litter giving them away, they probably came from petsmart of petco too). They produce about 10 pups per litter, fewer in the first litter, try not to breed them too young cause it can make them sick. And don't worry about inbreeding, mice can be 'line' bred for generations with no ill effects. You may want to introduce some new blood every few genrations.
My last petco buy (about a month ago) I got some black females and one of them is just now showing signs of a possible tumor, but it may only be an absess from a wound. Either way her offspring is still fine to use as feeders I just won't be keeping any of her young back for future breeders.

I mostly p/k or freeze for later use, my new red tail boa gets live and p/k because I'm in the process of switching her to f/t.
If a litter is the right size then I p/k and feed fresh, the extras get frozen for later so that I always have the size I need in the freezer. I've also got a grow out bin because my red tail and my bp eat adult mice so I have to keep some alive past the size my corn and king eat.

Make sense?

[punyhuman07]

totaly makes sence i know your lleaving for work so i'll wait till you get back but when you freeze the pinkies i think it was how long does it take for them to to sleep for say.... and how do you know what mouse is ready to be selected for supper....

[truthsdeceit]

totaly makes sence i know your lleaving for work so i'll wait till you get back but when you freeze the pinkies i think it was how long does it take for them to to sleep for say.... and how do you know what mouse is ready to be selected for supper....

I'm acctually already at work, slow day. So I'm on the pc, no worries, I just can't post pics cause I don't have them with me.

I've actually never had to p/k a pinkie my corn and king eat fuzzies/hoppers and my red tail and bp eat adult mice. I've been useing cervical dislocation to p/k lately. And I always p/k before freezing, in my opinion putting any live animal in the freezer is cruel.

The mouse is ready to be supper when it's the right size. The only time a mouse would not be a good meal is if it was sick. Lucky for me I've not had any sickly mice except for one mother who had her pups too young, she never gained her weight back and I fed her off rather than risk killing her with another pregnacy. She was safe to feed off since it wasn't a disease that made her sick.

Baby mice grow fast.
See this post: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=79467
Subscribe to it if you want to see them continue to grow up. This is one of the groups I plan on keeping back in the grow out bin. And I'll be posting more pics of them tonight when I get home.