Gearing up!!!

Okay, this is the first year that I am breeding my snakes. I have had two hook ups. So now it's time to gear up the mice and hope to have them produce more pinkies for the freezer.

Any one else gearing up?????

Yes very much so. Just like you this is my first year and I have 4 pairings. I also have 12 '08 so pinkies are in high demand at my house.

I only 3 08s left on pinkies so dont need that many right now, i am not going to start to collect any more pinkies until eggs are laid. i will chuck an extra couple of breeder boxes together and start collecting pinkies at about 1 month before the eggs are due to hatch, that should give me time to collect 100-200.

But then i have about 12 breeder boxes at 1:4 at the moment and then about 30-40 hoppers are grown on each week with any other being culled along with a few fuzzes to reduce and over crowding. so i can always just reduce the number i grow on as the rats are coming into production so the royals can be swapped over from double adult mice to rats! that will be a relief!! Then i will only need about 10-15 adult mice a week instead of the 30ish i need at the moment.

Rodent breeding, more of a hastle than the snakes by a huge margin!!

I personally don't breed enough mice to meet my demand for pinkies...I have roughly 30 females bred for this year and so I will need roughly 3000 pinkies to get me to the end of the 2009 based on last years figures. I have 55 2008 hold backs which are on fuzzies for me at this point and will soon move over to rats which I do raise en masse. I usually order about 1500 fuzzies in January to manage me to the end of the year. With 21 Rat colonies and 10 colonies of ASF's along with 3 colonies of mice for the stubborn ones who insist on live feed, I stay busy for sure.

Wow! My colonies only have about 20-30 a month but up to recently I only needed 10 mice (mixed between hoppers and adult)every 2 weeks. So I am setting aside a few for some more colonies thinking about going to 10 total colonies (1 to 4). Hopefully I can get 300-400 saved before any new snakes arrive.

Dragonboy... Holy cow, I would hate to try to breed mice for that many, Maintence on that many snakes has to be tough, let alone if you had that many mice to try to maintain as well.

Torsten..Yes the mice can be a pain. My wife loves them though and I have a couple of mice now that she has been breeding for color. I have to admit it has been a neat project and I have learned a lot about genetics.

Quick question???? Pending on how many good hatchlings, How many pinkies would be a good start or a starting point 100-200-300. Lets use a number of 30 hatchlings. One pinkie a week for a month is 120 pinkies??? Does that sound right???

Everyone need to do it different depending on what their needs are. Right now I am stocking up on Adults, Weanlings, and Hoppers. I want to have about 4 months supply in the freezer by the time the eggs are laid. Then I’ll have 2 months to collect pinkies. When the eggs hatch I continue to produce pinkies but leave more for the moms to raise so I can start replenishing my larger sizes. If I take half the babies for pinkies, it will take me longer to resupply the larger sizes. It’s a real balancing act. Last year I had to buy 500 adult mice because I guessed wrong.

Buzzard said:

Quick question???? Pending on how many good hatchlings, How many pinkies would be a good start or a starting point 100-200-300. Lets use a number of 30 hatchlings. One pinkie a week for a month is 120 pinkies??? Does that sound right???

Click to expand...

That depends...Why? Because of your feeding plan...I feed hatchlings every 5 days while on single pinkies to double fuzzies/pinkie rats. After that I go to every 7 days. I find that I do not get adequate growth if I feed less often.
However...I know many breeders who feed once a week for everything, especially hatchlings they have for sale, to keep them on the smaller side. You have advocates out there for slower growing and advocates out there for faster growing...Each side has valid points. My program falls somewhere in the middle of all of it.
Anyway as to the numbers...I kept 60 back from 2008...allowing for periods when they were in shed and not eating, along with the other 50 babies that I sold, I used a total of 1457 for the year of 2008. Hatching for me started in June.
Basically it figures out to 6 pinkies per month, per baby on average the first 3 months, and then 10 babies per month, per baby on average the fourth and fifth months. 12 babies per month was the average in months six and seven. As of 3-2009 they have been on fuzzies 1x per 5 days.
I keep records in microsoft excel...which helps keep track.
Hope this helps...