My Feeder Mouse Breeding Program Experiment

If I read correctly you have 3 does feeding 30 babies a week apart in age. It sounds to me as though that would be alright. I've had colonies that never were able to cohab and all the babies were eaten. I just feed our last mouse to Tiaga tonite, From now on it's giong to be frozen for us.
Good luck on your mouse venture.

The general consensus on mice is that they do better when left together. Others may have different results, but for the most part that's how it works. Those that "cycle" their mice successfully seem to be those with good tame stock that they have bred for multiple generations already.

Mostly depending on where you get the original mice from, its fairly common for the first couple colony attempts to have problems and perhaps not work out. That doesn't necessarily mean that the accepted husbandry practices are wrong.

thanks I am hoping that the last batch will make it. I have all the supplies to make the rack Ill be doing that today then as the pups wean they will be moved to the rack system. Flagg the group that Im having trouble with did come from a place that I believe could be inbred, not tame but the local petstore wants some fancy and thats not a thing that is around here. the plan was to cross them with the first group that I bought from another place and attempt to I guess outbreed them if that makes sense.

Never "rotate" mice!!
I have found the baby eating is common in an inexperienced colony no matter where I get the stock from. I don't mess with them trying to prevent this anymore - they usually get it right the second time around. It's important even if they are eating some of their babies not to disturb the colony by removing or adding any mice at this time. Let them get the practise of being mommies with any of the litter that survives the pinky eating - even if you need the pinkies for your snakes. Wait until they have the second litter to start removing any babies. You can always use the survivors from the first litter later on to feed bigger snakes or start another colony.
The more you mess with them, the more stress it causes - resulting in more baby killing.
In my colonies the first litter is a "free pass" but if a female is still eating babies by her second litter, she gets culled.
Males will often kill babies that are fathered by a different male, but will help the females take care of the babies if they are the sire, so it is very important to leave them in with the same females all the time. If they are removed and reintroduced they will fight.
Hope this is helpful..

yes I would agree once you have a nice colony going dont disturb them, I have 4 seperate cages at the moment some new and some old mums and they are all doing well and breeding regulary but once they are together I leave the male in all the time as I dont want to run the risk of them not accepting them when I put him back in.

I also find the males are very good at looking after the babies as well I often see them snuggled up with the babies.