Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My male hamster got placed in with 2 cohabitating fems by a denying family member and now I have 8 tiny hammys, 2 days old with another litter expected any day. I really don't want a population of hammys to care for, thought maybe I could freeze them to use for feeding my 9"-13" baby corns. Is this ok, or should I trade them to the petstore for mice? On raising mice for feeders, how often do they reproduce? As it is, I go through almost 2 doz frozen pinkys/month and that'll go up as they get bigger. I'm hoping to save some bucks on the foodbill.

Hamsters are fine for food.

Mice stink - but if you want to breed them, about 18-21 days or so if I remember.

Some mice have been selectively bred for large litters - and you really must cull the litter 24 hours after birth or they grow really slow and/or die (what they do in labs is spread the babies betweem several nursing moms as mice keep nursing as long as there are young to nurse).

I personally don't think it is worth it - since you have hamsters, you could just breed those for food.
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3.6 L. getula californiae - 16 eggs (Cal. King)
1.1 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
3.3 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - 14 eggs (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

sweet... I didn't know if hamsters had anything in them that'd be harmful nutrition-wise or not... didn't wanna raise mice, they don't like handing so much. Momma ham was a lil upset at losing her babies, but she'll get over it. Yay, less trips to the petstore now Thanks

Do mice breed faster than hamsters or visa versa?

I don't know much about breeding mice, guessing they breed more often than hamsters... A few years ago when we were into hammys, they had litters of 8-12 about every other month. So that'll provide about 60 pinkies in a yr per hamster. I think I'll need 8 or 9 females to support my 8 baby corns. Looking like it'll be as efficient as 1 ham/1 baby corn. I'd be thrilled

mice are easy to breed and I never had any problems with large litters being nursed, maybe one or two die offs at the most. THe only problem I had with pinkies dying off is when there are older babies around (these just push the pinkies out of the way of food, eventually they grow weak and die).

I find it best to breed 2-4 females per male mouse, housing all together all the time. If you are aiming just for pinkies, I suggest culling about half of each litter of pinkies and let the mothers raise them for awhile. Otherwise, when you want bigger babies, the mothers won't know how to raise them after a few days and may wind up abandoning them.

if you have adult snakes, then this won't be a problem, just raise the babies up in a separate tank (once weaned at 4-5 weeks old) till they are the size you need then freeze them(prekill first of course).

However, if you are only looking to feed baby corn snakes pinkies, it would be cheaper to order 100 pinkies or more from a online supplier. By the time you buy a couple cages (rubbermaid bins, whatever) water bottles, rodent chow, young adult mice and bedding, you probably would have paid for the mail order pinkies.

breeding your own mice works best when you have a few different snakes that need different size food, so you can freeze some, feed immediately others and grow up more for later. I also don't recommend breeding mice if you live in a one bedroom apartment or don't have a place you can isolate the mice in, so the smell of the male urine doesn't stink up the entire house. Constant cage cleaning will only get rid of the smell for a short period of time. Male mice just have a strong musk scent to their urine.
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PHLdyPayne

The problem with large litters is primarily that they grow slowly.

A litter of 12 will grow much faster than a litter of 18.
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3.6 L. getula californiae - 16 eggs (Cal. King)
1.1 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
3.3 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - 14 eggs (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

Hamsters are fine as feeders, but once your snake has been fed hamsters they might not go back to mice!

I have been breeding my own mice for YEARS. I keep 1 male with 3 females, this way you get 3 litters per group per month (they have babies every 24 days). I use Swiss Webster mice, they are genetically designed to produce huge litters, and also thrive under crowded conditions where as other lab mice will start killing off babies if they feel their cage is getting over crowded.

Check the link below to see my mouse breeding page....
Breeding Mice

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Mike Heinrich
mike@amazontreeboa.org
www.boakingdom.com

I can't say that I've ever raised hamsters, but I had a breeding colony of dwarf hamsters (Evil things.) but they are certainly a lot different than mice.
For one, mice smell more than dwarf hamsters. They just do.
And mice are a lot quieter and less sensative about their surroundings and cagemates.
Dwarf hamster babies are smaller than mouse pinks, and my snakes preferred dwarf hamster pinks over mouse pinks, just how they smell.
As far as I can tell dwarf hamster have EXACTLY the same time between litters, about 3 weeks.
There's nothing innately wrong about feeding pinks of any rodent to a snake, but I wouldn't mention it to the local pet store or friends, as white mice and rate aren't protected against 'animal cruelty' as they are genetically made to run tests on. Hamsters are pet animals and that's it, AFAIK.
I did it for years, man I hate dwarf hamsters. They bite and won't let go. Mean things.

I fed my yearlings with them, but now I see why mice or dwarf hamsters would be better: newborn hamsters are 30-50% bigger than pinky mice. Ended up decapitating one for a smaller '06 I have, and they are obviously too big for my new '07s which are only pencil width. Kinda gory after they thaw, so I'm only going to use store-bought pinky mice for those ones until I get a colony of mice going. Yeah, I guess all rodents are a lil stinky, I've tried a couple drops of vanilla extract in the water bottles, helps out a little...
~Paul S.