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How many litters from one female

manog

manog

Closet Creation Herps
I know it varies from mouse to mouse and age etc. but typically how many litters of mice do you get before it is time to retire a female? How about the male? My first litter shoulb be here any day and i am trying to figure out when i should start holding back a 1.2 to replace the parents?


Thanks
 
You should start breeding at one years of age and stop when they are around 2 years old.
So you can get around 40 litters until you should retire them.
Hope that helps :)
 
Thanks for the info however i have been told and have experienced that mice start breeding at a few months of age. For those that start at a few months how many litters do you get before production slows down?

Thanks
 
manog said:
Thanks for the info however i have been told and have experienced that mice start breeding at a few months of age. For those that start at a few months how many litters do you get before production slows down?

Thanks
Click to expand...
However, you can cause mice stress from breeding at an early age.
I do not advise you to do this.
But, if you wish to, go ahead. :)
Then, if you're starting at a few months, you will get around. 50-70 litters.
It depends, as you said, upon the mouse and the age.
And the gestation period is normally longer in younger mice.
 
You should start breeding at one years of age and stop when they are around 2 years old.
So you can get around 40 litters until you should retire them.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about normal fancy mice here?

Normal pet (fancy) mice should be bred initially at about twelve to fourteen weeks old. Their average gestation period is, depending on the lines, between 18 and 21 days - so the theoretical maximum number of litters you could have from one female in a year is just over 20. In practice, you would most likely find she delays implantation of the eggs if bred back-to-back constantly, and of course litters would tend to be bigger, stronger, and healthier if she is given a rest between litters. How long is up to you, and in a way up to her - some animals do badly when bred, losing lots of condition and need a rest or they are likely to simply not become pregnant or cannabilise their offspring. Others bounce right back, look fine, and lose no condition - I would recommend selecting those mice to produce your "keepers" and so the gap you'll need to leave between litters in future generations will be less too.

Males can normally breed right up until the end of their lives, but younger males produce healthier sperm. Breeding takes very little out of them, so you can keep the same male breeding constantly without any worry.
 
toyah said:
Normal pet (fancy) mice should be bred initially at about twelve to fourteen weeks old.
Click to expand...
This can cause bad litters, deformities and females that are unwilling to breed.
 
This can cause bad litters, deformities and females that are unwilling to breed.
Click to expand...

Can you provide some evidence, backup, details on this? It's something I've never heard before. I am just having a quick look at the husbandry information provided by the National Mouse Club, and they recommend around 12 weeks. Most mouse sites seem to say around 3 months for females - and these are people producing mice for show, so definitely wanting to avoid "bad litters" (whatever that means), deformities, and females who are unwilling to breed!

I should imagine mating mice at a year old for their first litter would not be good for the mouse at all. I'd be more likely to be retiring a female at that age than mating her for her maiden litter. At the moment I have about eight litters of mice in my rat room from females between four and eight months old with no problems, so certainly it's working fine for me.
 
Breeding for the first time at a year? By then, most mice are middle-aged. I had a female breed for the first time when she was 3.5 weeks old. She had 9 babies when she was 7 weeks. She went on to have 8 more litters before I retired her AT 1 year of age! Rats live longer than mice generally, and you will get many litters from one female rat. I've had over 16 litters from one female. She is now getting old and her litters are dropping off, so now she is just a pet. Its difficult to "give them a break", its easier to just keep breeding them until their production slows. Then just replace them with thier daughters. It will only take another 6 weeks before they are having babies too! And one of the best things to do, is to raise up her replacement as she is having her last few litters, so that her daughter "learns" how to take care of babies and may even help out with them whe she herself is only a month old.
 
Drucifer said:
You should start breeding at one years of age and stop when they are around 2 years old.
So you can get around 40 litters until you should retire them.
Hope that helps :)
Click to expand...
Geez! 40 litter? that is nearly a litter a week! :sidestep:

I started to breed at aroun 6 weeks of age and then i would wait until her 7th or so litter then just keep one of her daughters back, the daught would grow older and become "the nurse" Once the daught was of age i would just cull off the breeder and her daughter would take her place. that way you do not have to worry about starting a whole new colony. I was getting a litter about once a month. But becareful with cage size because i had mice that were very good producers, each female in a trio would have about 18 babies per litter. so once it was weaning time for them all i basically had about 35 small adult mice in one cage!
 
The rat and mouse club of america should have some good info. http://www.rmca.org/

Mice become fertile at around five weeks of age. However, I would wait until they are fully grown and are more capable of handling the stress. Be aware that mice can have MANY children and it is advised that you seperate them at around four weeks of age (males will start fighting). I rescued a female from the pet store I used to work at because of an eye infection they were not willing to treat. So, I brought her home and she ended up having twelve pups (that I found, but larger litters are not uncommon) but cannibalized seven of them. They are very small but start trying to squeeze through the cage bars at around 2.5 weeks so I would suggest a tank or a cage with VERY narrow spaces.
 
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