Mouse breeding/ mouse factory :D

[torsten]

hi

basically, by September i will have ~ 25 corns. consisting of about 12/13 pairs. i am expecting to keep about 50 hatchlings from their clutches the first year i breed them and then about 25 the second year, therefore i am expecting to have around 100 corns in ~ 4 years.

due to the shortage of mice where i am in the UK at the moment and the cost of them i am intending to breed my own. i am going to collect the mice and the cages next weekend and was trying to work out how many cages i will need(5 females and 1 male per cage), and how to cycle them.

this was the plan i had sorted for in 3 years time when i expect to be producing around 250 hatchlings of which 50 or so are keepers.

10 cages, each with 5 females and 1 male.

cage 1: pinkies
cage 2: 4 wks old
cage 3: 8 wks old - first small litters produced
cage 4: 12 wks old - full sized litters
cage 5: 16 wks old - full sized litters
cage 6: 20 wks old - full sized litters
cage 7: 24 wks old - full sized litters
cage 8: 28 wks old - full sized litters
cage 9: 32 wks old - full sized litters
cage 10: 36 wks old - full sized litters

then cage 10 gets emptied and pinkies are put in cage.

in 4 years i was thinking of doing this:
cage 1: pinkies

X 2 cage 2: 4 wks old
cage 3: 8 wks old - first small litters produced
X 2 cage 4: 12 wks old - full sized litters
cage 5: 16 wks old - full sized litters
X 2 cage 6: 20 wks old - full sized litters
cage 7: 24 wks old - full sized litters
X 2 cage 8: 28 wks old - full sized litters
cage 9: 32 wks old - full sized litters
X 2 cage 10: 36 wks old - full sized litters

any opinions on this?

i suppose this would also work if i put fuzzies instead of pinkies but i would just wait for less time to produce the young.

also i was wondering if anyone knew where i could by lab mice cages in the uk.

 

[Epi_Les_Paul]

Well dont take this the wrong way but wont you be spending the same amount if not more on the mice by breeding them.. I dont have a snake YET So I may not be calculating this correctly for the feeders. But by the time you buy food/cages, clean cages, stop the buggers from chewing through everything your back to the cost of buying frozen.. If you feed f/t

But! If I'm completely wrong on that then it sounds like your going to produce a hefty amount.

Good luck on the corns

 

[claireree]

sounds like a lot of hard work, I have 3 corns, 2 about 3 1/2 years old, and 1 11 months old, I also have 17 eggs in a incubator.

Anyway onto mice, I have 2 cages with breeders in one with 1 male 3 females and the other 1 male and 1 female. They tend to breed every 4/6 weeks and then I remove the mice at about 3/4 weeks when they can be weaned and they go into sep cages ready to be fed whenever required, I have also removed some pinkies this time ready for any new hatchlings as well but have left a few with the mums.

It is a lot of hard work though feeding them all and the weekly cleaning out etc but worth it and cheaper once you get a good breeding prog going

 

[kcaven]

Holy Crap! I give you all some credit! Thats ALOT of work!

 

[KatNPat]

I'll tell you how i'm doing it, but remember that i am allergic to work,lol, I picked up 2 large aquariums at garage sales for about $35.00 each, made wire lids for them then put about 10 females and 3 males in each, filled about 1/4 of the way up with shavings, added lots of hides then just let them be. It took about 3 months to really get going, now I am supplying quite a few people with feeders as well as my own. So about every 3 months i switch the males from one cage to another. When i need new blood, i just go to another petsmart or petco and buy 1/2 a dozen feeders live, (they are always male) and i remove all my male adults and put 3 new males into each tank and start all over again. They use one corner for a bathroom, so i only have to clean that one spot each few days and do a complete change about every 6 weeks. No smell, no problem, i just take out different sizes and kill and freeze to control the population. Lazy, yes, effective, yes, hard work,no. I hope this helps.

 

[Flagg]

You're going to have 1 cage with just pinkies? I don't get it. It's not like pinkies can survive on their own...

...and if you move all the pinkies to one cage with a few adult femaes, they are going to be a bit overworked.

It looks ike you have over-thought things a bit. Get a few cages with 1.5 and then a few "grow out cages". When they hit about 2.5 wks of age move them from their mothers to the grow out cages.

As they hit various sizes needed for your snakes, CO2 them and freeze them.

 

[wade]

I agree with flagg. I think you are planning way too far down the road. Get some mice and breed them and learn what really will work and what won't. Mice are not going to produce on a schedule like your plan indicates. They are not going to move smoothly across a spread sheet.

Since you like to crunch numbers, try this. If your 25 snakes really do breed and really do produce 12 clutches of eggs and lets say you get 15 babies in each, you will need 375 pinkies and 25 adult mice each week. That is 400 mice a week you will be feeding to snakes plus the mice that must remain in the colonies to produce the 400 mice you're going to need next week. That is just this year before you expand the farm.

 

[bamboe32]

The best result I have is with mouse is maximum 6 month old, any older they are just eating and getting fat with just a few baby's.

You also need to remove the hoppers from your breeding boxes. and feed them for two weeks to get them to adult size.

Cleaning 10 boxes will take you about 2-3 hours a week.
And you really need to clean them with lots of water and a brush, otherwise the mouses will get ill.

I keep 6 breeding boxes with 1 male and 4 females and get an average of about 100 pinkies / 40 Fuzzy's / 40 Hoppers and 80 adults a month

 

[torsten]

thanks for all the advice everyone!

when i said pinkies in one cage, what i meant was that the baby mice would go in these to start the next cage off when they are about 2-3 weeks old.

would i be better off to scrap each set of breeders when they become 6-7 months old rather than to wait till 9 months?

also i will have quite a few cages which i did not mention in the previous post to grow the mice on until they are the required size, this is in addition to to cages already mentioned.

the mice are fancy mice X Lab mice, so they supposedly produce 10-18 pinkies about every 18-24 days.

 

[Ssthisto]

Somewhere I remember reading that you can expect a colony of mice to produce one feeder per week for each female you have.

When I was breeding mice, I found that first and foremost they can be cannibalistic little boogers. Females will almost certainly eat their first litter unless you have an experienced mama in with them (who will show the newbies how to do things like groom them without getting too enthusiastic and grooming the skin/legs off them). You'd want to put your new growing stock into a cage without an adult when they're more like four weeks old - and females ideally not until they're six weeks old. You'd PROBABLY get your first litters when they're closer to ten or twelve weeks old in my experience with British fancy mice.

In all practicality, though, I hope you've got a shed or outbuilding to put all those mice in - otherwise your nose will never forgive you! Also, make sure you get escape-proof cages. Most 'pet' rodent cages have bar spacing that will allow youngsters to slip through and wreak havoc in the room... or get their tails/toes bitten off walking on top of OTHERS' cages.

I'd second the idea that you ought to start with a couple of cages of 1.5 just so you get to grips with how breeding mice goes in real life instead of on paper. Though it's nice to assume you'll always get a litter of ten to eighteen clockwork on the dot when they're expected, sometimes what you get is a dead pregnant doe that the others decided to snack on, or a group of does that get sick and tired of the buck pestering them and eat HIM instead...