Well... I think I have a pet mouse now...

I went to feed Moose today, and everything was going as normal. She was very interested in the food. However the mouse (the small rat I got her took her nearly fifteen minutes to kill and almost did some serious damage... scared me back into doing mice more often for awhile) ran around and stayed in her blind spot for a good half hour, despite me intervening to try and get it to run right in front of her. Then, whenever it looked like she was about to strike, the mouse would turn around and just stare into her eyes; seemed to kind of freak her out and she'd back off. After half an hour of this, Moose got fed up and started trying to get out of the enclosure. After about five minutes of her just trying to escape I decided to call it quits on the feeding attempt.
Then, when I got the mouse out he ran up my arm and just curled up behind my head for awhile.

I've always hated live feeding, because I get attached to animals very quickly. The only reason I do it is because my BP won't eat any other way. So, at this point, putting him back in with the snake is out of the question for me. Especially since this wasn't just a case of the snake not being hungry, but the mouse spending half an hour actively thwarting a hungry snake.

So I've got a couple questions:

1. The mouse (Mr. Biscuit) is currently in a ventilated tupperware container with a hide, some of my turtle's vegetables, and water, but no bedding other than newspaper (don't have anything mouse appropriate atm) in my bedroom, which is about 65-70 degrees; is this sufficient food/housing for a couple days?

2. My snake seemed interested in the food, the mouse was just really on his game. Do I try again tomorrow, or wait till the next feeding day? I just ask because this wasn't so much a refusal to eat as a failed hunt.

The place we get mice from does have a return policy, which I will certainly use if this happens again... But Mr. Biscuit just impressed the crap out of me by avoiding being eaten in an enclosed space with a large predator for as long as he did, and the thought of taking him back and having them dump him into an overcrowded bin to either be eaten or starve to death in a seven year old's bedroom makes me feel sick (the struggles of being a vegan snake owner I guess). You know how you sometimes just 'click' with certain animals? Well, unfortunately (because I had no desire for a mouse) we 'clicked'.

lol sounds like Mr. Biscuit is a ninja. ;)

i think u could wait a day and see if your BP will be cruising tonight, looking for a meal. or you could speed up the process, put Mr. Biscuit's tupperware next to your snake enclosure and see if a head pokes out of the hide and tongue starts flicking.

I feel ya! I've had the pet rats too.

That's why I quit feeding my BP on a schedule when I used to feed live. Mine is an adult so growing is not an issue here. I wait for my girl to go into feed mode now.

If you are going to keep the mouse, Aspen or pine will help keep the odor down for a few days and they like making a nest and hiding their food. If you can't get mouse/rat food, gerbil food will suffice.

Alright, thanks for the tips. Since she's on mice and gets them more often than she would rats, her next scheduled day isn't far off so I'll just get another feeder for her then. She's been out cruising for food for a few nights now, I think Mr. Biscuit just outsmarted her.

Ugh... I've already joined a mouse forum that's friendly to people who breed for feeders. Oh well, I guess I've just got one more little squirmy thing to baby now.

Haha, one reason why I couldn't do live. I kept rats as pets before snakes and I know I'd wind up with more. Those little eyes!

If you end up keeping your brave mouse for more than a couple of days, you'll want to find a wire/mesh enclosure. Ammonia will build up quick in tupperware and make the little guy ill.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/2621806/splinter-o.gif

Oh, he's going to be a permanent resident. I went out and bought him a nice enclosure with a wheel and everything. I even got an exercise ball so he can run around the floor at night after I put my dog up.

He hasn't gotten off the wheel since I put him in there, and it hit me that this may be the first time in his life he's actually been able to run or have any space to himself. A bit sad, but he seems pretty happy right now. I think he has some degree of understanding that his life just went from being pretty terrible to pretty awesome.

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Originally Posted by DVirginiana

Oh, he's going to be a permanent resident. I went out and bought him a nice enclosure with a wheel and everything. I even got an exercise ball so he can run around the floor at night after I put my dog up.

He hasn't gotten off the wheel since I put him in there, and it hit me that this may be the first time in his life he's actually been able to run or have any space to himself. A bit sad, but he seems pretty happy right now. I think he has some degree of understanding that his life just went from being pretty terrible to pretty awesome.

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I bet he's happy :). When I started talking about getting a snake one of the first things my boyfriend said was "Are you sure you're going to be able to feed it mice?". I'm a sucker for anything cute and fluffy. Well I'm actually a sucker for pretty much anything alive X). I was a vegetarian for around 3 years so I understand where you're coming from :/.

Good on you for rescuing Mr. Biscut.

I have no problem with feeding the rodents, but it does upset me how feeders are typically raised. Some of the How-to videos on this make my skin crawl. Just horribly crowded. I don't want to support that.

I'd rather not support the way they treat live feeders, but despite all my attempts my BP just will not take f/t.

At least the place I go to now seems a LITTLE better than most, in that the mice rarely have injuries or anything. Definitely still overcrowded, but not to the extent that I've seen at other places.

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Originally Posted by DVirginiana

Alright, thanks for the tips. Since she's on mice and gets them more often than she would rats, her next scheduled day isn't far off so I'll just get another feeder for her then. She's been out cruising for food for a few nights now, I think Mr. Biscuit just outsmarted her.

Ugh... I've already joined a mouse forum that's friendly to people who breed for feeders. Oh well, I guess I've just got one more little squirmy thing to baby now.

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Hey, that is too funny about the mouse. Congrats on your new pal. Yeah, I would try again to feed the bp in a couple of days or even the next scheduled feeding whichever you feel more comfortable with. I certainly wouldn't buy a different mouse though. The same thing has happened to me and I've housed and fed the mice for a week. However, when the time came to feed again it was always the same mice. I think the turtle food will suffice until you can get something different. Just my opinion. ;)

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Originally Posted by Albert Clark

Hey, that is too funny about the mouse. Congrats on your new pal. Yeah, I would try again to feed the bp in a couple of days or even the next scheduled feeding whichever you feel more comfortable with. I certainly wouldn't buy a different mouse though. The same thing has happened to me and I've housed and fed the mice for a week. However, when the time came to feed again it was always the same mice. I think the turtle food will suffice until you can get something different. Just my opinion. ;)

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Haha, Mr. Biscuit has already become a permanent resident complete with toys and his own enclosure. I normally would have no problem making use of the pet store's same-day return policy, but this little guy just impressed the heck out of me. Having done some research he's also apparently just unrealistically friendly (guess that's the same bravery that had him staring down my BP). Even though he's probably never been handled before, he has no problem crawling in my hand and doesn't freeze up or try to bolt when I've got him out.

Long story short; unfortunately I'm already smitten. :cool:

I have raised mice in the past for pets, and they can be terribly charming little fellows. I will caution you against feeding a lot of fresh vegetables and/or fruit. A little is good for them, but look at their body size...like half of a baby carrot would be enough for a day or two. Too much will cause them to have diarrhea, which can kill a small rodent. So very tiny portions of anything fresh is best. If you enjoy hand feeding treats and sharing your food with them, I give mine a little crust of toast, and by little I mean about the size of my pinky nail and a spot with no butter.

They also need hard things for the health of their teeth. You can get little compressed blocks of hay in the rodent section that are good, chew sticks, small dog biscuits are also nice. There are also a lot of expensive fancy treats, but unless they're on sale I don't bother. Mice will literally eat about anything you drop in the cage. Some people feed just pellets, but they are naturally foragers, so I buy a bag of pellets and then some of the seed mix and offer both. I just don't add more until he/she's gone through at least some of the pellets, otherwise they just get the fatty seeds and treats.

Now with that said, I have a possible solution for you as a lover of small furry creatures who also wants to feed your pet snake the live things he/she is accustomed to. It's also a neat solution to perpetuating horrible breeder conditions, and sometimes having a hard time finding a live mouse when you need one. I've set up my own breeding tank and two others to separate the mice when they are born and then mature. I provide them with better food and care than they would ever receive from a store, I just don't play with them and get attached. For me this is plenty ethical to both the mouse and the snake. It also allows me to choose one to replace my last deceased pet, which means my next pet mouse will be totally hand raised and not some half-wild thing from a pet store that supposedly plays with them.

My plan is to have a controlled breeding program so I have a steady supply without being overrun. In my experience you have to separate the males & females at around 2 months of age to prevent them from starting to breed. I'll put the male breeder in with the younger males if I need them to not reproduce for a while. So long as you grant them sufficient space, hides, and food, they do fine housed together.

You'll have a hard time getting females, many stores carry males only, but I did find one willing to ask for females in their next order of feeders. It took me a while and I don't have baby mice yet, but at least I'm set up. And in the meanwhile I bought some extra feeders and put them in the two cages that will be for the babies when they come, so I've had his last three feedings without all of the running around trying to find a place with feeder mice.

I've thought about breeding my own, it's just not an option for me right now. I'm currently sharing an apartment with another person, about 25 exotics (half are inverts, so it's not quite as time and space consuming as it sounds), and a large dog. It's something I'll probably look into when we move though.

Thanks for the tip on the veggies. He ate about a fourth of a circle of zucchini since I got him, but he's mainly been going for the pellets; I'm getting him better food in a day or so, that was just kind of an emergency purchase.

(Thread drift, sorry.)

What is it like to keep a tarantula?. (I randomly chose to look up Grammostola rosea trying to figure out what "inverts" were.)

The pellets are actually fine for them, and if you got the small rodent ones, they are nutritionally complete. You're doing fine with him! I offer a mixture because to me giving a forager one kind of food would be like me eating boneless skinless chicken breast with nothing on it for the rest of my life. The mouse may not even care if that's all he's ever seen, it just makes me feel mean :P

Regarding tarantulas, super easy pets to keep. They don't need much space, they don't stink or make noise, and are low maintenance/cost pets. They are content on just crickets, though you can feed very small vertebrates to the larger ones.

The only "downside" if you care about this is that it's not really going to do anything except sit in there looking cool. You can handle them, but there's no real bond or anything like that.

Thanks.
Watched several Howcast videos with a JungleBob (? IIRC).
Quite good. Of course, now I want one...or three. That pink-toed arboreal one looks exp. nice.

Good thing I'm on a strict budget, or I'd have dozens of pets, in addition to the homestead livestock.

Back to mice: was chatting with the neighbor(He teaches science, and is setting up breeders for his snakes - the only local pet store is just too unreliable.), and I now have a source for mice, and rats. So, I can set up a couple of breeders myself, and maybe later get a snake.