Yay! My very own mouse rack!

Finally, some convenience to my mouse breeding objective. No more urine-encased sticky water bottles, no more urine covered lab blocks, no more having to scoop soiled litter out with a dustpan.

My husband built this, with some minimal assistance from me, tonight in about 4 hours, off and on throughout the afternoon. With $50 in materials and tubs, we got 'er done.

The base design is from Dwight Good's plans on his website.

We customized it for different sized tubs and whatnot. I'm unable to find kitty litter pans that don't have an extemely curved edge, and I like to be able to SEE my mice to observe their progress as far as babies and pregnancies go. Besides, who wants to cramp their mice into tiny little opaque tubs..more floor space means more room to move about.

The only thing I'm unsure about it is that the tubs don't slide completely. There wasn't enough room for slider rails like was in Dwight's plan to be installed. So wood screws were screwed in halfway so you flex the tubs in between the screws and it holds them quite tightly. If it doesn't end up working out we'll have to find some material thin enough at a 90* angle to support the tubs. But so far, so good however.

The overal dimensions of the rack are: 33.5" x 17.5" x 60". The tubs used are Sterilite model 1856 & 1854. Everyone is in their new homes, with food and water in place and they settled down quite nicely.

It may not be pretty, but it's functional. A lot more convenient than aquariums taking up a good portion of the polebarn.

Here she is:



Let me know what you all think.

Looks great to me! Lets see those Black Rats try and sneak thier way into that.

I need to do that for my colony. My setup now is awful. Thanks for that post.

i wish i had 1................ but i cant afford to feed so many

Hey Misty,

You have a better rack system now then I do! And here I thought I was the mouse pro LOL! It looks really good. If I only had some where to cut wood and build I would be asking for the blueprints. I just don't trust myself with power tools these days. :twohammer

Jeff C.

Looks good!!

You will be amazed how much money you will save, when you start to breed your own rodents. It takes some time , but it's worth the effort.
Congrats, Stephen

Jeff,

That's funny! How do you have all of your mice situated in your house? Lots of aquariums? =P

Are you ever going to ship mice? I'd kill to own some of those blueish colored mice you've got going. :crazy02:



Stephen,

Yeah, I've been breeding my mice shortly after owning my own snakes. Got sick of ordering mice, and my snakes not growing very well. I raised mice and gerbils as a kid, and it was pretty easy and very rewarding so I just upped the production a bit and voila..