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Just bought first colony...

H

Heather M.

New member
I just bought my first mice breeding colony (for feeders) yesterday from Petco. They have pretty knowledgable staff and the animals are healthy/happy.

One male and two females (all of them are red eyed whites). They are friendly towards me and to eachother. They'll groom eachother and sleep together.

My question is...approximately how long before they start to breed?

I've been reading as much as I can about breeding mice but I was wanting to hear personal experiences.
 
If they are breeding age and if they were housed together than you could have a litter (or two) within a month. If not it will probably be around 2 months or a little less if they are breeding age. John
 
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I also got my first colony from petco. They were not breeding size when I got them, but they took about two months to produce.
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Ryan McCullough
MC Reptiles
 
I agree with the others, new colonies usually take 1.5 to 2 months before you see a litter. Sometimes longer. Gestation period is 19-21 days for mice, but they usually take a while to get started.
 
Goodluck, my first ever mouce i brought home become pregnent, it had like 10 babys then they had babys and i ended up with alot of mice i sold about 300 for £4 to local people, mice was rare in my town now thanks to me there everywere nearly everyone has a pet mouce from "George" lol, if only they knew they were inbreeds :X

PcS
 
My Colony was started from PetCo as well, however mine are fancy mice ;) fun to see the variety of colors, harder to cull. I congratulate you for getting the whites ;)

It took my group a LOOONG 3 months to breed. It was once I gave up on them and fed off the male, days later went to cull the females, found one of them with babies, then 2 days later the other one had babies :rolleyes:

Needless to say I'll be keeping a male from the babies born to start my colony again. :bang:
 
Pet Corn Snake said:
Goodluck, my first ever mouce i brought home become pregnent, it had like 10 babys then they had babys and i ended up with alot of mice i sold about 300 for £4 to local people, mice was rare in my town now thanks to me there everywere nearly everyone has a pet mouce from "George" lol, if only they knew they were inbreeds :X

PcS
Click to expand...

Inbreeding in mice isn't as bad as you'd think. Many English Show mouse lines start off with a single (probably related) breeding trio - one male, two females. Then you breed for your own distinct type within the offspring of that line.

I have a colony that started with one foundation sire and eight females - some of whom were almost certainly related; I'm not encountering any problems with the offspring yet - no deformities, nothing. The one problem I do have is that one foundation female has decided that she'd like to EAT babies instead of MAKE babies.
 
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