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Producing and Storing my own Pinkies for Clutches?

swishyfish2003

swishyfish2003

Queen Nerd
So, now that my first ever clutch of corns are all hatched out, and I'm waiting on their first shed, I've started shopping around at the local pet stores for the best price on pinkie mice, and have discovered that none around here sell in a medium bulk size x(

The most I can get in one package of frozen pinkies is 4, and it's much to expensive to pay the shipping for only enough pinkies for one clutch from online. (I only plan on keeping them for about a month before I find new homes for them)

I did find one store that keeps a large supply of frozen pinkies, so while I can't get them from this store in bulk, I can get the amount I need for about a dollar a mouse.

So now I'm thinking if I wanna try and hatch another clutch next year, maybe I should try breeding my own pinkies just for that part of the year?
I'm thinking maybe I can get about three females and a male and breed them right before the eggs are laid, then set the pinkies aside for when the snakes hatch? Then when I'm done, Perni and Ayame can have the adults xP

My one concern is killing the babies humanely, and non-messily, and also, will a normal freezer freeze the dead pinkies sufficiently, or must mice be frozen in a specific way to be stored properly?
Any help would be much appreciated xP
 
That sounds good, but I've had a 1.2 group for four months and have NO litters dropped. Start about 6 months ahead of time in case something goes wrong.

With pinkies and peach fuzzies, you can pop them in the freezer and they'll die quickly. Having no fur, the cold hits them immediately.

A 1.3 group may be worthwhile, though you may wish to have a couple 1.3 groups depending on clutch size and number of clutches.
 
As long as you have something big enough you should be fine and not have problems. A lot of people here say they have problems with females killing the male, or the colonies just not getting along. We havent had this problem at all and we even just had our first litter of rats over the last few days and all rat pups are being fed and taken care of by their mother while the other rats leave her to her thing.

Make sure you have something big enough. A 10 gallon might be fine for a few mice but when babies are born it will get crowded quick, so bigger is better in this case.

Dont constantly check on them, we also found having tubs that are not see thru is better than the tanks. This keeps them from getting stressed which can cause them not to have babies or to even kill them.

Fashion some sort of food dispenser that allows them to eat the food but not carry it off. Mice will hoard the food and you will go through so much of it this way if you just put a dish of it in there.

Start in advance! It never hurts to have to many mice. You can always freeze the left overs, find someone in your area who needs them as feeders or put them up on craigslist. Plus you dont know how fast your hatchlings will sell, so having extra never hurts.
 
Thanks for the help guys. Freezing them seems to suit me just fine, because I don't know if I could handle watching them die xD
The nice thing about my adults is that their food is already dead when I feed them, and even if I did have to feed them live, they do the killing not me lol.

I don't ever plan to have more then one clutch a year, if that, so I'm not overly concerned about having a lot of mice on hand. I might not even hatch another clutch next year if I have difficulties finding homes for this years babies. But I figured it would be nice to have some sort of plan if I do decide to. I do love seeing those babies! ^_~
 
Breeding yourself is a good idea. You can also buy them online or at shows for a lot less than pet stores. Shipping is expensive for small quantities, but still not as bad as $1 a mouse. Breeding them isn't hard and it's even kinda fun. I'd probably do 2 cages of 1.2 or 1.3 and breed those for a few months until you feel you have enough pinkies. Then make sure you kill them when they're no more than a few days old to make sure they're not too big for the hatchlings.
 
Are you on the PNWHS forum? There are a few people with a supply of feeders. Jenn, gets a huge order from RodentPro, & then offers them to people at a reasonable price, so you don't have to place a huge order yourself, with RodentPro. I'm getting my feeders from Jenn right now, until I make my next RP order.

http://forums.pnwhs.org/search.php?searchid=42549
 
Oh nice, I haven't seen that site yet Heather, thanks a bunch! I'll make myself an account over there too and see about getting to know some folks. ^_^
 
You will see WrechedProcess over there too, since she's moving to the Seattle area.
Members on PNWHS don't seem to respond quite as quickly as on cs.com, but I think alot of that is lower # of members.
Let me know if you need any help getting a hold of someone.
 
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