Questions for those who breed their mice...

[Nagah11979]

1) Do you keep them inside or outside?

2)if you keep them inside, do you do something to cut down on the smell? To those who keep them outside, what do you house them in? (pics would be nice ).

4)What do you feed them? (with the nutrition of your snakes in mind) seeds? veggies? dogfood?

3)and lasty, after getting how many snakes do you think it is just cheaper to breed your own mice rather than buying them online?

Thanks!

 

[rspier]

To try and answer your questions one by one.
1. If you have more than one or two pairs you pretty much have to keep the out of the house because the smell is pretty bad.
2. I built a rack that holds 24 tubs, that will house a trio each. I keep the rack in a small storage "closet" off of my back patio where the water heater is. In the winter I have to keep a small space heater in there to keep the temps above 65, I am not sure how I will keep them cool enough this summer. So I am freezing a lot of extras and will probably have to downsize mouse production in the hottest part of the summer.
4. I feed them rodent block. Its about 13$ for a 25 lb bag.
3. I have 23 corns and go through about 140-160 mice a month, and freeze about that many, so there is no way I can afford to buy them. To produce about three hundred mice a month it costs me about 20-40$ depending on how much I use the heater, electricity is pretty expensive. Not to mention the convenience of having the mice right there and being able to feed when I want and the size I want. Cleaning is no fun although it only takes about 45 minutes once a week. ( If you are interested in building a rack I can direct you to the link that gave me the ideas for mine.

 

[moreptiles]

One of the things you can do to reduce the smell is to add about one tablespoon vanilla per gallon of water and 5-6 drops
GSE (grapefruit seed extract). Make sure you don't use grape seed extract. This really cuts down on the smell. But even with this, you still need to keep them out of your house.
Mark

 

[Nagah11979]

I would want to keep them outside no doubt, but at what temps are mice comfortable?

My problem is that I don't know where to put them or how to build a small enough rack for them. (I don't really need 24 tubs, rspier, but maybe I can modify the design, I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the link that would be awsome.)

Thanks

 

[Interested]

I just started my own "mouse farm" for my new corns, and I want to freeze some mice and I was wondering what the best way to do that is. Obviously I should kill it first, but I mean should I remove as much air from the ziploc as possible and only put one mouse per bag?

 

[natural_angel33]

I breed mice for my 5 corns. Since the snakes are varied in size, I only have to keep 4 adult female mice and 1 adult male to have a constant flow of pinkies, fuzzies and small adults. With every litter born, I just freeze some at each age level, and so those I don't freeze as pinkies mature into fuzzies, etc.

I keep them inside in a regular old mouse cage, because it's easier to keep track of and clean.

I feed them several things in several bowls. I feed them nuts, grains, seeds, dog food, fruits, and veggies. I put vitamin drops on the grains and stuff so they are better for the snakes too. I also have 3 water bottles in there so they all have easy access to water. (I take good care of the mice so that they will take good care of the snakes, if you get my meaning... happy mice means happy snakes!)

I think that breeding mice has been so much better than buying them. I only spend $5 a month on mouse food, whereas I could be spending $10-20 on pre-killed mice. The hardest part is cleaning the cage, but if you do the mouse cage and the snake tanks all at the same time it's really no problem.

 

[Sasheena]

1) Do you keep them inside or outside?

I kept mine indoors for 18 months before hubby and I bought a house with an outdoor shed. They've been in the shed since August.

2)if you keep them inside, do you do something to cut down on the smell? To those who keep them outside, what do you house them in? (pics would be nice ).

I'm at work so I can't post pics now, but I'll try to post some pics later when I get home from work. When I had them indoors I tried a zillion different combinations of bedding and food and what I finally came up with as the ultimate bedding is the following:

• A pinch of cedar at the bottom of the clean cage
• A layer of pine shavings
• A layer of either chlorophyll pine (expensive) or alfalfa hay {cheap}

In addition to this above bedding, I would change the mice twice a week, give them raw cotton to make nests out of, feed them dog food that wasn't too high in protein, and put a half a dropper of imitation vanilla in the gallon jug from which I poured their water.

My outdoor mice are in a 12 x 8 shed, using cat litter pans on racks. I also have a few in larger "weaner bins" for the older mice that have grown up, and some special mouse colonies in ten gallon aquariums. The shed is insulated, air conditioned, and has a heater during the winter, for those few weeks where the temps get kind of low.

4)What do you feed them? (with the nutrition of your snakes in mind) seeds? veggies? dogfood?

The optimal mix for the mice, rats, and gerbils is 50 lbs of Grrreat Adult Dog frood (from Petsmart) ($14.00), 50 lbs of COB Corn-Oats-Barley ($7.00), and 10 lbs of black oil sunflower seeds (approx $5). When hubby is weeding in the garden, I often throw some weeds in with the mice... they like it. When we have leftover veggies, I sometimes give them to the mice also. Mostly it's just the Dog Food and COB (can't always get the sunflower seeds). When I'm really feeling poor, they just get the dog food. So far I've only found two dog food brands the mice like, but one has red dyes (the food is RED) so I only get that one when I can't make the 50 mile round trip to the Petsmart to get the brand of dog food the mice really like.

5)and lasty, after getting how many snakes do you think it is just cheaper to breed your own mice rather than buying them online?

In this instance I did things backwards. I had three cal kings and one rosy boa, and was tired of looking for mice every weekend. Talked hubby into letting me raise mice, and got REALLY interested in the mice. Before I knew what was happening, I was buying more snakes to justify having so many mice. Now I think I'm at an equilibrium point, I have 40+ snakes and 40 rodent cages (including rats and gerbils). To my mind, after some of the really awful frozen rodents I picked up, raising my own seemed the only way to go to know I would have what I wanted when I wanted it. Of course my original 1.2 mice just didn't do it for me, because it took almost two months to get the first litter.

Okay, hope that was helpful, sure did me a lot of "procrastination" good.

Thanks!

 

[natural_angel33]

hi Sasheena,

I heard you're not supposed to used pine/cedar for bedding even with mice because the oils can rub off on them and poison the snakes you're feeding them to. Have you ever heard that? And does the mice bedding affect the snakes that you can see?

 

[Taceas]

For my 25 snakes I have a 2:7 breeding colony set up in a 20 gallon long aquarium. I've tried mice cages before but they all seem to be too drafty and had too many escapees. But with my current setup they're doing great. I keep mine in my laundry room where it stays around 72 in there at all times.

I'm sure my ratio would be considered a no-no by some, but the two males do great together with no fighting and enough females to go around. They give me a constant flow of young, I seem to have a litter pop around every week or so, which is good because I have some snakes that can only manage the smallest of pinks and some that are about to move on up to fuzzies. Just over the weekend I had a total of 57 pinks in one big pile. Thankfully I had a feeding night one of those days. =P

To keep the smell of mine down, I change their aspen litter every week. I think the formula of food mine are on doesn't seem to increase their smell all that much. I get it in 50lb bags from a local feed store that makes it up for me special. If you want exact nutritional quality I can get that for you if you want. I've found the more I splurge and give them treats of seeds or whatnot, their smell is unbearable. So I try and stick to their block diet as much as possible, as boring as it may be.

I find it cheaper for me to produce my own pinks-fuzzies. I can have 50-70 babies a month and totally use them up for a couple dollars worth of food. Where I'd pay about $13 for 50 pinks plus the cost of shipping and handling. But anything past fuzzy size I buy in frozen bulk from an online vendor. I don't have but a handful of snakes that eat larger mice, so it lasts me longer.

Hope that helps. =)

 

[Sasheena]

There is no debate about cedar... it's bad to keep reptiles and rodents on. But the amount of cedar I used to use is miniscule. (no need to use it now that the mouse operation is outside) As for Pine, that is a still-hotly-debated topic. A lot of people keep their snakes and mice on pine and swear by it. As for the health of my snakes and mice, I've noticed any difficulties or problems that I couldn't explain and that would/could be attributed to pine.

You'll get different opinions on this topic, and there is no final word on it. Same as with dogfood, different opinions on that. For me, pine is fine, cedar helped the smell when the mice were indoors, but isn't necessary when they are outside.

 

[Matt L]

breeeding mice

I'm dissapointed --no other pics--here is what I have chosen for my breeding colony--notice it also includes some rat breeeding tubs as well.

 

[Matt L]

Closeup

The secret to my success with the smell is Alfalfa Pellets. They don't make good nesting material-so I add a small handfull of pine to the bin. I clean once a week, but I have gone as long as 12 days. Try 12 days with pine or cedar or both. The pellets can be purchased at any feed store for about 10.00 dollars for a 50lb. bag. I feed a combination of Mazuri rodent feed and Dog food. The ratio per bin is 1:5 and the rats are 1:2. Here is a close-up.

 

[Taceas]

Nice setup. Matt =)

I just don't have the money right now to lavish on something that elaborate, nor do I have the snakes in that quantity to feed. The 2:7 I have right now produce more than I can use up sometimes.

Your snake racks on the other hand look like something I could use. My snakes are going to be outgrowing their smaller Sterilite tubs and I have no way to really organize anything larger.

Do you build them yourself?

 

[Matt L]

Misty,
The rodent rack is Freedom Breeder-They are a little pricey, but I started with one section and expanded a little each year. The snake racks in the picture are my own design.

 

[Sasheena]

Here's my "mouse room" when hubby and I rented a house. The mice were kept in an addition to the house, a sunroom, with a sliding glass door to keep the odor in the house down. This photo IS a collage, so might look slightly funny.

 

[Sasheena]

This picture is a picture of my "mouse house" now, again, it's a collage

 

[REG]

Mouse House

Hello again to all, Matt, I live in Boca Raton, I noticed the picture of your set up, looked like it was in the garage? if so what do you do in the summer, I know mine gets pretty hot and to a.c. the garage just would not be cost effective. whats your secret. Thanks REG
:bowdown:

 

[Nagah11979]

Thanks for all the posts!

Thank you everyone for helping me out with this.

I am going to try to start my own colony at the begining of spring/summer since there is no way I would be able to put them outside now since it is so cold! Does anyone know if mice can live at temps varing from 70-90 degrees in the summer if they aren't directly out in the open (The garage) and have enough water?

Also what temperatures are mice able to live in?

Thank you

 

[rspier]

From what I have read mice breed best between 68-86 degrees. Above 86 the males become sterile.

 

[Interested]

I thought it was bad to feed mice dog food, cuz of the red dye? And whoa, I need to check the temps in my room if mice become sterile in temps above 86. My room might get too hot.....