When to pull the hoppers

Hello all,

Only started breeding multis a few months ago to feed my small collection. Everything went smoothly with 3 1.2 colonies, until the females have started to have their 2nd litters.

The previous young, now with eyes open and moving independent, have basically pushed the pinkies to the bottom of the nest and so I presume off the milk.

My question is... When do you remove the previous litters and place them into the growing on tubs? Other care sheets said 4 weeks but that would always leave pinkie s (who pop out every 3 weeks) At the bottom of the pile.

Cheers

They can be weaned at 3 weeks.

In my opinion it's never good to leave the males and females together all the time for any rodent. It's best to pull the females just before giving birth and put them in separate tubs. Once the babies are weaned you can put them back with the colony. Otherwise they will get pregnant as soon as they give birth and will have the second litter before the first are weaned. And if you try to wean the first litter early by separating them it seriously affects their health and their growth will be stunted. If you keep them all together there's a chance the new babies won't get enough milk to survive. I separate both my female mice and rats before they give birth, or at least remove the male as soon as one is ready to give birth.

If you are not in a hurry you can keep the male in the tub until all are pregnant, then just before the first female gives birth feed off the male. Then as the babies grow up feed off all but one male first, keep that male to breed back with the females. I sometimes do that with my mice, it really slows down production but keeps the females healthy and litter sizes big. Plus with mice it's the males that really stink so it helps keep the smell to almost zero by removing the adult male population. I don't really need that many mice since I have so many rats so I'm not in a hurry to produce that many anyways.

My go into grow out tanks at 3 weeks on the dot. Make sure water bottle has a light weight Ball so they can drink. If you do not pull them the next litter will die.
As some will mention pulling males this is NOT a option with ASF's. They will fight/kill the male when re-introduced. Your best breeding will be 3-4 litters tops from each female and then you need to feed them off, after three or four litters they will produce only 5 to 8 pup litters. I start growing pups from the 2nd litter to replace the mothers after their 4th.


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Amazing info - more than I found trawling Google for ours. Cheers guys and gal. :)

Another quicky.... What would happen if I moved say 8 day old babies into another tub with colony females. Would they seek and destroy the babies or feed and care for them?