Pregnant mice Question...

[Beardedragon]

Heres the deal, Mice Direct sells Pregnant mice for $2.50 a pop. I'll be heading over there sometime next week to pick some up, yet i am not sure how many to buy. I do not want to over load myself with mice, yet i do not want to under buy them. Once my adults are back on track they should be eating 3-5 mice a week, and my lesser will only eat one a week until he is big enough to handle more. Although i do not want to over load myself with mice, i do want to over stock a little because once i have a good colony running i can buy a lot more snakes like i have been planing to do.

I was thinking about buying 10- 15. That way i will have enough to to hold back alot of females unrelated to my male mouse, and still have enough to feed off to my snakes, plus a friend of mine who has balls( She has three snakes as well) What do you guys think? I know that will bring me alot of mice, but how many baby's should i expect from 15? I know i can house and feed as many as they can throw at me

[PythonWallace]

I just started recently, but It seems like I'll be getting about 12-15 mice per female every 5-6 weeks the way I do it. So if you get 15 pregnant mice you will likely have about 150-180 babies all born at the same time, then 3+ weeks to raise them all the feeding size.

[cassandra]

Gah, that's a lot, hehe...

My mouse litters have been anywhere from 5-6 up to 16 with 10-12 really being the average I get.

If you have room and the pregnant mice look healthy, I'd lean on the side of more as a) you can always freeze extries and b) sometimes mice just don't breed and/or get pregnant when you think they should have by now (kind of a thing).

When you don't need more mice, they'll ALL be pregnant. Very Murphy's Law.

[Beardedragon]

Thank you both for the fast replies. I was thinking around the same estimate Pythonwallace, thats ALOT of baby's!

Cassandra: I was leaning on more also, Ive been setting up tubs all day because of it Not only can i freeze them but i also know ALOT of people who need fuzzys and such in my area, so i could sell some off as well to help feed, house, and get back what i put into them. I'm Pretty sure Mice Directs mice would be healthy, everyone that has ordered from them seems very happy with their mice.


BUT... Since I'm a little new to breeding mice, where can i house the baby's? Could i house all 15 girls in a 55 gallon tub without having to worry about them eating baby's and stealing? And once they get bigger separate them by size?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

how many baby's should i expect from 15?

I average 12 to 17 babies per litters so you could very well get between 180-255 babies

[cassandra]

BUT... Since I'm a little new to breeding mice, where can i house the baby's? Could i house all 15 girls in a 55 gallon tub without having to worry about them eating baby's and stealing? And once they get bigger separate them by size?

Yipes, I wouldn't. For the first time, I housed 2 mom's who dropped within a few days of each other in a 20L. One mouse kinda took over nursing both litters, which I think really slowed the development of the later litter. I still have a few runts still nursing on the mom's *and* eating solid food (which is weird since all my other litters stopped nursing once they started eating solid food)...they still need time before I can wean them off. =P

If it were me, I'd keep smaller groups (depending on how large the housing/tub/whatever you're using is) together that look like they will drop at the same time. Mice momma's love to nom on babies, even their own, so for starting out, I'd be worried that all your efforts would just go down the drain, er, gullet...

[Beardedragon]

I'll ask Mice direct when they think the moms will drop, a few weeks ago i bought two pregnant mice that just happen to drop the same night. I think i lost 5 +- or so baby's and now they are at the hopper stage at 18 baby's from the two. I'll definitely separate them into smaller groups, maybe groups of five?

[Dcommander]

Yeah, I think 5 is OK