Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I have a colony of 1.5 mice right now and would love to know how long I can expect this colony to produce well.

All the females are young and have just been bred, so they are about 2-3 weeks away from their first litters. I plan to keep the colony together 24/7, so the females will not be getting any kind of a rest after giving birth.

Can anyone give me an idea of how many litters a female will typically have before she starts to really slow down. Also, roughly how long are the females productive?

I realize that every female isn't going to be the same... I'm just trying to get an idea of when I need to have new females waiting to replace the current breeders to establish some kind of cycle.

Thank you for the help.
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-Ross Payan - www.LeosAnonymous.com

Leos Anonymous

Ball Pythons, Red Striped Leos, W.Hognose and Screaming AFT's

i've had mine going for 8 months and that was too long they've all gone psyhco i should have retired them at 6 months

>>i've had mine going for 8 months and that was too long they've all gone psyhco i should have retired them at 6 months

by psycho, do you mean that they became violent? What did they do? did they chase each other in the cages and start to fight amongst themselves? Or did they get mentally ill and start eating their own children?

I once placed my male breeder in my neighbor's mice cage because the neighbor wanted to borrow my male to breed his females. A week later, we couldn't see the male anymore. We dug and dug in the bedding. We were about to give up when a headless body thumped on to the floor of the cage (we were picking up handfuls of bedding and sieving through trying to find the male). The females had apparently ate off the head of my male. Gruesome! Now, that is psycho. Can you beat that for psycho?

cheers.
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Longtang. I like snakes and rats.

once i tried to make a new kind of mouse by breeding a normal mouse with a ballerina female mouse ( these are the kind that go round and round.. also called dancing walz mice i think.. they are smaller then normal mice).

i put a weaned normal with a female ballerina so he was smaller.. they were fine for a couple of weeks as he grew with her.... then one day i find a normal mosue and a leg... a leg...ehh... wicked funny

ps... i always had trouble with placing full grow rat or mice together for breeding. i let them grow from weanlings together. the problem is that it doesn't really allow the females to gorw a lot before breeding!!