Question about feeding

[cchardwick]

I think I would feed her smaller mice especially after regurgitation, I wouldn't do an adult for awhile, just work up to it. You could try finding a mouse breeder, maybe put an ad on Craig's list, or maybe you could even breed your own mice. They grow super fast and produce like crazy, just get a 10 gallon tank and throw in a male and female. When the babies get to the right size just gas them with CO2 and pop them in the freezer, then you'll have plenty of mice for a long time. They have babies every three weeks, and my white strain of feeder mice have up to 19 babies at a time! You could have just a 10 gallon tank and one pair of mice.

I was breeding mice in colonies of one male to 3-5 females and soon I was literally over run with tons of mice! I started feeding 3-4 mice per snake to feed them off and I'm still getting tons and tons of mice from just a few tubs full. I actually have a new mouse breeding strategy now. if you keep the male and female together all the time the male will breed the female as soon as she has babies, and she will have new babies before the babies are weaned. You'll end up with the mom sitting on a bunch of old babies mixed in with new babies, which doesn't work well at all.

Now I actually put the male in with the female just until she is about ready to have babies, then remove the male and gas him with CO2 an feed him off or pop him in the freezer. Then when the female has babies you can gas and freeze off all of them at the right size but leave one male in to breed back with the female. It gives the female a break and slows down the breeding, it takes a few weeks after weaning before the male is mature so instead of babies every three weeks it's probably every 5-6 weeks. Then once the female is ready to have babies again you can feed off the male. I actually don't run any males in with my females now, I pull them all out and feed them off when they mature and they breed all the females before they go. Works great because the males are the stinky ones, the females don't smell that much. You could get quite a few mice with just one female in a 10 gallon tank, it's really all you need if you are pulling them out gassing them and putting them in the freezer.

I actually have several tanks now, I keep the breeders and babies in 20 gallon tanks and pull the mature males and females and put them in separate male only / female only 10 gallon feeder tanks, keeps the males from fighting over the females and keeps the females from getting pregnant. Males will only fight if they are fully mature and mixed in with females. If there's any fighting I gas those off first thing.

For tanks I use glass critter cages with screen tops and put a carbon filter pad on top, that way it has zero smell. I've also started using coconut husk mixed with shredded paper, cuts the smell down considerably.