Mice Breeding Issues??!?!

[truthsdeceit]

Says who? I've been breeding mice for 18 years. It does not stunt their growth. Maybe you are working with an inferior strain of mice. Maybe you are outcrossing your mice with weak strains. I will have 2 litters by the time you get your first. The only time I've seen sick mice is when temps are too cool and when they get old......8-10 months.

The mice I worked with are 50-60 grams at retirement. Would you call that anorexic? Optimal health? We are talking about animals that we feed to snakes. I have never had any trouble with cannibalism or losing mothers and babies. My average first litters have always been 8-10 babies. Average litters after that have been 14-16 and topping out at around 20.....and I inbred for MANY generations for YEARS with zero negative results.

Yes, start breeding them at 4 weeks. They are weaned at 21 days and another week is when they are usually breeding anyway. Keeping weanlings in too long is what wears out the females. I can start with a group of 5.25 mice breeding and in just a few months be producing thousands of mice a week. I guess my goals of maximum production are different than everyone elses'. Wait if you wish.

Good luck.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get anyone up in arms. I just meant in my experince 4 weeks tends to be too young. (and yes your experince far outstrips mine because I've only been breeding mice a year) But that's the point of these threads to share experinces.

I do not always wait a full 12 weeks with my mice.
Usually around 6 weeks they become breeders. I wean at 3-3.5 weeks depending on whether I've witnessed them eating solids. I agree keeping them with mom too long will wear her out. That's what grow out tubs are for.

I call 12 weeks a safe bet. Just as when we tell beginner bp keepers to have 2 hides but many sucessful keepers provide one or none. I'm telling beginners to give there young mice time to grow up until they are experinced enough to know what a healthy breeding weight is. (which I'm sorry to say I have no idea, I "eyeball" my mice, because I do not own a scale.)

Of course we want optimal health! we're feeding these animals to our pets. I never feed my snake a sickly mouse. I call anorexic a mouse half the weight it should be (though it is eating as much as it can so anorexic is the wrong word). I've only seen this 3 times in mice that came to me already prego, usually because they we're not seperated from there brothers at 4weeks. That's why I"m careful to wait for maturity. And yes I"m sure I have an 'inferior' strain of mice as most came from local pet stores. But I average 10per litter and have never had an act of canibalism.

That being said. I'm small time. Very small time. So good luck and I hope everyone finds a way that works for them.