Mice are fighting pretty bad, is it OK?

[cchardwick]

I just had my first litter of mice that are weaned from the mom, one of the babies was sitting in the food bowl eating and mom was sitting all by herself in the corner of the tank, not in the hide with the babies, so I figured it was time to move her back in with the male. There was already one female in there with the male and she started fighting really bad with the mom that I just took from her young. It was pretty violent for several minutes, the male kept trying to check on each one kind of like a moderator trying to smooth things over LOL. I figure if things get real bad where she is all beat up and bloody I can just feed her off, but I'm not sure it will come to that, will it? Or I can move out the other pregnant female, but I'm short of empty tanks at the moment...

I really like the idea of moving females into and out of a colony breeding tank with just one male, move them out when they are ready to pop from having babies. Not only does it give the mom some alone time with her babies to raise them in peace (no cannibalism) but I can also control the breeding rate by choosing when to move them back in with the male. That's the idea anyway, I didn't expect all the fighting when I moved them back. The good thing about feeder mice is that if there are ever any problems you can always feed them off LOL. I actually bought seven feeder mice last week and had an extra one so decided to keep the smallest youngest female to add some variety to my mouse bloodline. Lots of fighting at first but they finally settled down, she was really young though, not sure about an adult mouse that has just finished weaning young...

I just bought a baby ball python, only had three meals so far, so these new baby mice will be a perfect meal for her for the next few weeks. I also have more baby mice on the way!