What are your thoughts on this?

[Beardedragon]

What are your thoughts on keeping mice together all the way through pregnancy, and then still keeping the baby's in with the rest of the colony?

I know how the male can eat them if they are not his, and that others can stress her out, but while i was at the pet store yesterday i saw that one of the moms was kept in the tank with all the other feeders( around 25) and the baby's had color, so they must have been in there for a few days. I want to try it but i want to know if anyone has any high success stories using this method. I do not mind separating them, but introducing new mice to my colony is hard work!

[frankykeno]

I am not an experience mouse breeder, however, I wanted to put this thought in your thread.

It's not a good idea with most any living thing to go by what a pet store is doing as far as level of care (unless it is a speciality store).

[Beardedragon]

Yeah, in no means would i want to follow the directions of that pet store, i was just saying it surprised me that they have a litter with so many other mice that were not devoured by the mom or other males. It is also very hard to introduce a mom once you wean the baby's.

[JeffFlanagan]

It's not a good idea with most any living thing to go by what a pet store is doing as far as level of care (unless it is a specialty store).

Hahaha...very good point.

I've been pretty lax in pulling my pregnant mouse females lately because I have no mouse eaters right now and a lot of mice, and I'm not seeing any babies in the main tank. I'm pretty sure they're all being eaten despite the availability of a lot of hides in the tank.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I have tried harem did not work for me 100% cannibalism each time. Some people are successful at it though.

The only thing that seems to work for me is to have 2 females together in each tub and rotate the male. This way the female don’t breed back-to-back, have a limited amount of stress and take good care of theirs babies. (0% Cannibalism this way for me)

Once the babies are weaned (3 weeks old) they go in a grow out tub.

This is what work for me, mice are tricky and often hard to get started so you need to experiment and see what work for you.

I would definitely recommend you to separate the offsprings from the breeders once they reach 4 weeks old (max), and to also separate them by sex or you are gonna be over crowded very fast.