First Rat Isnt a Charm

Well, she won't always be small enough to be kept healthy on one mouse a week...but as I said before, the debate is still open about whether multiple mice or a single rat is more beneficial. If you breed your own mice and feel comfortable feeding them by the handful in the future...then there's probably nothing wrong with it.

I figure eventually we may have to switch to rats as she grows..but so far so good.. she has doubled her length and I gave up on weighing (scale got too small!) once she got past 500 gm (10x her original wt when we got her)..hubby has a hard enuf time with the mice.. i don't know what he'll do if I say we need to grow rats! I guess I should try to switch her to F/T.. but I have so many mice!! Maybe when I get down to just 4 left , I try the switch.. then perhaps i can buy F/T rats in bulk.

SheSkweezes....I deleted the accidental double-post. :)

As for mice...I guess so long as you stop keeping males and females together, you may eventually be down to four. LOL! From what I hear, rats are actually much cleaner, smell better, and are more fun to keep than mice...but I'm not speaking from personal experience.

You may have a harder time switching if you switch both the rodent species AND the method of feeding (live to f/t) at the same time. But you can always start pre-killing and freezing your own mice. That's another way to help with the excess mice, too. Freeze 'em and save 'em for later. :)

pray tell.. how does one pre-kill? I'm awful sqeamish about purposely killing any animal..i dont think i can do it..

I'm the same way. I usually feed f/t, but got stuck with some live mice that I tried once...the snake wouldn't eat them. I took them back to the petstore (returned w/o a refund! LOL) rather than kill them myself. The other day, though, I put some live pinkies in the freezer...felt horrible about even that!

The easiest way that I've heard (and one I may need to buckle-down and do someday) is to use dry ice to suffocate them. You put the dry ice in a small container (preferrably one with sides too tall for the mice to get over) and set that container into a larger one that can be closed. Put the mice into the larger container as well...pour some water over the dry ice, then close it all up. The smaller your over-all container is, the more effective and effecient this will be. You may need some ventilation to allow building gasses to escape, too.

I hear it's very quick and painless...they just go to sleep. But if I ever do this...I'm not planning on using any transparent containers! :shock:

good idea...thanks! I will keep it for future reference!

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Originally Posted by JLC

From what I hear, rats are actually much cleaner, smell better, and are more fun to keep than mice...but I'm not speaking from personal experience.

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I am, and it's the darn dirty truth! :lol: Seriously, though, I've had both as pets and bred mice to feed off to a bp, and rats are much better to have in the house. I'm less happy about feeding them to bp's, though.