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.
Originally Posted by 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
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