Growout cages

So I have a few questions regarding my future growout cages. As I said in another thread i got 3 mice colonies, 3 cages with 1.5 in each. I also have 2 empty cages that will be used for weanlings to grow up to size in, one for females and one for males.

My questions are these; Let's say I have 10 females in the growout cage, another litter is ready to be weened. How do I place them in the same cage as the other 10 without causing alot of territorial battles? Do I clean the cage before adding them all, both the original 10 and the new litter?

I'm just starting with my mice breeding so any advice are very welcome.

Thanks
-D

I cleanout my tubs and add any new weenies that I have.

Clean the cages well and put everyone in at once. That way it's 'neutral' territory.

does the age diff matter alot?

Yeah I'm wondering the same thing as dmaricle. :)

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Originally Posted by dmaricle

does the age diff matter alot?

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Not really. You will get a little fighting during the first few hours, but nothing to worry about. Males will fight more than females. For every breeder cage, you need one growout cage......depending on the fecundity or your breeders. If you have animals that eat pinkies and fuzzies, you could use your 3rd cage just for that leaving a few to grow up.

good luck.

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Originally Posted by Brandon Osborne

Not really. You will get a little fighting during the first few hours, but nothing to worry about. Males will fight more than females. For every breeder cage, you need one growout cage......depending on the fecundity or your breeders. If you have animals that eat pinkies and fuzzies, you could use your 3rd cage just for that leaving a few to grow up.

good luck.

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Why do you need one growout for every breeder colony? I have 3 colonies and was planning on having 2 growouts to start with, one for females and one for males and then just mix and match from all the colonies. I was planning to clean the growouts out really good before adding them all together at the same time. Will I have issues doing it this way?

Thanks
-D

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Originally Posted by Doxster

Why do you need one growout for every breeder colony? I have 3 colonies and was planning on having 2 growouts to start with, one for females and one for males and then just mix and match from all the colonies. I was planning to clean the growouts out really good before adding them all together at the same time. Will I have issues doing it this way?

Thanks
-D

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If your mice are producing at their peak, you will over-crowd your growout tubs before you know it. When I was breeding mice on a larger scale, we had one growout for every breeder tub......and even then some were overcrowded. I went from 27 cages to nearly 200 in less than 3 months. During this time, I still fed my snakes and sold some surplus as well.

You shouldn't have any issues mixing animal together. They'll fight for a bit and get over it. I wish I still had pics of my setup.

good luck.

I think Brandon is assuming you are using the same cages for grow-outs as you are for your breeders. In this case, it is easy to see how you'd need one per each breeding group. If, however, you are running relatively small breeding groups, and putting all your weanlings into one much larger grow out tub, there should be no problem with combining the offspring from different groups.

What I have been doing, with virtually no fighting, is when it is cage cleaning time, I put the ready to be weaned mice from their mother's breeding group, sort them by sex, and put all of one sex in a holding tub. Then I take the mice from the mice from the appropriate grow-out tub and add them in to the holding tub. I clean the grow-out tub, rearrange the furniture (for example, if the wheel was by the water, I'll put it by the food instead), and add all the mice back in.

I've had mice that were at least 8 weeks old mixed with newly weaned mice with no difficulty at all. One thing I recommend avoiding is having a cage with only 2 males. Larger groups of males (with no females) have done just fine for me, but the one time I had only 2 males together, they fought until one was so badly injured I had to euthanize it.

Casey, you are correct. I'm going by what I know from experience. I used litter pans from the Dollar Store for my racks and had groups of 1.5 going. When I was running full bang, I was pulling around 1000 mice per week from my own colonies. Using a rack with auto-water makes thing so much easier.

As far as keeping males together with females, it's ok as long as they are weaned together. You can keep as many males with as many females as you like. Just don't mix different cages together with more males. If you want to make lots of pinkies, "pinky factories", just raise a couple of tubs of growouts together until the females start becoming pregnant. The most amount of pinkies/fuzzies I've pulled in a day was over 7000, when I worked for one of the "pro" rodent suppliers......we had lots of snakes to feed.