Keep Track

How do you keep track of different blood lines and who you breed with who?

Excel files. And for quick glance information I use index cards. The rack has nails on the front and I put index cards on the rack with all the information about a specific litter.

Can you show me an example?

what are you breeding?

Mice, Rats and ASF

i use degei4 for breeding,feeding,sheds, and everything. very nice program.

Excel files basically cover a rat's name, age, color, how many litters she has produced, parent's names, who she can breed with, ect. I have a file for every rat in my colony. As far as index cards. The layout is simple. Here is an example from my most recent litter:

ID: Chance03 <--Indicates this is Chance and her third litter
Chance x Hampton <--The pairing
Initial Count: 12 <-- The original number of babies upon birth
11 <-- Count after feeding off any offspring, additional countings will go under it
Birthdate: October 1st, 2008
1 week: October 8th, 2008
2 week: October 15th, 2008
3 week: October 22nd, 2008
Wean: October 25th, 2008
Breeding Age: January 21st, 2008 <-- When females from this litter are breeding age.

On the back it reads:

Females: 2 Agouti Hoods, 2 Black Hoods, 3 Albino, 1 Berkshire
Males: 1 Albino, 1 Cream Hooded

Keeping: 1 Agouti Hooded (F) 1 Cream Hooded (M)

(Then of course since you have claimed 3 girls from this litter I marked this on the back as well)

Clear: 1 Black Hood, 1 Berkshire, 1 Agouti Hood - Light one. :)

I found a really nice SIMPLE program called Kin Traks that you can set up to keep track of rodent colonies. It will tell you when litters should be weaned, when to expect babies, keep track of bloodlines, etc etc.

www.kintraks.com
It's free.

I use Degei for my snakes. :)

Cool thanks!

The only problem is the free version of that program limits you to 60 animals. Not good if you plan on having more breeders than that. I personally only have 13 breeders but I do plan on expanding the colony.