Reptile & Amphibian Forums

fellow mice breeders; let me get your opinion on which of two school of thoughts you subscribe to
needed background info.......I have about fifteen trays of mice breeding well. I need/let about ten percent of the pinks grow fully through to micehood.

1) pulling all a mothers babies at once forces her to ovulate and then breed immediately, such allowing her to produce more in her lifetime
-or-
2) allowing a mother to raise at least part of her first litter decreases her chances of cannibalizing future litters.

basically my question is- to get young adult feeder mice, do you guys let a mother raise her whole litter or do just leave a few pinks with each litter ?

which do you subscribe to ? Anybody know of any comparison research on this? Any feedback is appreciated

thanks

I notice when I take away too many pinks it's like the mothers dry up a bunch and those babies end up on the small side as weanlings. When holding back for breeding, I like to leave just six to eight babies on the mother. I usually let the whole litter get raised up to just fuzzy size and then pick out one male and five to seven females for her to finish raising up and I feed off the rest. But I also keep four to five females to a tray, so technically one can feed off an entire litter of one female and both females will finish raising up the other female's litter. So don't take away eight pinks of twelve and leave those four with ten hoppers. You can expect the remaining four pinks just won't compete with ten hoppers from the other litter. I try to raise up mice in the same age group up together rather than try to have mixed ages of babies in a tray. Good luck! Frankly, everyone has their own way of doing things!
This is just the way I do it.

I never heard that theory about pulling the whole litter to make her ovulate? I read, and found it to be true, that the female goes into heat within 24 hours after giving birth. If that's true, then you'll get a litter about ever 25 days from each female...and that's what I get.

I breed the Swiss Webster laboratory created genetic strain. They produce huge litters and they don't canibalize their babies, not even when extremely overcrowded ( I never have overcrowded cages, but this is what I have read about the Websters; that they thrive in overcrowded conditions).

Basically what I do is go through the boxes twice a week and pull 50% of all the pinks and fuzzies and take them up to the local pet shop (I sell them 3 for $1). Everything else is held back for feeding my own collection.

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Mike Heinrich,
708-428-5616
Mike@amazontreeboa.org
http://www.amazontreeboa.org

I've read that the female goes into heat with in 4 hours of giving birth. If you keep your colonies with the male in place, she is going to be pregnant before you discover the pinkies. Removing the pinkies is not going to increase production.

I have found that if you remove all the pinkies the mother will dry up and not nurse as well in the future. I always leave 5 for them to raise out even if I don't need bigger mice.
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Wade's Weptiles & Wodents

Local pet store - they have five females in a tub. They buy from a supplier and keep throwing the pinkies they buy from supplier in and the mice keep nursing them etc.

While most of their mice including pinks they buy, they also have a few breeders in the back who give birth, and have their young taken up front to the tub of nursing females. if you need extra small pinkies, you have to check daily and ask for what has given birth - their supplier only brings in pinkies that are already 2 to 3 days old at the smallest.

It's a real neat system. The mothers that raise pinkies up to weanling size haven't given birth themselves for some time.

I don't know if they are a lab variety bred to be good mothers or if they are regular run of the mill mice - but it works for them.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

fellow mice breeders; let me get your opinion on which of two school of thoughts you subscribe to
needed background info.......I have about fifteen trays of mice breeding well. I need/let about ten percent of the pinks grow fully through to micehood.

1) pulling all a mothers babies at once forces her to ovulate and then breed immediately, such allowing her to produce more in her lifetime

Others have addressed the above statement pretty well. I organize my mouse cages in an ‘S’ shaped pattern on the rack so that the top left cage is the oldest mice colony and the bottom right cage consists of the youngest breeders. I never keep breeder mice ‘in rotation’ for more than 6 months. I feed the top left cage off weekly. Below is an example of how I do it….Cage #1 would be the oldest group while cage #24 is the youngest group of mice.

Removing a breeding group once each week would be killing off your oldest group in about 4 months….possibly too soon. However, removing the oldest group once every 2 weeks would result in your oldest group being 7 ½ months old. For a group of 15 cages, it might work best removing the oldest breeders every 10 days to feed off.

2) allowing a mother to raise at least part of her first litter decreases her chances of cannibalizing future litters.

I had some problems with cannibalism when I first started 2 years ago. I simply ‘culled’ the ones doing it and haven’t had any problems since. Remove them and you may find that the behavior simple disappears. I also had some weird trait that made the fuzzies look dried and wrinkled at first but it went away quickly. I slowed production this past year to about 20 mouse cages and I produce about 150-200 hoppers/small adult mice each and every week. I have plenty of snakes that eat this size. However, I end up with a TON of crawlers/small hoppers that I pull. I simply place a dozen or so in a bowl and put them in cages for the snakes to snack on. I read something once about how snakes in the wild often eat entire litters of baby rodents when they discover a nest. Therefore, don’t feel that you absolutely need to raise mice up to adults or that you have to feed them a specific size meal.

basically my question is- to get young adult feeder mice, do you guys let a mother raise her whole litter or do just leave a few pinks with each litter ?

Someone else already stated exactly what I do…and that is leave the pinkies, wait till they’re fuzzy size, and pull most of the males, leaving 6-7 females and 1-2 male fuzzies for the mom to wean and raise. They don’t have to compete as much for their mother’s milk…they get bigger more quickly. Also, when I start a new group of mice, I start with about 6-7 females. I can then replace females in other cages if necessary or simply feed the extras off. Overall, I have the best success with 1.4 groups. In time, you'll find what works & what doesn't work. Some genetic strains will pop out odd traits that you'll need to remove from your 'gene pool'. I recently started experimenting with African Soft Furred Rats and so far they are working out very well!
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Sincerely, Jason
www.NortheastSnakes.com
NortheastSnakes@verizon.net