Thanks for all the advice everyone!!

Becky, what you said really made sense to me. The next day I went out and bought myself an adult mouse and she nailed it. She's got a great feeding response with live so I suppose I'll just stay with that.

Yesterday, I decided I'm going to start breeding my own feed. I just can't justify spending 2.50 for a mouse at PetCo. After MUCH help and advice from Bruce (loftlizard), I decided that a 1.2 colony should work out just fine for me. I'm dumb and bought a starter kit that was on sale at PetCo which included everything I needed. But I basically bought the starter kit and just 3 feeder mice for now. I'm still working out all the kinks with breeding. I bought a tub, water dispenser, and wheel today at walmart and plan to have that all set up maybe today or tomorrow. And I'll probably pick up my 1.2 by Wednesday or something.

Joanna, Bruce told me to contact you about your tub setup with the screened top design(?)... I'd love to see pictures if you wouldn't mind. Also, because I am only keeping such a small colony, and I'm only trying to raise enough for this one female, does anyone have any good methods to achieve a good maintenance level of mice?

Thanks again everyone!
Mitch