Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Going to start breeding feeder mice very soon, just have a few questions.
When they start breeding can I leave the males and females all in the same thing? Or should I remove certain ones from the enclosure?

You can always leave males with females after birth....

However mice vary from rats. Its my experiance that you can have three possible outcome for communal breeding.

1)Females kill the male...

2)Male kills offspring (typically other males but not always)

3)Works fine...

Obviously you can have the same issues with none communal breeding however I found communal breeding increased the problems listed above.

The list is not all inclusive...

Cheers
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Jeremy Payne
JB Reptile

1.0 Snow "Kahl"
0.2 Triple Het Moonglow "Kahl"
0.1 Orange Tail Hypo Het Leopard
0.1 Double Het "Sharp" Snow
1.0 Ghost
0.1 Possible Super Hypo
0.1 DH Ghost
1.1 "Kahl" Albino
1.0 Hypomelenistic
1.3 Pastel Hypo
0.1 Anerthrystic

1.1 Morelia Clastolepis

...you start with a colony of mice...1 male and so many females as you want...I use 1.15....
the male is now the king.....I had 2 this year that were fighting ...I have all males in one tank and all females in another(and a few more with mixed feeders,hundred in each more or less) anyways...when I setup a colony,rarely do they fight, a male with 15 new girlfriends has nothing to cry about....as said...I had a couple fight this year,don't know why, but you can hear them fighting and all, so the male comes out and a new one goes in, all in a couple hours while I am working in the room, the new male usually won't fight...and he is now a lucky camper.....

all let in same cage...after about 4 weeks I start getting babies....new mothers are dumb at times, they cannot handle all the kids they make...I leave lke 30 per tank, new tanks maybe 21.......you have to cull and pull all the time....males will NOT kill babies...other pregnant females will at times eat new babies from other mothers, they need the protein and they are just stupid like that, nothing you can do byut mark the tank and if theye at babies over and over again, they all die....and I start over.....this is not the norm.....

after they breed for 6 months ,I cull them all to the big ball pythons and start fresh, I always have alot of new young females in a tank ready to take a new tank over....

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......16
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1(1.normal,.1mojave,2.1 spider mojaves)
2(1.normal,1.pastel,spider?Huh,.1blast)1 dud 2 boobs died...
3(2pastelghost,3pastel,1normal....)
4(2normal,7 pastel...)

I agree with Bighurt. Although, sibling males and females are less likely to fight. I prefer to separate the litters into each sex, once weaned, until they are about 12 weeks of age. Then I'll set them up into their own colonies with one male to 5 or 6 females depending on the size of the tote. Any extra males I have are held over for later, fed off, or frozen for later.

In my experience, if you try to introduce a new male or female to a colony to replace one that expired, the others may very well try to kill it, beat on the new mouse a bit, or be very welcoming to it. It really is a toss up. New males will kill any offspring already in the cage.