Thinking about keeping mice

Jamie, your right, they smell horible and I have only kept one female breeder because she wont eat her babies. the other 2 have ate there babies twice. I give them 2 strikes and there out.

I used to go into the local herp store in FL to get feeders and there would be mice with no heads in the cages. Of course they kept upwards of 50 in 20 gallon tank and frequently left them without food and sometimes water. I had them investigated by the fish and wildlife service but unfortunately that rarely goes very far. I actually was more disturbed by burms in 20 gallon tanks and tons of cages with dead animals, animals with no water or animals lying in piles of feces. But that is a whole other story all together

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Originally Posted by jglass38

Oh yeah, one more reason. Little cannibals! They really are foul...

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I finally got fed up with one mother that kept eating her young and decided to make her pay with my BCI. Strangely enough, even my BCI wouldn't eat her. He stayed in his hide and just hissed when she went near him. He has always been my little garbage disposal, but has always eaten F/T off of tongs, so maybe the live thing threw him off. Either that, or he's just as disgusted with her as I was.

I eventually took her out and put her in the gas chamber...

Yeah I would second rats as being superior to mice, but I havn't dealt with mice :)

I have yet to see a single rat mother eat a baby, and Ive seen about 300 babies born so far. Out of about 20 different females who have given birth, only one would not deal with her babies, and she had something along the lines of 18-21, I forget because a few died. Those I just re-distributed to other rats.

It has become a fairly common thing for us to shuffle babies the same age around among mothers. If a mother has a litter of 10, and I feed off 5, and another mother has a littler of 10, I will usually give her the 5 more babies, and let the other mother take a break before she heads back into the breeding tub.

I like rats a lot so far, now if i could just get my one male to eat a rat, I think he only wants mice :(

I'm always suprised to hear these horror stories with the mice, maybe just because ive been outrageously lucky or something. My mice have been excellent, and not really all that smelly with vanilla in the water and frequent cleaning.


Sometimes they will eat a baby here and there when they're first born, which
is pretty instictual for a mother to do in order to keep the rest of the litter alive.
In most of my tubs, I keep 2 females, and if one gives birth, the other female helps nurse the litter, which i find incredible! I also find that I am able to switch babies around as needed from tub to tub with no problem at all, even if they are smaller or larger than the rest of the litter. I've also never had a problem introducing a new adult to the tub.

BUT, apparently my mice are exceptions, lol, and i would take into account what others here are saying.....obviously, you would have to be prepared for these things to happen as well.

Now, I dont know if i did something wrong with the rats, but wholly mother did they stink! and i couldnt get them to breed! i just recently sold them off for like 1/2 the price i paid to a friend of mine with a red tail, just to get them freakin out of my house. I used to have them as pets in a wire cage, and that worked out well. It may just very well have been the tub.

Okay, sorry.... tons to read.... hope you made it through