My Feeder Mouse Breeding Program Experiment

Well, I've finally purchased my mice which I hope to breed for pinkies for my snakes. Just to give you a little bit of history in this matter, a long, long time ago, my mother decided it would be neat to breed mice just for the educational fun of it to distaterous results. To make a long story short, the mice escaped and our house was infested with domesticated mice. Now I know what you all might be thinking. Just why am I myself doing this? Well, I like to say I'm educating myself a little more on Mouse Breeding with resources my mother was not privy to, which will include any of you with experience as well as online sources. I have your basic mouse setup at the moment. I have them all in a ten Gallon tank with food, water and an excercise wheel. Mind you, my mice are still pretty young so I anticipate in a few monthes they will mature. Determining the sex of young mice is extrenmely hard, so I just nabbed 7 mice from the Petstore's batch. Well, I've found out I have 4 males and 5 females (I have at least 2 females I bought a month earlier). As soon as those Males are matured enough though, I was thinking of moving them into a separate enclosure I would like to dub the Bachelor Pads. Basically I was going to put them into Rubbermaid containers. Nowe my idea is to put the females into these Bachelor Pads and when they start showing, I was going to put the females into their own little enclosures by gently coaxing them into a small delicup to alleviate physical contact with the mouse on my part. After the pups are born, my plan is to retrieve all of them using tiny, plastic forceps and freezing them so I have a nice store of pinkies in my freezer I can access for my snakes. Anyone else have any other comments and suggestions.

you stated you'd like to seperate out females, well, for me, that's what I do with my rats, when they are showing heavily, I pull them out of the breeding tub and give them their own little tub to have and raise their babies in. But with mice, here's what'll happen, you'll remove the pregnant female, she'll have her babies, and raise them up happily, then you'll put her back into the breeding bunch...and chances are good, something's going to die! Cause mice are VERY territorial, and some lines of mice turn into little cannibals and attack anything that smells strange. I've always cleaned mice by taking mice out, putting them into a five gallon bucket while I cleaned out their cage, and put them back in, and have had males attack their own females, cause the scent of the last mice in that bucket set them off! And yes, I've had the gentler mice, that just scurry around a few times, and squeek at each other, but it always upsets the whole breeding cycle for mice, and they are really only their best for about six to seven months before breeding quality goes downhill. So my recommendation to you, is only keep one male, and the group of females together, ALL the time. The way I run it in my group, is I check to see how the babies look. If everyone is fat and happy, I let them grow up or whatever I need to feed. Sometimes you can have several litters of babies which get to large fuzzy size, and suddenly another female has babies. I don't like to make pinks compete with obviously larger babies. It can be done, but you usually get tinier babies out of the pinks. I like to see large weanlings, cause ultimately, those weanlings are one of two things, food for snakes, or future breeders. And why not make sure the future breeders and food for the snakes are the best you can do? You might find you have to feed less to your snakes cause the meals are bigger and more robust. Plus using the biggest healthiest of your weanlings for future breeders is a plus. I also try to keep track of larger litters. When a female who has been a great producer suddenly has a large litter of 15, I watch closely, to see that she's a good mother, and depending on my need of pinks or fuzzies, I pull all the males out, as I always use more females, obviously! So this way she's only got her daughters to raise, who hopefully have those high production genes. And they are held back as breeders. So yes, this intensive culling of pinks and fuzzies in my colony makes me need animals that eat small mice...well, my collection of animals has mouths to take on those babies! If you've only got adult animals, you could let nature take it's course and just let the mice raise all the babies best that they can. But I notice I can get several to a whole litter of runty under sized babies that way. I know I spend more time on my colony of rodents than I do with my snakes! But thanks to my love for animals...odd...I love animals yet I feed and cull! But thanks to my love of animals I enjoy breeding and raising rodents. I have great fun with the genetics of mice. I have plain white albino mice, but also have a line I call Tiger mice. They have a solid base color, with streaks of darker color, shades of black, in that solid color. So I can have an off white mouse with darker shadings, or streaks in their hair coat. Or a gold mouse with streaks. I know I well answered your question, and hopefully more. Good luck with your mice, and hopefully you enjoy them as much as I do mine! And oh, have what I call an overstock cage. I have two, one for males, one for females, and wean those babies as soon as they look like they can be weaned. Experience will help teach you this. You don't want them in with the adults longer than they have to be, or they are just taking away from the younger litters in my experience.
Russell Keys
Keys Reptiles

Russell's 100% correct. You want to keep the colonies together, not adding/removing the mice constantly. That will lead to cannibalisum.

I have never had problems with my rats adding/removing anyone. I think though, rats are a lot smarter then mice!

You also should expect the first 1-3 litters to not make it. New mothers usually don't get the swing of things right away, and will eat their young. I also don't recommend the glass tanks (though they do work perfectly fine)...You will find them difficult to clean, and they glass sides will get very scuzzy, very quickly. I use lab cages. I'm very pleased with the results.

Oh bother! I can't leave the males in there or they'll gore everyone in the tank including the pups I intend on freezing. I want a controled breeding, not a rampant one with one male to all those females. I want to make sure the male breeds when I want him to breed. Otherwise this Mouse Breeding thing could go all out of control. That's exactly what happened decades ago. I'm trying to learn from my mother's mistake, not repeat it.

P.S. I am well aware of the cannibalism thing. I've been through this before as a child you know.

I think you'd be better off with a tank or two of 1.3.

With that many male mice in a tank fighting over a female---you're going to have a bloodbath on your hands.

I have around 8 breeding females to one male per mouse cage and that's been working very well for me. Any more than one male though and you get scrapping and fighting

Originally Posted by Godzilla2000

Oh bother! I can't leave the males in there or they'll gore everyone in the tank including the pups I intend on freezing. I want a controled breeding, not a rampant one with one male to all those females. I want to make sure the male breeds when I want him to breed. Otherwise this Mouse Breeding thing could go all out of control. That's exactly what happened decades ago. I'm trying to learn from my mother's mistake, not repeat it.

P.S. I am well aware of the cannibalism thing. I've been through this before as a child you know.

I don't think you understand what we are telling you. If you do not keep stable colonies (as in one male to however many females you wish 24-7), you run the risk of the mice cannibalising EVERY TIME you introduce the male. Whether they actually cannibalise the male, or the young depends on the particular colony. You do not want to be adding/removing breeders. It needs to stay stable, and when you want to refresh your stock, raise babies from that colony to adult hood. If you have more then one male in a tub, you do run the risk of cannibalism. If you run a single male with a harem, cannibalism is less likely to happen once the new mothers settle into their role.

I have been having great luck with my mice breeding till the last couple days. well I guess the male got to a female a week after the other females well didnt I come home to some half eaten pinks. needless to say the one that gave birth today is on her own with the remaining pups. as for the other three females well I removed all four when trying to separate the babies. I fugured at least they would have a possible chance as it wasnt the mother eating them it was one of the other mothers. btw the other pups were born between the 28 and 30 of aug today being the 5 sept they are like tripple the size of the pinks.
I also had another dilemma There was some fighting out of the blue with another tank of 4 females and one male well one female was in rough shape last night so I separated her I was to late she died today. there is still fighting in there. Why all of a sudden are these issues arising I have to ask. I have been rotating the male for a few months without an issue the groups of females were getting along. I have had over 100 pups that all did great this week has been the first loss.
A- 3 females raising young doing fine
B- 4 females were doing great together till the one had babies today and I had pieces of the remains of some all over the place/ weekold babies ok so far removed her and day old babies
C-2 females with 3 and 4 week old young doing fine just waiting to take to pet store
D- 4 females one male have been fine till yesterday when One female was killed. females aren't due till minimum sept tenth.
Anyways I was searching the thread to see if I could figure out whats going on, Im gonna go see if another nightmare has begun.
btw I hope to build some type of rack as I dont want any more 10-15gal tanks

I know Im all over the place with my post its just very frustrating when everything was going well to smooth

I posted yesterday and since its an old therad Im trying to bring it up again. I have tried leaving males in and it hasnt worked out by the third week someone is going to get killed and I did loose a female that way I guess the male doesnt know when enough is enough.
Untill this recent mess I would leave the buck in for 2 to 3 days and whoever got preg got preg and the others would help raise the young I had no deaths no fighting no problems.
the recent and first critical issue last nignt. when the youngest pups were born and the rest were roughly a week+ old some of the females one particular that I saw proceeded to dismantle the new babies, I removed mom that just gave birth with new pups and that didnt work out very well she moved them into a nest I put in but then a few hours later they were all over the place cold and no milk spots looked like they were all going to die 2 were dead and the female was freaking out understandibly. my next step I put them in with 3 other nursing females but across the tank figuring it cant get any worse they are going to die anyweays and they carried them into their litter of pups. now their pups are over a week old and there are roughly 30 of them. today one was dead but the rest seem to be fine the does are nursing them but Im surprised they are able to get any milk I mean thats a bunch of pups for 3 does and the pinks are a quarter of the size of the rest. Writh the four does that had litters different times this is the second time this has happened the last time I was late and just cleaned out the remains. Anyways I am attempting to build a rack and have any of you had any issues like this?
As for the bins I plan on building tomorrow
4 5feet 2x4
1/4inch mess
1/2x1 for lids
10 19litre sterlite bins.
the plan is to have the bins 2 side by side meaning 2 rows of five.
I refuse to get anymore fish tanks for separating they are awkward.
As for the 3 does with a ton of young shall I cull or do you all think they can handle it I dont have snakes for the pinks but could use the 4to5day old pups