need help getting started.

[halfwaynowhere]

My sister asked me to look into breeding mice for her... She's got a few clutches of corn snake eggs in the incubator right now, and is going to need a lot of mice. Its become impractical to just buy what they need, they'd be spending about $500 a month on mice.

This is what they'll need each week:
20 adults. 6 fuzzies. 60-80 pinkies

I plan on going over there this week to help her get set up (rodents are more my thing than hers). her hubby can build a rack for them. I just don't have any clue how many breeders we'll need to get started. I figure she'll probably have to still buy some of her feeders for awhile, but this should take the strain off a bit...

[Argentra]

Hmm, figuring out just how many takes math...something I am horrid at!

However, I can say that the harem method of breeding (one male with two or more females in a tub) works much better with mice since you aren't changing things around all the time by moving the males. Mice like their groups to be steady and they prefer to be left alone most of the time...at least they seem to breed better when those things are done.

Good luck setting up the colony, and remember that it takes a month or more to get them going! Hopefully someone with better number skills than I can tell you how many to start with.

[halfwaynowhere]

we do have a bit of time before the first clutch is due to hatch... sometime in august... the second clutch might not be viable, and the third hasn't been laid yet... and they only plan on doubly clutching the second two females this year, so that huge number of pinkies can be worked up to... its gonna take awhile to get up to that 20 adults per week, though...

[dracovolans]

I keep them in groups of 1.5 and when the females are ready to deliver I move each one to anoter tub alone. When the male is alone (because all the females are with their babies) I add 5 more females. When the firts 5 femlaes are weaned put them together until the the male finish his work with the second group of 5 females. Then add the firts 5 again. That way you only need 1 male for 10 females and will have a good production (around 50 babies) every month with this set up. Double or triple that and you will have alot of mice.

Hope this help.

[littleindiangirl]

Aww, I'm with Adriana, math=eww!

[Reptile dude007]

Ok lets see here
With a average litter of 5 to 10 pinks you will need 20 females if the only have have pinks per littler. or you will need 8 females if they have 10. But it is all ways good to have extras. So you will need you will need 1 male per every 3 females. You will need 7 males if you buy 20 females and if you have 8 females you will need 3 males. all together you will need 10 tubs 5 tubs for the mating and 5 tubs for different times in the mice's life's. 1 for pinks, 1 for fuzzys, 1 for hoppers, 1 to give the girls a rest, and 1 to hold the ones that didn't get eaten, larger litters, ect.

[Beardedragon]

WELL... It seems like you need my old breeding setup! Take a look at my old video of when I kept mice, it seems that it is exactly what you are looking for!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7p6ZAd2glp8

Its the adults that you will have trouble with getting, it takes a good bit for mice to get up there. What you need to do is raise up all of your first pinky's to adults, and have ALOT of surplus to where at all times you have enough to last you a month or two( long enough for the same amount of pinkies to get to adult size so you never run out.) You really need to start now, getting a good colony takes a while. In that video I had been doing it for about three? months and that was my current amount.

I didn't really do anything special, I have maybe 15-20 females to one male, and switched the male out between two tubs. Once they hit overcrowding or weanling stage they were moved to the big blue tub( there was more but the day before I sold 20 off)

I might have had a little trouble with them eating some baby's, but as you can see in the vid I still had plenty! All I fed them as well was dog food( the good kind)

I really didn't do anything fancy like switching them to different tubs between stages and it worked out fine, once I saw that one tub was pregnant id put the male in my other tub and so on so they did get a small break and were not prego while nursing( or at least I tryed).

Any who, my current setup pretty much met your requirements!