Thinking about keeping mice

I know that you guys suggest f/t, but I'm a live mouse guy. I'm thinking about keeping them, not necessarily breeding them, but just buying a few so that I won't have to make the trip to the store as often, not that I'm not willing to do that if I have to. What are your opinions?

I'm not sure what gave you the impression that we (as a whole) prefer f/t. At least as many, if not more, feed live to their snakes. But anyhow....as for keeping mice...


If you don't want to breed them, then DO make sure that you buy all the same sex each time you buy a bunch! Or you may end up with babies whether you want them or not.

Personally, I have discovered that I don't care to keep even a single mouse for more than a few days. Stinky little boogers. Seriously stinky. But if you don't mind cleaning after them often enough to keep the smell down, it's actually a good way to go, because before you give them to your snake, you can make sure they're eating really good food to make them as healthy and nutritious for your snake as possible.

I didn't mean to generalize, I'm sorry! I've had some problems with male mice in the past, so as a rule I only buy female. But yeah, one of the reasons that I wanted to keep them was so that I would know just what I'm giving my baby!

Hey, I advocate doing whatever works for you. For me, its FT. I dont have the space or the want to breed rodents. I do however have a nice sized rodent freezer that stays full and I always have food for my snakes. :) If I was to recommend, I would say breed rats. Mice smell and are disgusting little creatures.

Breeding rats would be a bit of overkill for one snake. LOL And the trouble with buying a few rats to feed for a few weeks so you don't have to go to the store each week, would be that they would continue to grow and end up too big for the snake to eat.


I think, with a single snake, that trick would only realistically work with mice, since they wouldn't grow any larger than...well...a mouse!

Haha..Shows me my lack of attention. I didn't realize he had only one snake.

Are you saying a mouse won't grow any larger than a mouse? Preposterous! :)

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Originally Posted by jglass38

Are you saying a mouse won't grow any larger than a mouse? Preposterous! :)

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LOL....I know. I expect someone to slap me down for making such a vague assumption!

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Originally Posted by jglass38

Mice smell and are disgusting little creatures.

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My thoughts exactly. Right now I have a few mice in a cage because one of my girls seemed to prefer them, but I've been able to get her on scented rat pups so I think I'm going to off the rest of my mice and keep their bedding. Mine took FOREVER to breed even though the male was constantly going at it. Finally when they did breed, the mothers kept munching on their young. Disgusting, vile, stinky little creatures.

Rats on the other hand are really cool. I have a couple that keep giving me huge litters (16), but they make excellent mothers. I felt really bad today, though, because I had to move one mother that just had a huge litter and she had JUST given birth. We're going out of town so I had to clean her cage.

I breed mice and I keep all mine in the garage. But im kinda stumped right now because I started at the end of the summer but now summers here and im not sure where to put them. EEEEKS

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

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