a couple of colony starting question

Alright everyone I'm thinking of starting a new colony up. A 2.3 ratio is a good start right? Another big concern of mine is the smell. Is it true that you can put vinegar in their water reservoir to keep the urine smell down? You have to change the vedding about every week correct? How long does it take for mice to have babies? I know I should have structured this better, but I'm doing it from my crackberry!

I would do one male for every 3 females. Putting two males in the same colony isnt a good idea. I would set up two, or even three bins (or what ever you are keeping them in) one each with 1.3 and then one empty one to keep the mice (once they are eating on their own) in that you will be feeding to the snakes and are not your breeders.

You do change the bedding weekly. It takes 18-22 days for mice to have the babies once they are pregnant but can be as soon as 16 days if it is their first litter. Also plan on them not getting pregnant right away and have some mice on standby just so you have feeders while you are waiting.

That sounds like a good plan. I'm just going to have a 10 gallon tank. Do you know about the vinegar thing?

Oh another nig concern is that I have two cats. So I definitely need to make sure its secure. Do mice rack bins fit in a home built rack? I use 41 qt bins for my adults in my rack.

I have my two colonies in 15qt Sterilite bins with locking lids. I keep them on a shelf my cats can't get to.

I'm currently building a rack like another member made and I'm going to screw it into the wall so the cats can't knock it over and making sure that the bins fit tight. We'll see how well it works!

(I have five cats, one that is obsessive about mice lol)

If you look towards the end of this thread you can see where we built our own rack. http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100757

we currently have a 1.2 colony of rats in the top, the second one down is mice we will be feeding to the snakes and the last two are a 1.3 colony of mice.

I haven't heard anything about vinegar. I however have heard that vanilla extract works. I've tried it and it does seem to keep the smell down. Especially with the males.

We did an experiment just yesterday to see if introducing a sub adult female to an established colony would result in death of the female. It has not. (She would have been fed off it it had, no waste around here.) Anyways, It appears enclosure size and security is paramount to successful colonies, we have large concrete mixing tubs...for 3 breeding females, it's probably overkill but when you think about it, it'll result in healthier babies, better breeding and the ability to add to the colony if we increase the number of snakes we keep. But not everyone has 8 snakes...5 of which are females looking to make breeding weight next year, not that it'll be a problem anyways

Oh btw, good luck with the colony, it can be a bit trying when you first get them started. They fight out the pecking order for two days straight.

Adding the extra girl may or may not result in the death of any of them, but it certainly introduces a lot of extra stress to them all and will likely cause you loss in terms of babies that get eaten.

Social experimentation at this point is less of a problem then if they were established moms. I'm more interested in knowing if size of the enclosure is directly proportionate to territorial behavior in the colony. It certainly is pointing that way. The one I introduced to my first colony, whom will be having babies in about 4 days is doing just fine, they bed down together with the new addition when I check them in the mornings. My idea is simple, food is incredibly plentiful and easy to access so much so all of them can eat and not have to get in each others way, not to mention we are using concrete tubs with pretty small colonies, from the BP forums it seems acceptable to run mice with a 1.8 colony in tubs that size.

Things to note, if you add to to colony, do it on cage cleaning day.

I plan on getting a few mice this weekend and starting that colony up! Hopefully I can keep the stink down. Changing the bedding once a week should be fine right? I'm probably going to do a 1.4 colony. That's a lot of mice though! then again I have a lot of hatclings coming haha. If I don't end up needing that many I can feed one off anyway or something.

Do you guys have any suggestions for keeping the stink down?

I use a shallow layer of non clumping kitty litter under my shavings and it seems to help alot. At least I sure notice when I DON'T use it!

I've got two bins right now with mice one has a 1.2 with babies and the other is a 0.2 with babies (the male got killed) Once I have babies grown up I'll re-arrange my colonies.

I clean once weekly, on Sundays. Though I have noticed that now that my babies are close to weaning (they're two weeks old, just opened their eyes) the smell level has gone up proportionately.

Make sure the cage is big enough and it shouldn't stink too bad. I was doing 1.5 in 44qt tubs I think they were.