Mouse Total Bites Gutload.

Has anyone tried these? Are they really good for your mouse eating herp.

what is it?

If it is what I think it is, it is something you feed to the mice, not the herp. And- if I am right about it being what I think it is... it is an expensive product that really dont matter if you feed the mice right.


Anyone else know what this stuff is?

actually, itsa a supplement that is not really any good for the mice themselves, for the snake. So the mouse really aren't healthy after giving this to them. I breed my own mice and I can tell you all you have to feed the mice is pure mice food. When my mice are pregnant I will give them whole unsalted peanuts and triple the sunflower seeds in my mix of food i make. Just make sure they get lots of seeds and peanuts. This will keep your mice very nutritious for the snake. It also keeps the mothers from dying while feeding there big litters. When I first started breeding I had two females pregnant together. One had a litter of 2 and the other had a litter of 14. They ended up in the same nest and only the first mother wsa feeding them. I wasn't feeding them right at the time and the mother of 2 could not handle feeding 16 young. So i researched more. Just feed them PLENTY of food and water...and lots of peanuts and sunflower seeds (Unsalted).

So how hard is it to raise your own mice do the benefits outweigh the costs. And now do you know which one gets eaten first. I have considered doing this myself but i have lots of questions.

ok ask away my friend...its not necessarily hard. It takes a while to get used to. You cannot keep different aged mice in same cage cause they will fight. So scenario....you have two tanks. You put three females in one and a male. The three females get pregnant. You put two in one, the other female in a another, and seperate the male. The two females have young in one and the other female has young in the other. The mice grow and after three weeks get weened off the mother. Now these mice must be put in a fourth cage. And if the mice are born at different intervals then those three litters must be seperated. Then the four adults can be put back in one to mate again. Now, you must now realize that after 4 weeks the males of the ones are ready to mate but the mice are way to young to carry, so you must go in and seperate males from females from the new litters as soon as the males drop (testicles on mice hang way out there back side). So that adds more cages. So now if you seperated soon enough you will be good. If not you must seperate the new pregnant mothers into 6 and 7 cage. I keep about that amoutn 7 cages. That is for the extreme. Cause you have to remember agfter about 5 weeks you can now kill the new litters, because they are adults now, vaccuseal them, and freeze. And start the whole process over. I never use new mice for mothers or Fathers. I have used one mouse for a father and the same three mice as mothers. Only because a mothers first litter is overwhelming on her and it takes a few times for her to get used to. So, i guess what i am sayign is yes it is complicated and can be frustrating, but if you take a log of what your doing it is simple. With cost, you pay for food, thats it. A LOT OF FOOD. And pine, but it is cheap. Starting cost might get you but after that its gravey, mice production is quick. Mice have a germ period of only three weeks.... Any more questions

What size cages do you keep and what type are they.

you can put 4 breeding mice in a ten gallon cage. 1 male and 3 females. once they have babies, you have to serperate them into males and females. hopefully you will feed them off beore the males start fighting. females can live socially better then males. sometimes brothers that grow up in one cage wont fight, but i dont think that happens often. they get into bloody fights, its not pretty. it happened to me with rats. if you search on google you can find a few caresheets that should answer alot of your questions. if you breed feeders, i would suggest rats over mice. rats dont smell to bad at all as long as you clean the cage enough. ive had mice for a few hours and my whole room smells. also you will need you BP to eat rats when its an adult so why not start now. im only breeding mice a few times. kinda just for the heck of it, even though that sounds stupid. i know my mom will make me stop, probably before i even get a second litter because of the stench. lol.

Actually, 4 mice will fit fine in even smaller than a 10 gallon. I use plastic 6.5 gallons for all my mice, young and old. If its a big litter of 15 or more i will put in a 10 gallon. Just the litters until they are old enought to take out and freeze. He is right tho, care sheets are available. I recomend yahoo search over google any day.

Thats straight up stupid...

If you're going to enhance your herps food feed pre-killed and directly inject it. There needs to be a product full of some good nutrients that you just get a syringe and fill the mousy up. It's make fasts less stressful too. Knowing your bp ate really well before going on the fast.

Freak's novel reminded me of why I breed rats instead of mice. I have 2.5.25ish rats in a 75 gallon aquarium on aspen bedding. All the females nurse each others babies, and no one ever fights.

I am swtiching to rats in about a month. I have stopped letting my mice mate and are raising the rest of my litters and switching..

I also raise rats. They are easy and replace themselves quickly. Mine a hairless, tho. They look sorta like nuclear fallout victims! Last litter was mostly albino, fathered before I purchased Amnesty (momma rat). Anyway, I heard that the less hair the better for bp's to digest, but then I was wondering if hair wasn't a good source of protein...........

Hmmmmm....I never heard of feeding hairless rats. From what I've observed, most of the fur passes through the snake, but I've wondered if it might act as "roughage" which would help them poop....? Don't know.

I have bred both mice and rats for many years. Rats are easier and they just dont smell that bad- mice are aweful. Currently, I breed mice. I house mine in rubber maids that are modified a bit. You do not have to separate into so many tanks and stuff, that is just uneccessary and it does take up alot of space. Mice of different ages can live together just fine, it is all about the pecking order they establish. When you use only 1 male for breeding, it is best- because a single male with a harem of females, will not kill his own babies..in fact, you got more of a chance the mother might. The only separating I do is I have a a bin for males and a bin for females, and a bin for my breeding harem. Male mice do actually learn to live together in harmony if they are put together young, fighting occurs most when the dominant male of the bunch is only putting a younger male mouse into place after being challenged. In all fighting- blood shed can occur. Females are more likely to live harmoniously than the males, but they do have a pecking order too. In my experience, it is the females that inflict the worse wounds on eachother.

Mice and rats are very much alike, and the same ideas and principles apply no matter what you are breeding. Feed them healthy, and they are great prey for your snake/snakes. Rats and mice can get pregnant again within hours of giving birth, however- it can be hard on them, so usually you will only get a few litters out of 1 mouse for this reason. Thier pregnancy getsation is 21- 27 days depending on the mouse or rat. Once they have given birth, they usually wean thier babies any where from 3-5 weeks of age, again, it depends on the rodents to be weaned (thier growth rate,etc). In my years of breeding, I have never seen a mouse or a rat under 7 weeks old get pregnant- however it is possible, and not adviseable. When they are bred too early, they are not such great mothers and will often kill thier own babies by tearing them up, or just not feeding. There are many reasons they do it, they also do it to kill off the weaker of thier species.

Sexing mice and rats is the same, so if you know how to sex one or the other, you can pretty much sex any rodent, hamsters and gerbils included. Because of my years of breeding experience with rodents of different kinds, I am able to tell what ratio of boys and girls I have from birth. Just takes practise.

As far as breeding being cost effective, that depends. In fact, it depends from person to person on this. What is cost effective for me, may not be for anyone else. I would say if you only have 1 snake, no breeding rodents is probably not going to be cost effective unless you are able to put frozen ones in your freezer. I do not freeze mine, strictly because my husband would be VERY upset to find a frozen rodent in the freezer when looking for ice cream or something. Because of this, I control my breeding rodents so I dont ever have a HUGE over population. If you have several snakes/rodent eaters, it can be very cost effective for you. However, it is always time consuming. You will need to evaluate your situation to decide on if breeding will be cost effective for you.

I feed off the size of the rodent I need for the critter I am feeding. I tend to feed off from whichever bin has the most. I try and keep my population from container to container even as much as possible tho~ and the oldest are usually the first to go, esp. the older breeder females. Hope this helps.

jeanne, do you let your mice breed consecutively without a break to nurse their young and recouperate? i know its not too healthy for them to breed so close to having babies...but since you only breed one female a few times, do you still give them breaks between litters?

Ive just swithced from mice to breeding rats,and decided to do some research.I thought the mouse food i had from my mice would be fine and i have all the free corn and barley i want(local farmer friend)and i bought some alfalfa pellets and sunflower seeds.
On a rat site i visit they say lab blocks are best and mouse food is terrible for rats-any opinions on this cause i think breeding rats would be a bit different than pet rats.
So far i have a litter of 11-13(cant really get a good head count yet)and another one going to pop any day now.
They all seem to be healthy and are very active on a mostly mouse diet-its only been about 6 weeks now i think though.

edit: doh - wrong thread :P

gerbils are the best, I realized this today.