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feeder mice breeding colony

carnivorouszoo

carnivorouszoo

Crazy Critter Lady
When I got my snake from her old owner she came with a breeder colony of mice. Should the male stay with the females? Cause they also gave a "bachelor pad" and said to pull the male in a week and the girls would have babies a week after that. He had already been with them a week. They said they just put the male back in when the babies have all been harvested and just repeat the cycle.

Is this ok or should I just leave him in there? I am thinking of keeping 3 male babies and breaking them up into 5 breeding pairs instead of having all of them with 1 male in 1 cage.

What do you guys think?

Also, do you take all of the pinks at once or??
 
I did some reading in older postings and saw that many just leave the male with the females. I saw more success than problems with this so I will just leave the male with the females.
 
I'm also going to mention, leaving the male with his entire harem is probably a better idea than holding back male babies. By having separate breeding pairs, you only create a problem of having a ton of cages. The only thing different pairs will do for you is the possibility of timing their pregnancies so you always have pinks available, rather than the females all popping at once, and then waiting 20 days for more pinks. One male can and will successfully handle several females... I've heard of colonies of one male and 10 females! If you want more than one colony, hold back as many males as you want colonies and several females for each colony (3 or 4 is a very common number for females, I've heard 1.3 is a very good ratio).

Do you know how old the mice in the colony are? If they're getting up there in age, the females will start having smaller litters... At this point, it would probably be a good idea to hold back some babies to start a second, replacement colony so you can retire the original colony.
 
Floof said:
Do you know how old the mice in the colony are? If they're getting up there in age, the females will start having smaller litters... At this point, it would probably be a good idea to hold back some babies to start a second, replacement colony so you can retire the original colony.
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If I remember correctly, the gray and white girl is close to 8 months, the chocolate girl is about 6 months, the black and white girl is about 6 months and the REW is only about 4 months. Her and the male (also about 4 months) are the newest additions. How long til I should remove the older for new, younger stock?

Thanks!
 
carnivorouszoo said:
If I remember correctly, the gray and white girl is close to 8 months, the chocolate girl is about 6 months, the black and white girl is about 6 months and the REW is only about 4 months. Her and the male (also about 4 months) are the newest additions. How long til I should remove the older for new, younger stock?

Thanks!
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I have no idea, as the only rodent I've ever kept before this year was a hamster that we only had for a few months before it escaped and was apparently scared to death by the dogs. (They just wanted to play... Lol) All my knowledge came from reading around on this forum.

Anyway, by what I've read, you should just watch for noticeably smaller litters than the usual. When one of the girls starts to have really small litters, either keep someone's daughter or plan on a smaller colony and rotate her out. I don't know if there's any way to know that the male is past his prime, unless, maybe, all the females, age aside, start having small litters at once. You can rotate them out whenever you want, really.
 
I rotate my females when the litters sizes go down. For instance I had an older female give birth to 3 then her next litter also 3. So I culled her. I wanted to wait for a second litter just to confirm it wasn't a fluke litter(she had been having between 9-14 pinkies). The males tend to last a little longer. One of my first colonies I have already culled 3 of the 4 females and went ahead and culled the male(I figure this would easier to keep track of) after the last remaining female(younger female) gave birth(14 pinkies). I then culled it down to 1 male and 4 females, allowed her to raise them. The colony is doing fine. Now after 12 weeks the mother is still with them and the male has knocked her up as well as a couple of the other ones so far......Hope this helps.....
 
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