I bought fancy mice from Petco, there are several problems using them as feeders. For some reason fancy mice don't produce nearly as many babies as white feeder mice. My litter size for fancy mice was in the 8-10 range, for white breeder mice I get up to 16 babies at a time. Also, it may be hard to feed off fancy mice because each one is unique, you may end up with a whole colony of pet mice LOL. White mice are easier to feed off, they all look the same and you don't get attached to one color or pattern combo.
Personally I'd do the same with rats, try to find some white / albino rats instead of fancy colored pet rats. I actually started with multi colored rats and I'm holding back all the white albino rats as female breeders and keeping the solid black rat males as breeders, that way I can tell them apart.
I'd suggest getting rats or mice from a pet store that sells feeder rodents. Usually breeders choose that specific line for their ability to reproduce, most times you'll find white mice used as breeders. Be sure to keep just one male per one or more females per tub. Often times in the pet stores they throw all the mice together in a random tub and they will beat each other up to the point where they are all bloody and beat up, not a pretty site. That's where I started, I chose just a few mice from those beat up pet store feeders and got my start that way. Now I never combine mice from different colonies, I keep them all together as they grow and mature and cull the extra males first.
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