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My Dumerils Boa should be dropping her litter sometime in the next month. I figured this would be as good a time as any to start raising my own mice to feed the babies. Here is a cage I built out of a 15 quart tub which should be suitable for raising mice on a small scale. It was pretty inexpensive and only took about an hour to build.
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Paul D
Looks good and should work just fine!!!
Might want to make a few more if you're going to need feeders on a weekly basis.
One thing I do to keep a steady flow of feeders with my rats is to cycle the females through a males cage and remove them before they give birth. This method works very well on small scale programs as it avoids the feast/famine effect of too many/few litters born in a given week. Another benefit is by having a weekly cleaning/cycling day is the litters will be born pretty much the same day every week so you'll have appropriate size feeders they same time each week.
I've done cycle breeding with mice before but am now tub breeding them as I need lots and simply freeze off any excess. During baby season I need way more than I can produce and those frozen ones come in handy.
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Thanks,
Dave Colling
www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com
0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)
LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders 
lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats 
Should be fine for a trio of mice...but I am concerned about whether adult mice can comfortably squeeze underneath the feed chute, doesn't seem to be much clearance between the floor of the cage and the 'corner' of the chute. I happen to have the same size and style tub lying around and from the pictures...doesn't look like there is much more than an inch or two under the lowest point of the chute...Though shavings can easily mat down or move out of the way...it could cause problems, especially with heavily pregnant females.
It may be a good idea to cut it back maybe just square it off so there is more clearance underneath...otherwise it may effectively divide the cage in half.
Myself, for a small trio or quad breeding group of mice, I would use a larger bin...just to give more space for things for the mice to do, like hides, tubes etc for them to chew and play in. Having some 'enrichment' really helps keep stress down.
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PHLdyPayne
Without the bedding, there is about 2 inches of clearance underneath the lowest part, and just over 2 inches on each side. I'll probably add some hides to it in the next couple days, but I just built it at about 1am and haven't done much else to it. Thanks for the advice. I'll see how it goes and tweak it as needed.
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Paul D
That size mesh hardware cloth will work if you are pulling all the babies before they get big enough to run around. Mice that are just big enough to run around can get through it and the last thing you want is loose mice. My rat colony has been going about twenty years. Cleaning 26 trays once every 5 to 8 days for the last 20 years has been REAL boring. At least rats smell a little less than mice. I hate the smell of mice. I would rather take a beating than raise mice.
I decided to put a 2nd layer of wire on the cage to prevent the mice from getting out and it looks like it did the trick. In the future if I could actually find 3/8th inch wire, that should work too. To give you an idea on the size, that is a hopper mouse in the picture.
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Paul D
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