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

Those are actually good questions. But as with many good questions, the answer depends on your needs.

I produce lots of mice. Not big time, around 5 to 6 thousand a week and increasing.

Recently I started testing in this direction. I now have two racks(64 tubs) That are not allowed to raise babies larger then fuzzies. That is, we harvest all mice at the pinkie fuzzie level.

I do not rate racks on number of mice produced, but instead by how much money they generate per week. Which is very related.

So far money wise its a wash. But, its far far far more convient to harvest pinkies and fuzzies from one location, then taking a few from many cages. plus, the adults consume less food and go longer between cage cleaning, in this situation.

I believe, that mice cycle every 23 days or so, Unless overly stressed. A day or two of missing food or water, too many to nurse, temps, etc effect this.

I do think the above is not your actual question. You are most likely taking about an individual female in a harem. As long as you have a harem(1.whatever you do) you have to go by the harem production, not the individual females.

It also depends on the strain of mice you have. Colored mice have small litters, 8-12, some lab strains, produce over 30 per litter. If you have a medium sized harem, and three or four females drop litters of 30 in the same week, there is no way on earth for them all to be raised up to adults.

So it depends on your need, what your feeding off. Normally you can harvest(control) a harem to rear all sizes, or for select sizes. Cheers

I'm with FR.

Another thing. Keeping mice in harems rather than separating pregnant females allows the adults to breed again within a couple of days after the female gives birth. The females are raising a litter while pregnant with the next litter. This maximizes production.

Paul Hollander