Colony Size ?

I've built a rack for breeding my soft furs, rats and mice. does any one have a 1.10 or larger mouse colony and if so how good does it do. can the male "keep up so to speak". :D and how do the litters do. do you seperate your females. i'm going to be building another rack soly for mice and am wondereing if i should do a maternity rack or leav them together. in the past i have done it both ways with better results seperating the females. thanks for your info.

Eric

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Originally Posted by ericswan_1

I've built a rack for breeding my soft furs, rats and mice. does any one have a 1.10 or larger mouse colony and if so how good does it do. can the male "keep up so to speak". :D and how do the litters do. do you seperate your females. i'm going to be building another rack soly for mice and am wondereing if i should do a maternity rack or leav them together. in the past i have done it both ways with better results seperating the females. thanks for your info.

Eric

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both my colonies are 10 females 1 male. My first one was started around 2.5 3 weeks ago and i just started another one the other day. So far its seems like the male is getting the job done. Ill know within a week or so after the females drop the babies.

cool Thanks,
the first one of mine is made up of adult mice that were already breeding. I had prolly 7 preg. females but lost all the babies. I know its because the male thats in there was not the father. I expected to loose them. I figure they will be Fine once he is the dad of them all.

thanks

Eric

I have groups of 1.3-3.20. Depends on how old I plan to pull the babies. 3.20 is for pinks. 1.3-1.5 works best for growing to weaners for me. One male should get the job done in your 1.10, but you may find your growth rate (if not pulling at fuzzies or sooner) may suffer for the younger litters if older ones are left in for the full 21 days.

Kool Thanks chromeitout for the reply. thats exactly answers my ?. I'm going to be doin the most breeding with the mice for pinks for hatchling corns. I'm getting ready to build my new rack this weekend and was thinking of doing like 3.20 or so for all the pink breeding. the moms that are ready to pop will go in a maternaty bin till pups are born then go imediatly back in with a colony to do it again.:please:

Thanks everyond for all your help once again.

I wouldn't do 3.20 more than one male usually ends in disaster.

I currently keep 3 females per tub and rotate the male. It works great for me. If you tub is big enough to support a higher number of females then go for it.

I had a large colony for pinks but all of the females attacked and ate each other. Now I do 1.2's and everything works much better.

I would run them at 1.4 per colony.

This gives each female the opportunity to pick a corner of the tub to pile up their little ones if they so choose. This helps to keep the stress to a minimum.

You're always better off separating them if you can, but if not then I would run them at no more than 1.4 per tub.

I keep 2 females per tank, tried 4 once in a four foot tank and they all wanted the same corner, two killed their litters, other two did fine. Went to 2 each and no problems. I rotate males. I'm not trying to produce huge numbers though. Best production seems to be keeping females apart, less stress, more litters on the ground more you will lose, babies born a few days after ones on the ground can't compete with too many around and starve.