I'm buying pregnant mice from a petstore my friend works at, in hopes of saving money since the store charges us a buck for each pinky. Then I'll throw the mom to my friend's monitor (unless my question that follows works out good for me). I don't need the mice as a staple diet for anything, I just want to use the pinkies as a fattening nutrient filled treat for my breeder leos and chameleon... And would like maybe a litter a week or so. But since I don't know when the females got impregnated, I never know when I'm getting this free bonus of pinkies. So here's my questions: Can I buy a pregnant female with the litter of pinkies she's feeding, feed off the pinkies, then buy a new batch of pinkies, throw them in with the mom mouse and hope she feeds them? Or will she ignore or kill the new batches of pinkies? Or would it just be easier to buy like a 1.4 group and try to control breeding times? I'm looking for a combination of efficiency and low cost... Mainly because buying pinkies each week can run like 10 bucks a week... where a pregnant female is 10% of that.
I've read that people on the forum use gerbils as feeders. What are the benifits of using gerbils or their pups over mice? How large are newborn gerbil pups in comparison to mouse pinkies? Do gerbils breed more/less frequently with larger/smaller litters than mice?
Thanks, and sorry for the long post.
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-Kris
