I need to breed my own but am very frustrated!

[chromeitout]

I beg to differ with temps. With extremely high temps yes they will not breed well. But my mice have been in 82oF room and i produce over 200 mice a month on the dot. It mainly has to do with the males and if they have what it takes.

I respect your opinion, but you are recognizing the fact that high temps cause them not to breed well, but would you say for sure that yours would not produce more at... let's say 70, than at 82. When the temps went up this year my production went from about 600/month to about 400/month (last years results were about the same). I am adding an a/c unit this week due to this.

Sure a bad male can cause production problems as well, but that's just 1 tub. Temperature and ventillation affects the whole project...

[RichsBallPythons]

Temps can play a role but i only have 12 breeding groups right now producing my 200+ per month. Each group is 1.2 and been going strong since winter.

Cooler temps in my house is out of the question. so i keep air circulating the room so they feel like its cooler but yet its not. Coldest room in my house year round is 77. but with the production i have im happy with and couldnt ask for more.

[chromeitout]

You are right, that is very good for 24 females. If you are having that good of numbers then don't change a thing... rock on!

[nixer]

ive produced so many mice i wont even try to guess over the years.
all my mice are are in my snake room its roughly 75(no heat or a/c) in there.
with both rats and mice production numbers will go up with temps less than 70 degrees. mice do really well with a/c but humidity is more of an issue with both rats and mice. with just some air movement they should breed just fine. 60-70 would be ideal with both rats and mice. also note that mice need light or you will get bad numbers, while rats do not require any lighting to breed.

[chromeitout]

That is very interesting. I've never heard about the lighting requirements. Both my rats and mice are always in total darkness, unless I'm in the building. I will definitely experiment with this...

[Jay_Bunny]

We only use lights in the room if its dark outside, otherwise the entire room is lit up by outside light (skylight) so the rodents get natural light cycles. Not sure if this matters or not.

So I did a few different things with the tank this time. Instead of a simple paper box (like they use in petstores for your pet to come home in) I used a wooden (one of the edible ones) house in their tank. The mice love it! They love crawling on it and cuddling in it. Its very dark in there so they can go in there when they want to feel secure. I'm also providing them with more things to chew on then last time. I also introduced a running wheel. Temps so far are staying 80 and under, so hopefully they will start producing.

When I went to feed them today, I checked each female and one is looking plump. Not golfballs in the belly type plump but definitely plumper than the other two females. Cross you fingers!

[chromeitout]

Good luck!!!

[Emilio]

Asf's are worth a try maybe you can talk to Mike I highly recomend ASF's.

[Jay_Bunny]

Who is mike? Haha. I know people on here mostly by their screen name, so whenever I see a real name I wonder who it is. I would love to do ASFs. I had two males here at one point (they were given to me because the petstore was shutting down. I was hoping they would be male and female but turned out to be two males) and I noticed little to no smell. And they are quiet. Maybe thats something for when my husband and I get our own place.