Difficulty in Breeding Mice

When I was a kid I had two mice, Sam and Samantha, and they bred like crazy. Healthy as can be and voila, I ended up quadrupling my colony in a matter of months. It was all fun, when I didn't have any outlet for my numbers that I produced.

But now, I have 1 male and 2 females, and the little suckers won't breed. My dwarf hamsters are off to a better start than they are, and it's the pinks I need!

I got the three from a local pet store. From my experience with raising rats and researching about their health problems, I'd hazard a guess that these mice have a respiratory illness. As they just sit there and look like their panting all the time. Their fur is all unkept and oily looking, they're skinny looking (despite the myriad of foods I've tried), and they're always wiping at their snouts.

But what confounds me is the fact that they're in a wire cage, not an aquarium where they could get a respiratory illness. I keep their cage super clean, fresh water, fresh food and they still look dejected.

Is there any trick to raising mice successfully? In what type of container are they "happiest" in?

I have had HUGE sucess with mouse breeding. I don't have definite numbers but last year I produced around 500-600 mice off a starting 4.16, and I had zero cannabilisim.

The problem is one or two things. 1. Your male is sterile. Sometimes if the mice don't start up this is the problem. Normally my new colonies start breeding anywhere from 1-3 months after being started up. Or 2. They are ill. What you describe could be many illnesses and its never a good idea to start off with bad mice. It could also be temp, are your mice kept above 80? This is never good for them and they enjoy far cooler temps. anywhere from 55-75 works well.

I suggest this. Go to plenty of pet stores and buy some really super healthy looking mice. Even if you have to go to more than one store. If you are having trouble finding healthy mice at stores, try local breeders and/or labs. Set up one male with anywhere from 2-10 females. I find 1.4 works the best.

You also need a smaller cage. Well actually I don't know if YOU specifically need a smaller cage, but I am saying that in general mice like to be a bit crowded. Sometimes a larger cage will slow down production. I keep 1.4 in a shoebox sized rubbermaids with homemade mesh top.

Then if the mice are healthy, the male is not sterile you should see pinks within 1-3 months. Provide ample food and water so they feel these thing will be available when babies come, and badda boom badda bang you should have mice.

Good luck!

bmm

Sorry about your experience with the mice. It is a real bummer to go to all the trouble of raising these mice to breed, and them get nothing. I have also had some bad experiences with major pet chain store mice. I bought a some from a small pet shop, that did very well, but none of the ones from this one major chain would breed well, and most died. My bad ones seemed to behave as yours are described to be behaving. I'm not sure what the problem was, and it did not seem to be contageous. My recommendation would be to get some more mice from another pet shop, and pay close attention to picking healthy looking ones. Also, be cautious with getting any large mice, because they may be retired breeders and also, large males often will fight and attack the genetal areas, thus sterilizing their cage mates.
Good luck
Mark

Oh another suggestion I wanted to throw out there.....

I have had good luck using larger males to smaller females. Sometimes the females will bully a male and not allow him to breed. I would suggest getting some small sized females. And purchase a fully grown adult male.

Set the male up first for a few days then introduce the females .The females will not bully a male in his territory usually, and an older male is less likely to be bullied and more likely to start breeding them right away (wether the girls like it or not!)

I normally have the 1.4 set up, and when the females are done after a year, I replace them with fnew females, but use the same male for as long as he is producing.

bmm

Pictures of my Setup

Thanks for the advice guys. I might just have to go to all the pet stores I know of and see what they have. These were the store's breeder mice, as they didn't have any "pet" mice.

I picked these mice out myself, based on healthy appearance and activity levels. They were great looking when I first got them, but have since degraded in quality.

Since I don't need a ton of mice, I thought I'd start out small with a 1:2. One "ready-to-pop" female, a younger female, and a nice-sized, non-aggressive male. To me, it's always easier to add to the colony if I need more, rather than cull a great breeder.

The male is the only one who looks good right now. The pregnant female is skinnier (I'm guessing she ate her babies), yet she pants all of the time. The younger female looks anorexic if I've ever seen one, skinny as a rail.

The cage I have them in, is similar in size to one I had years ago as a kid. Maybe I just got some bad ones, I dunno. The temps are regular air-conditioned house temperatures, 75 or so. I'm feeding them Browne's Rat & Mouse food, with some dry ferret food and a few fresh veggies/fruit when I have some. They even get filtered water to drink, as I wouldn't want to drink our calcified water either.

Pictures of my mice colony:





Picture of my hamster colony:



My hamster colony is an interesting story. I'd had these dwarf hamsters (mean little buggers) for 3-4 months, and no babies..ever. I started out with a mother and 6 young adults, her babies.

Well as it turned out, she had 1 female and 5 males, just my luck. So I thinned the herd and picked the best looking male and used him as a breeder. Well, the two females never had anything.

So I'm sick of feeding them one day and think "Lets use em for food, they're just taking up space, and I can't handle them as pets". So as I'm cleaning out their cage and putting them in my CO2 chamber and getting it hooked up, and this little baby comes wandering out of the litter pile in the trashcan, barely had it's eyes open.

I'm standing there thinking, this is ironic as all hell. Since I hadn't any idea which one was the mother, I put them all back in the cage and waited it out for a week or so, till the baby got bigger. And that next day, the other female dropped 6 babies. Just when I'm about to can the whole project, it starts producing. =P

I'll keep trying with the mice I suppose. Don't have much else to do at the moment. =P

Adding some GSE into the water should help the mice out if they're feeling sick. Also check their poo, if it's runny, it could be a parasite infection, or some other thing that caused an upset stomach. Yogurt drops help alot for upset stomachs in mice.

Also, your mice look kinda small, they might not be sexually mature yet (my breeders are easily twice the size of your mice). Also, you might want to move the mice into an aquarium instead of the wire cage, or move the wire cage to a "stale" part of the house, since mice don't like cold drafts and can easily catch a cold.

55 deg F is too cold for mice IMHO. 70-80 deg is better, though they can tolerate lower temps. Also lower temps will make the mice breed less, or not at all.

Also bigger cages are better. Crowding mice is one sure fire way to get them mentally insane (cage bar biting, hair trimming, whisker biting, nail biting, fighting, cannabalizing young, stoicism, apathy, "hermitism", and many more problems start when mice become too crowded).

If the mice aren't breeding, I would separate the male and females for a while. Put the male in the bigger tank that you plan to keep your breeding colony in so that he can "claim" that territory (this is better for smaller males since the females won't bully him around, if the male is a real big buck, then allow the females to take over first). Put the females (or the male) in a separate more "cozy" cage and feed them like mad (sunflower seeds, kitten food, brown rice, anything fattening with a bit of protein in it). This will "prime" them. Once the females reach a nice weight introduce them to the male and they should breed within the next 7 days. If they don't breed, then they are either too young or too old.

Also, solitary mice get lonely fast, give them a wheel and play with them every chance you get for the time period they are caged alone (they'll get fat, lazy, and apathetic if they aren't mentally stimulated).

Hope that helps, I know I treat my mice like kings and queens, but I get a dozen pups per female or more, guaranteed, so I must be doing something right.

-Lemur 6

i have a question for you quys that have been breeding mice for a wile. what is the best way to add new femals to a colony?
I have a 1.1 right now but the other day i caught a hatchling rat snake and baught a hatchling speckiled king so i need more pinks to feed them. Ihave tried to put extra femails in there before but that didnot work so should i just raise a few femails up in the or what?

It's really not a good idea to be adding females to an already exsisting colony. I would just whack off the 1 female you have now, leave them male.....go out and purchase like 4 females and add them with the male.

If you must add another female, then seperate the exsisting male and female into two cages, add new female in with exsisting female at this time. Leave them for a few days then introduce the two (or however many) females to the males cage.

bmm

Also, if you don't have any spare cages or space to put the single female, you can clean out the cage of the current colony absolutely spotlessly clean with no smell (or try to cover up the smell with strong smelling soap like dial or joy), and then get some extract of vanillin and dab some on each mouse (confuses their scents for a little bit so they don't fight with the new comer) and put them all back into the cage with fresh bedding.

This will remove previously established "territories" that they've set up and will make them re-establish them.

Also, make sure you put some sort of antibiotic or something (GSE works well) into the water for the first couple days after you introduce new mice into the colony, since new mice can infect your colony with any bugs that tagged along with them.

-Lemur 6