Reptile & Amphibian Forums

is it bad to keep breeder rodents in a dark room with very limited light? actually zero light for a few days at a time then just a hour of light and then again no light for a few more days? thanks everyone.

A complete lack of light might cause some problems - but I can't imagine it would be the end of the world either.

With the collection my dad & I kept while I was growing up, we bred our own mice and rats. All of our reptiles and rodents were caged in the basement. The rodents only had "bright" light on them when we were going through and feeding, watering, or cleaning cages or 'harvesting' babies. Other than that, they did have the dim light around them from the nearby reptile cages, about 12 on, 12 off.

Rats and mice are nocturnal creatures, so I don't expect their feelings would be hurt by being more in the dark - as long as they are not also cold!

To fall back onto some of my recent college courses though, rats and mice (among many other species) do have different bioprocesses that are affected by the amounts of light they receive; biorhythms are probably the most important here. If left in total darkness, rats in experiments have shown that they run on a 25-hour "day" as opposed to a 24-hour day. This really isn't too important except that I can think of one thing this might do: the females' estrous cycles may be slightly longer (that means longer periods of infertility), but at most we're talking less than a day. You probably wouldn't see these effects, but if you do notice any kind of a drop-off in production, you might want to consider leaving at least one dim light on for them for about 12 hours each day.

So, probably nothing bad will come of the lack of light. Just keep an eye on your production levels, and use what works best for you.

Good luck,
~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)

I don't know wether or not it will harm them. Why not just put a small light on a timer?
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John Vandegrift

i was kinda thinking the same thing.

I have always used frozen mice so i don't have any experiance at all with mice breeding, but if i was in your position i would prob put a light on a timer to simulate a light cycle.

~ Mike