Breeding 100+ a week

[azmodane]

So lets say I wanted 120 adult mice a week how many breeding groups would I need? Also at that size is it necessary to pull the mother out once she drops pups and move her and babies to separate tub or would it ok to keep the group as it is and just pull the babies out once they stop nursing? Also would it be best to do 1.2 or 1.3?

[tomfromtheshade]

Alright...this how I would do it.

Build yourself some racks using medium sized Petmate litter pans. They are 16" x 12" x 4" which is a great size for running 1.2 mice in.

You can build these racks 8 levels high with NO problems.

This gives you 16 females per rack. This should get you about 128 babies per month.

You will need four racks like this. Introduce the trios in the first rack on day one. Introduce the trios in the second rack on day seven. The third rack on day 14. The fourth rack on day 21. This should mean that they will be giving birth in about 1 week increments.

Then you will need grow out racks for all of your little mice.

You will need to grow them to at least 16 weeks to really reach adult size.

You will need to separate the grow outs by sex so you don't end up with a ton of unwanted inbred babies.

[azmodane]

So estimated I will need about 64 tubs which would be 8 racks with 8 tubs per rack?

[ice#1]

look at those little lab grade mouse cages they hold 4 females and a male which you pull females out before they pop 3 to 4 days.

i myself would use that same size tub recommended bout the same floor space as a 10 gallon tank put 5 to 10 females and 1 male as females get close to popping (3 or 4 days before move 4 or 5 of the pregnant females to a new tub. depending on size of mice you need you can start shortly after them getting hair to pull the males out and freeze and use as food male mice can and will easily get 10 females pregnant a month thus free up much of the needed factory size room you would need only doing 2 females per male.

i prefer to give my females a couple weeks after they are done raising a liter to recoup before getting pregnant again. the last time i breed my own mice i had a couple females over a year old still pushing out 12 to 13 pinkie litters mainly i think cuase i gave them a rest period not breeding back to back.

by putting pregnant females about ready to pop in a group cage they will help raise each others babies which means less looses even if got a bad mother it will surprise you just how many mice you can produce from just 1 cage if you got more then 2 or 3 mice just these last 2 weeks just from female from 1 male cage they have produced close to 80 babies from 6 females i still got 4 more females getting close to popping like said the trick i use is move females to a group cage (by group cage i mean no-more then putting 5 females in a cage when they are ready to pop)

as far as inbreed mice from the babies as they get bigger who cares they are going to be snake food right one inbreeding isn't going to cause no major issues now if you did that many times to years on end yes problems will arise but not from a single inbreeding after all that is how traits are set you got 2 different color morphs say a white female mouse and the male was Grey or black or even spotted and you want lets say all white you take a male baby that was white(or what ever color you liked or thought looks neat) and breed back to the mother. or the other way if you liked the males color.

all in all with the way I'm doing it my goal is close to the same as yours possibly higher depending on hatching % and i right now only need 4 breeder tanks instead of a whole rack full. yes if you got tons of room and love cleaning mouse cages then do a 1.2 or 1.3 ratio or if you love spending tons of money on bedding. but you can go higher even if just 5 female to 1 male will save you room and money that can be used to build racks to hold snakes. if just do a 1.5 ratio you can put a female in with male weekly then the 5th one of the females will have a week to recoup before getting pregnant again

[Jeremy78]

Wow! That sounds like a full time job lol. If it were me I'd do exactly as Tom said. I took his advice for my colony and I'm doing great! Be warned: if you overcrowd expect a lot of death. 1.2 is perfect for that amount of space. Any more and... Death.
With toms set up you can run 1.1 asf too if you get bored .

look at those little lab grade mouse cages they hold 4 females and a male which you pull females out before they pop 3 to 4 days.

i myself would use that same size tub recommended bout the same floor space as a 10 gallon tank put 5 to 10 females and 1 male as females get close to popping (3 or 4 days before move 4 or 5 of the pregnant females to a new tub. depending on size of mice you need you can start shortly after them getting hair to pull the males out and freeze and use as food male mice can and will easily get 10 females pregnant a month thus free up much of the needed factory size room you would need only doing 2 females per male.

i prefer to give my females a couple weeks after they are done raising a liter to recoup before getting pregnant again. the last time i breed my own mice i had a couple females over a year old still pushing out 12 to 13 pinkie litters mainly i think cuase i gave them a rest period not breeding back to back.

by putting pregnant females about ready to pop in a group cage they will help raise each others babies which means less looses even if got a bad mother it will surprise you just how many mice you can produce from just 1 cage if you got more then 2 or 3 mice just these last 2 weeks just from female from 1 male cage they have produced close to 80 babies from 6 females i still got 4 more females getting close to popping like said the trick i use is move females to a group cage (by group cage i mean no-more then putting 5 females in a cage when they are ready to pop)

as far as inbreed mice from the babies as they get bigger who cares they are going to be snake food right one inbreeding isn't going to cause no major issues now if you did that many times to years on end yes problems will arise but not from a single inbreeding after all that is how traits are set you got 2 different color morphs say a white female mouse and the male was Grey or black or even spotted and you want lets say all white you take a male baby that was white(or what ever color you liked or thought looks neat) and breed back to the mother. or the other way if you liked the males color.

all in all with the way I'm doing it my goal is close to the same as yours possibly higher depending on hatching % and i right now only need 4 breeder tanks instead of a whole rack full. yes if you got tons of room and love cleaning mouse cages then do a 1.2 or 1.3 ratio or if you love spending tons of money on bedding. but you can go higher even if just 5 female to 1 male will save you room and money that can be used to build racks to hold snakes. if just do a 1.5 ratio you can put a female in with male weekly then the 5th one of the females will have a week to recoup before getting pregnant again

[ice#1]

Wow! That sounds like a full time job lol. If it were me I'd do exactly as Tom said. I took his advice for my colony and I'm doing great! Be warned: if you overcrowd expect a lot of death. 1.2 is perfect for that amount of space. Any more and... Death.
With toms set up you can run 1.1 asf too if you get bored .

really putting even 5 females sounds like a full time job but having twice as many cages don't that is funny think of it like this would you rather have 5 chores to do daily or 64 chores to do daily which sounds like more work i know which by the math is more work i myself would rather have 5 cages to clean weekly then 64 far less cleaning to do with 5 breeder cages then 64 cages far less bedding would be needed only thing that would be the same is the ammount of food needed and water yes you need to refill water bottles daily but your suppose to do that anyway to insure better health.

hmm more deaths if you mean I've yet to loose a mouse then i guess i must be overcrowding. also Jeremy78 aint you the guy who has a vid on here somewhere where you got a huge nest that many mothers share i could be wrong and it not be you but rember somebody on this site showing a vid talking about there big next of babies that many mothers share

as long as you give enough food and water they will be fine it is when you go from doing a small 1.2 or 1.3 ratio to a higher ratio but only give same amount of food that you start running into deaths. i've used this same set-up in the past for 10 years straight last time i was breeding and guess how many mice i lost in those 10 year not a single mouse

I'm just saying that when using that big of a tub you can use more then 3 mice to that size tub here is the size of tube for a 1.2 or 1.3 ratio 7.5" x 11.5" x 5" made from a company that builds cages just for that style of producing mice

to me personally i prefer taller tubs or tanks to keep the mice in so i can put an exercise wheel or 2 in so mice aint just laying around with nothing to do maybe thats why my system works for me cause i let my mice get exercise which improves there health so yes if tub aint tall enough to have a wheel i could see tons of death from a bunch of mice that can do nothing but walk around.

just like the tall tale of how long you can use a female mouse to breed for just a few months hahaha. I've had females breed for a couple years with using an exercise wheel and giving a few extra weeks to recoup. and had no drop in litter size. yes when they get older you might loose a pregnant female due to complications in a total of not quite 11 years of breeding mice I've only lost 1 pregnant female and that was recently cause the Lil pet carrier i put her in my son knocked off shelf her cage was on but then again my mice seem to be super mice most people get there biggest litter from a virgan female mine seem to be having more babies after there first breeding case in point these last 2 weeks i've had 4 females there first breeding they had 12 babies second breeding they had 16. reason i think for this is cause 1 they get all the food they want 2 fresh water daily not fill the bottle and wait till it gets empty to refill 3 they get exercise from an exercise wheel. 4 no table scrapes at all only high grade mouse rat and rabbit food that makes a varied diet like they would get in the wild, don't no truely wild mice that go get hot dogs or man made dog food or cat food. (by wild mice i mean mice that live away from man)

[tomfromtheshade]

Where to start? LOL.

You can clean 64 tubs in less than half an hour.

Water bottles? LOL. Auto watering baby!

You COULD run 1.8 in that size tub as well, but just because you COULD do something doesn't mean that you should.

Wheels? In mouse tubs? Umm...You must not have that many animals. I could never take the time to mess around with wheels and what not.

really putting even 5 females sounds like a full time job but having twice as many cages don't that is funny think of it like this would you rather have 5 chores to do daily or 64 chores to do daily which sounds like more work i know which by the math is more work i myself would rather have 5 cages to clean weekly then 64 far less cleaning to do with 5 breeder cages then 64 cages far less bedding would be needed only thing that would be the same is the ammount of food needed and water yes you need to refill water bottles daily but your suppose to do that anyway to insure better health.

hmm more deaths if you mean I've yet to loose a mouse then i guess i must be overcrowding. also Jeremy78 aint you the guy who has a vid on here somewhere where you got a huge nest that many mothers share i could be wrong and it not be you but rember somebody on this site showing a vid talking about there big next of babies that many mothers share

as long as you give enough food and water they will be fine it is when you go from doing a small 1.2 or 1.3 ratio to a higher ratio but only give same amount of food that you start running into deaths. i've used this same set-up in the past for 10 years straight last time i was breeding and guess how many mice i lost in those 10 year not a single mouse

I'm just saying that when using that big of a tub you can use more then 3 mice to that size tub here is the size of tube for a 1.2 or 1.3 ratio 7.5" x 11.5" x 5" made from a company that builds cages just for that style of producing mice

to me personally i prefer taller tubs or tanks to keep the mice in so i can put an exercise wheel or 2 in so mice aint just laying around with nothing to do maybe thats why my system works for me cause i let my mice get exercise which improves there health so yes if tub aint tall enough to have a wheel i could see tons of death from a bunch of mice that can do nothing but walk around.

just like the tall tale of how long you can use a female mouse to breed for just a few months hahaha. I've had females breed for a couple years with using an exercise wheel and giving a few extra weeks to recoup. and had no drop in litter size. yes when they get older you might loose a pregnant female due to complications in a total of not quite 11 years of breeding mice I've only lost 1 pregnant female and that was recently cause the Lil pet carrier i put her in my son knocked off shelf her cage was on but then again my mice seem to be super mice most people get there biggest litter from a virgan female mine seem to be having more babies after there first breeding case in point these last 2 weeks i've had 4 females there first breeding they had 12 babies second breeding they had 16. reason i think for this is cause 1 they get all the food they want 2 fresh water daily not fill the bottle and wait till it gets empty to refill 3 they get exercise from an exercise wheel. 4 no table scrapes at all only high grade mouse rat and rabbit food that makes a varied diet like they would get in the wild, don't no truely wild mice that go get hot dogs or man made dog food or cat food. (by wild mice i mean mice that live away from man)

[ice#1]

just 1 question you sterilize 64 tubs in less then half an hour and dry them hmm either you dont do it or your lieing about how long it takes to clean the tubs

1 simple reason you dont clean your tubs cages what ever properly infections and diseases break out

you say you can do it i say prove it lets see a vid of you pulling mice out of 64 tubs washing the tubs like should be done to properly clean them to keep with healthy standards dry them replace bedding and then mice i dont see it being done unless your jacked up on meth. my grandpa use to work at eastern Illinois collage had 75 mice cages the ones that dont need bedding as it dropped threw and 115 rat cages and i would go in on week-ends to help him clean them and it would take half a day so i been there done that cleaning the cages up to spec for safe living conditions for the mice and rats and it took longer then half an hour to do 64 cages.

i wouldn't of called you on this if you said an hour or 2 but less then half an hour come on lets see some proof

now i can see it done if all you do is dump the old bedding out and put new bedding in yes anybody can do that but to do it properly to not spread any diseases takes longer no ifs ands or buts about it

[Jeremy78]

Never lost a female after 10 years?!?!?! And breed females for a few years!?!?!? Wow! Not saying I don't believe you, I'm just amazed at your success!

To the op, I would do as Tom says . I spend 20 minutes a week in the mouse room and that includes, cleaning, splitting up babies, watering, and feeding. Dump the bin, quick bleach spray, towel dry, replace mice and bedding.

I strongly disagree with overcrowding. Mice require daily care that way, accurate log books, and TONS of cleaning.

Rack systems FTW. So much easier, you can go away for a few days without worry, 1/8 of the smell.

[ice#1]

only daily care i give mine is feed them and check water bottles to make sure they wont run out while I'm not around (i dont like putting all my mice on the same water supply cause if 1 gets sick cause of bad water or what ever they all get sick with water bottles you get the biggest size even for 21 mice it lasts a few days unless the ball is touching something and leaks then if disease breaks out you are sure it wasn't spread to all the mice from a central water supply)

as for smell i put a cup of kitty litter under the aspen so it dont stink unless i go 2 weeks between cleanings (like going on vacation just have somebody come and check food and water daily)


Jeremy78 wasn't it you you posted a vid of a big communal nest of babies more then 2 females worth of babies.

i know i pull pregnant mice out and put them in cages with other females around the same due time up-to 4 females. where as long as all the females are there together from the get go help take care of each others babies and don't fight or eat each others babies. I've had females that still had a week left till they had there babies feeding her cage mates babies