The only way I have ever found to keep the odor of mice tolerable is to clean the cages every 2-3 days, which sucks. I tried the vanilla trick and didn't notice a significant difference except that the water bottles grew mold faster. For cleaning cages, I have separate spray bottles of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. Spraying the cages down with these 2 solutions, one after the other, seems to neutralize the smell of urine as well as any cleaner I have ever found.

I have used both approaches to breeding. If you take the males out, it obviously can take a while for breeding to resume when you re-introduce them, which slows production down. However, it gives the females a break, which seems to extend their breeding "careers" for lack of a better word, and the babies tend to be larger. If you leave the males in you will get back to back litters, which increases numbers, but the babies seems to grow slower, because they are always competing with older babies from previous litters. I usually just left the males in and planned on replacing the females after 3-4 litters, because they get burned out faster and litter sizes drop.

I switched from mice to African Soft Furs. I have one picky Baird's rat snake that still refuses anything but mice so I have to keep one trio of mice going. All of my other snakes switch back and forth between mice and ASFs without complaint. My ASFs get up to 80 grams (100grams for ex-breeder females), so 1 or 2 a week are sufficient for my runty male ball python. At birth, they are usually the same size or slightly larger than a mouse (1.5-2.0 grams), so they work for all but the smallest of Colubrid hatchlings. They have fewer canibalism and socialization issues, and smell FAR less than mice. My wife gags at the smell of 3 mice in a cage 4 days after cleaning. I have 5 trios of soft furs in 10gal tanks in a spare room and she barely even notices the odor even after a week between cage cleanings. They do smell, it just isn't as strong or offensive as mouse stench.

Just my $0.02. If you get the chance to try ASFs, do it. You won't regret it.
MZ

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