Need to breed large quantities at low cost

I am looking to produce about 1000-2000 mice per month.

Can someone give me the best way to do that:
size tubs and website to get them from
rack plans for said tubs
how many tubs/racks would I need
How many per tub
Keep males/females together or no?

Thanks

I would use the medium Petmate litter pans.

Build your racks 8 levels high for easy management.

Run 1.4 animals per level.

This gives you 32 females per rack.

Count on about 250 animals per rack per month.

This means you would need 4 to 8 racks of breeding animals to produce those numbers.

You will need half again as many racks for growing out replacement breeders.

Do you just do them 1 stack high or do you make the racks where you have about 10 across and then 8 down? I was looking at those and it looks like you'll need a router to make the supports that the litter pans sit on, is that right?

Do you know the cheapest place to get these litterpans? At one point last year I was seeing some at .99 each but of course now that I'm needing them, they're like 3.00+ each!

I build mine 8 high and 3 wide... $3 is what i pay for them
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g6...t/DSC00805.jpg

With a production that much per month will not be cheap starting up.

I go through 5-6 50lbs bags of Rodent food each month for only 500 production.

At this rate it costs me about .15-.20 cents per mouse.

It's structurally more sound to make them only one tub wide.

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Originally Posted by tomfromtheshade

It's structurally more sound to make them only one tub wide.

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I would agree, but the mouse setups don't weigh nearly as much as the rats ones do...the multi units seem to hold up just fine.

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Originally Posted by suzuki4life

I would agree, but the mouse setups don't weigh nearly as much as the rats ones do...the multi units seem to hold up just fine.

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I will agree with you there.

I have a bit of OCD or whatever you want to call it. I build all my racks single file now. I also replace my animals one rack at a time. It just makes things simple for me.

Suzuki, I know you know what I am talking about when I say that the same stuff that you used to do when you had one or two racks just doesn't cut it anymore when you have more than a dozen racks.

I have a system in place now that accounts for the timing between holding animals back, growing animals out, and replacing animals before they start to decline in production.

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Originally Posted by chromeitout

I build mine 8 high and 3 wide... $3 is what i pay for them
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g6...t/DSC00805.jpg

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Where did you get your litter tubs, what are the dimensions and what do you run in each?

This set up, really works. It can be done in very many ways to fit your needs. And it works. Thank you for posting the pictures :D

I believe they are petmate large... roughly 16x18. I don't stock all of my tubs the same. It depends on what size of mice I am pulling from each tub as to the stocking count. The racks are mentally divided into sections. Pinky tubs are 2.10, fuzzies are 1.6, hoppers are 1.4, everything else is 1.3.
I havent had any problems with the racks warping or falling apart (one is 3 years old now) but i will not argue against single stacks being sturdier.

chromeitout do you got any building plans for that rack you use not really worried if it is stable or not as I'd attach mine to the wall at the top and use some brackets on corners and such to help sturdy it up



reptilegirl07 have you thought about using tall totes this way you can if done like i saw somebody do with them put some screen on the sides for airflow(pix are on this site in i believe the rat section of feeders) then you would be able to reduce the number of tub or totes or what ever you wanted to use by being able to put more mice per large tote. also could stack them up on each other but also reducing the amount of water bottles or water lines you would have to run. even wouldn't have to build a rack to hold them saving even more money from lumber not needed if you didn't want to or even with the money you saved from not building a rack you could make more of the larger totes and spread the mice out in smaller numbers per tote(but then that would require more tubing for water or water bottles

valves i seen for watering cost 3+ dollars for buying less then 100 and 2.59 or 2.95 each if you buy 100+ valves so there is a couple hundred bucks just for valves alone then you need tubing (cheep unless you want black or blue tube so algae dont build up in the tubing over time. but even the black or blue tubing aint that much more in cost. you might have to go to a hydro store to get it or order it off the net.) then there is t's gromets and such needed to hook it up-to the water res (unless you use a pump to push the water but then that would cost more money.) I'd think if you go with valves and such for watering the cheapest would be a gravity flow system (meaning you put the water tank higher then your racks as a pump to push water to that many tanks is going to run you at least 75 bucks more if you want a good pump that will last a few years(by good pump mean one that is a mag drive that is mad so it don't leak oils and such into the water) at least then preferably depending on water quality in your area you might want to get a RO system to use on the water about 119 bucks if i rember right and that will make it so your valves and tubing dont build junk up over time.) i set hydro systems up for people on the side and get tons of calls after a couple years cause people choose not to RO there water granted there sprayers got allot smaller holes that the water is pushed out of for sprayers or drippers but none the less stuff will build up in the tubes and such over time so to keep from having to clean the tubing (meaning take it all apart here and there to clean it out) ro is the way to go yes even with RO water you will still have to clean tubing from time to time but not nearly as often as if you didn't use it ( say you can run a system 10 years with-out RO before having to clean the valves and tubing you could easily go twice as long if you use RO done water)

none the less any way you choose to do it there will be pros and cons to that type of system you just need to find out which will work best for you in your situation and the time you got to spend working with which ever way you choose

i myself prefer the more hands on type system of filling a couple dozen water bottles daily and giving food daily thus while doing that i inspect the mice cages and mice daily just rember if you go with more mice per big tote you should go with a bigger water bottle mine actually can go 2 days before i got to refill the bottles but i know i don't like drinking day old water so i dont force my feeders to do it either (we change or snakes water bowls daily so why shouldn't we change there foods water just as often) not knocking any way anybody else chooses to do there feeders i just like the more hands on approach cause i don't want to be sitting around later scratching my head trying to figure out what went wrong and to me inspecting everything daily and keeping track of stuff so if something goes wrong everything is righten down and just got to check the paper work

sorry if i went off topic my 4 year old kept bugging me while i was trying to type this (can't wait 2 more days and he goes back to pre-school)

Sorry, no build plans. I could probably provide a cut list later if it would help. Also, for those who are wondering I believe the total cost of materials for 1 of the 24 tub racks including tubs and auto water is right around $300.

yeah that would help along with a few detailed pics and i can build me a few like that i'm a carpenter by trade so give me a few pics and cut sizes for like trays to be held and i can get it built. does the spacing matter? like lets say you can only get brand x tubs while i can only get brand z tubs or is all there lips pretty much the same size

Here is some good advice. Buy WAAAAY more tubs than you need. They will eventually be discontinued and you will be stuck if you don't.

With mouse tubs I would say that you want at least 1.5" between the bottom of the tub and the top of the next level. If you are using water bottles instead of an auto watering system you will need more room.

My rat/mouse breeder uses the bus pans you can get at sams. They are grey and come in a two pack. He puts in 1.12 mice in the tubs. His Racks are double sided 12 wide and 6 high so he has 144 tubs and pulls at least 300 mice per week. When he is really rockin he can pull 600. Once a tub has not produced babies for 4 weeks he dumps the whole bin and replaces it.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I'm intrigued by the idea of the totes depending on how many you can successfully breed in each (some of these tubs are 9.00 each).

Right now, I have an order on 250 lab grade mouse breeding cages. I have someone that wants to buy 1/2 of them for double what I spent so I will be getting 125 lab cages piratically free. I'm going to run the mice in those for a while and see how that goes.


I'm sure I'll have pics soon. I just picked up some mice last night (i'm adding some colors in so it stays interesting). I got a fox, long haired satin, and several other long haired mice. I got another orangey mixed colored one too. This will be fun. I'm excited already! Now just to find someone who has a frizzie satin

reptilegirl07 i take it with you talking colors of mice your breeding them to sell as pets (way more profit to sell as pets then feeders average feeder cost 2 bucks versus cheapest pet mouse 6.99 so 3 and a half times more costly.) and thats for a plain Jane mouse seen them in Kalamazoo MI petco had feeders 2 bucks looked just like petsmarts pet mice(wouldn't sell me any cause i asked them if they would give me discount cause was going to breed them for snake food) but the petsmart mice were 6.99 for mice that had all the same colors and markings as petco's feeder mice

or are you just trying to make a large gene pool to work with. i know when ever i go long ways from home. i go check pet shops along the way to get unrelated mice to add diversity to mines gene pool. usually males is what i get unless i get some neat looking males. like recently i got a few tiger striped so saving those to breed and see if i can't get a bunch of nothing but tiger striped. or got some solid orange albino's that just look neat as can be

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Originally Posted by ice#1

reptilegirl07 i take it with you talking colors of mice your breeding them to sell as pets (way more profit to sell as pets then feeders average feeder cost 2 bucks versus cheapest pet mouse 6.99 so 3 and a half times more costly.) and thats for a plain Jane mouse seen them in Kalamazoo MI petco had feeders 2 bucks looked just like petsmarts pet mice(wouldn't sell me any cause i asked them if they would give me discount cause was going to breed them for snake food) but the petsmart mice were 6.99 for mice that had all the same colors and markings as petco's feeder mice

or are you just trying to make a large gene pool to work with. i know when ever i go long ways from home. i go check pet shops along the way to get unrelated mice to add diversity to mines gene pool. usually males is what i get unless i get some neat looking males. like recently i got a few tiger striped so saving those to breed and see if i can't get a bunch of nothing but tiger striped. or got some solid orange albino's that just look neat as can be

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Actually average feeder cost is .50 cents per mouse.

I'm talking retail price not wholesale price i been in almost every state and mice for feeders you got to pay around 2 bucks per feeder (yes some places are cheaper and some are a Lil more costly) and thats from a pet-shop not from a mouse breeder. but yeah from a breeder or if you buy enough in bulk even a pet-shop will come down in price if you have done allot of business with them.

Nah, I'm primarily breeding for feeders. Although I love the pretty colors :P It gives me something fun to play with in my breeding program. Plus, if I'm ever over-stocked I'd imagine pet stores would be more incline to buy mice from me that are "pretty" instead of the plain white ones :-)

I doubt I'd ever be too overstocked, there are a lot of snakes that need to eat in this state (or so i've seen). :)

BTW, just got my first litter of 10 babies about a week ago. Man do these guys grow FAST! I can't wait to get more! :-) I'm literally JUST starting with these guys this week! Holding back all females to breed that come from LARGE litters :o)