Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have 14 corns now, only one is a full adult, 2 yearlings, 7 may 03 hatchlings (bred here, and one's currently MIA), and 4 july hatchlings (love bred). My adult female snow, the only breeder, is eating rat pups now, and I really don't see her going up in size from there, they seem to be just the right width But the others are on various sizes of pinks and the male yearling is eating fuzzies, almost ready for hoppers. Actually, he probably could take hoppers now, but i have a bunch of fuzzies in the freezer

But What I'm wondering is, with all these babies eating different sizes, and online stores selling rodents in packs of 100, or 50, would it be more cost efficient to just breed my own mice? I used to have mice, and bred them on occasion when i needed a few mice for my (at that time 1 snake) and my wd used to enjoy them as well. But the WD is gone now, and I have a lot more snakes. I'm so tired of paying 25$ for shipping on mice every time! And pet stores charging 1$ a pink? really? is that a "reasonable" price? I think not. I won't pay that. So how much would it cost for a Co2 setup, and what's the easiest way to do that? Mice are cheap enough to buy a few females and a male, and my daughter wouldn't mind having one as "her own pet". My only concern on breeding my own snake food, is the cost of the gas chamber
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Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents

I got tired of typing it out all the time, so a friend of mine put a pic of my set-up and some instructions for it on his web site. Hope this helps!
CO2 Chamber

YES it does! Thank you, I bookmarked that page and plan to start breeding my own mice. I just made (hopefully) my last purchase online for them! What size is that CO2 chamber? I was looking at paintball supply places and they were pretty cheap on tanks, but I'm not sure how big they were, (measurement wise) Those directions you put up were great, ganna go buy some LIVE mice real soon here
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Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents

That CO2 tank is 20 oz tank. It is approx 12" high and about 3-4" across.

The kill tank is just a plastic cereal jar from Wal-mart. It is about 14" tall and about 5-6" across. (When not in use I store the CO2 tank iside the Kill tank to save space and they nest nicely) Remember that kill tank is too small for adult rats though. They can get their heads above the CO2 in it and struggle enough to make me uncomfortable. That particular tank will kill an adult rat, but it looks to be a rather painfull process which defeats the purpose of using CO2. I don't put down many adult rats, but when I retire a breeder I usually use a pillow case to "Thump" (Rat in pillow case, pillow case slammed hard on floor~ DON'T use a pillow case you plan to ever use on a pillow again!) and then drop them in the CO2 tank while they are unconcious. (The Thumping may kill them, but I like to make sure they will not wake up with a bunch of broken bones).

Good Luck!

It is way cheaper to breed your own. I fed 20 corns from a set up like this:

4 cages with one male and four females and one big cage where I put the weanlings in. I bought twice a year a 25 kilo bag mice food and 3 times a year a huge bag woodchips. Total cost less then $100 per year. I could feed 20 snakes easily each week.

Good luck.
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Marcel Poots (Holland)
'Where is your crown King Nothing?' James Hettfield

Thanks, i was thinking of three females an one male, pretty much the same deal for keeping them..."while they're allive" lol So you keep all your females seperate? When I had females before I kept them all together. They seemed to like each others company a lot. I toss the male in for a few days and then he'd move out and all the girls would be pregnant together. They even had their babies all together a couple times. I'd open the cage near due date and there would be 30 pinks in there all curled up together with one mama! lol the other two obviously decided to let the older lady take the nanny job. It should be the first week of october when I get my live ones. Then I have to get myself a nice CO2 set up like what JM posted. Though, being german, I'm not sure I feel right about creating a "gas chamber"!
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Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents

This is a major mistake a lot of new feeder breeders make. SOME Mice will tolerate the colony changing, but for the most part mice are nasty critters, and they will kill new members introduced, and if you remove that male they may nueter him when you put him back. You can re-arrange rats, but mice are *Usually* just too nasty.

Put 1.5 mice in your tub, and leave them alone. Once they start producing evaluate them. You started with 1.5 in case you lost any females to the first pregnancies. If not, cull the weakest looking. Then leave them alone to work. Clean the cage every week, feed, water, and harvest, (try to leave a few nursing pups at every harvest to keep the females milk going) that's all you want to do. In 5 months hold back 1.5 of the pups and set them up. When they are actively breeding (about 7-9 weeks) it will be time to retire the first colony.

Good luck!

>>So you keep all your females seperate?

No, I had four females and one male in each cage. Never switch a male from one group to another. They will eat him alive. Mice are very canabalistic.
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Marcel Poots (Holland)
'Where is your crown King Nothing?' James Hettfield

i must have had some "man-hater" females before then, because I had to keep the male seperate or they would team up on him. Maybe I'll search around for some that are already living together at the pet store? I know pet-he11, oops i mean petco always keeps the males and females together. I just hate to spend a dime of my money in that store.
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Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents