Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Recently I bought some mice to breed for my snakes. 1 of the mice had her babies last nite. Two of the other mice that are pregnant killed 2 of her babies. I seprated the males from the females too keep them from killing her babies. Do females kill other mice's babies too ? does this happen often with the female mice? I have another female in the cage with her now who seems to be helping her by keeping the baby pinkies warm when the female that had them eats.

john

Hi John

There could be several possible explanations for what happened, including "no discernable reason at all." But first.... just for background info, how many cages of mice are you maintaining? How many mice in what size/kind of cage? Are you keeping more than one male in the same cage? (It was hard to tell from your post... but this is generally not recommended.)

All mice can become cannibalistic, with their own offspring or that of other members of that colony. Some possible causes (in no particular order) are: "first time" or too young mothers, protein deficiency in the diet, overcrowded conditions, something in the surrounding environment perceived by the adults as 'threats' to the colony (perhaps extreme disruption or noise, frequent disturbing of the nests, etc.) and .... others will jump in here if I left something out. It is fairly common to lose some (or even all) pups with a first time mother's litter.... with the following litters being raised successfully.

Most often, members of an established colony will do just as you described.... assist in rearing the young regardless of which babies actually belong to which mice, and all is well and good! =)

When you do return the females to the male (and it does have to be done in that order, not the reverse!) be sure the pups have been removed (as in fed off or placed in another cage once they're weaned.) The males are known for killing offspring that have not been in the cage with him since their birth.

Also, before re-introducing females, it's helpful to allow a male to remain in a clean cage by himself for a day or so. This lets him scent mark and establish his "territory" -- reducing the likelihood of the females ganging up on him.

In general, once a colony is established, it's fine to leave them be. If you feel the cause was just first-time or too young females, and lose pinks to cannibalism again, double check your husbandry. See if adding some extra protein/fat to the diet helps (depending on what you're feeding, sometimes adding small amounts of dry kitten chow and black oil type sunflower seeds, or even live mealworms/crickets can help.) Also double check on the number of mice you're keeping in the cages. It may be overcrowded.

Hope this helped.... let us know how things go for you!

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Rebecca
TSBabe66@hotmail.com
Honored to moderate at Snakefeeders, a great place to buy/sell/trade feeder animals. Come check us out! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/snakefeeders/

>>Recently I bought some mice to breed for my snakes. 1 of the mice had her babies last nite. Two of the other mice that are pregnant killed 2 of her babies. I seprated the males from the females too keep them from killing her babies. Do females kill other mice's babies too ? does this happen often with the female mice? I have another female in the cage with her now who seems to be helping her by keeping the baby pinkies warm when the female that had them eats.
>>

I feed all my rats superworms.. since I have well over 2000 of them that I bred *laughs* They love them... they get em like 2 or 3 times a weak... I did a sort of test with 3 cages of my rats.. The one cage got my usual mix of food..Dog food, black oil sunflower seeds cracked corn, grain based cereal and wheat flakes.. and my other 2 cages got that supplemented 3 times a week with the superworms.. Well.. the pups out of the two cages that got the superworms.. were all huge compared to their counterparts out of the control cage.. So I went to giving everyone the worms.. since it seems to help the females produce more milk and the pups to grow somewhat faster.
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Lucien

1.0 Columbian Redtail Boa (BCI)
2.1 Leopard geckos (2 Blizzard and 1 het Blizzard)
0.1 Savannah Monitor
13 rats
12 Gerbils
2 Dogs
3 cats
1 Albino Corey (fish)

I have 2 males 4 females. The 2 females that are pregant are do any day. I will separate them when they have there babies. The males are seperated from the females with the babies.
now i am considering that buy frozen thawed and having them shipped to my house was cheaper than keeping the colonies up do you think it is?

thannks,

Depends on how many snakes you're feeding. For me, with a Savannah Monitor and a boa.. its cheaper to breed my own rats....Shipping was costing more than my order was when I was getting f/t shipped. *shrugs* If you only have one or 2 snakes that can eat the same size prey.. you might be better off buying.. or, if your snakes can eat any stage of rats....pinks for example.. then you'd be better off switching to rats.
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Lucien

1.0 Columbian Redtail Boa (BCI)
2.1 Leopard geckos (2 Blizzard and 1 het Blizzard)
0.1 Savannah Monitor
13 rats
12 Gerbils
2 Dogs
3 cats
1 Albino Corey (fish)

all of mine are 2003 babies.

0.1 het for lavender albino desert banded cali king
1.1 desert desert striped cali king
1.0 lavender albino cali king
0.1 reversed stripe cali king
1.0 desinger snow cali king
1.0 50-50 cali king
1.1 western hognoses

I have used www.micedirect.com They are in Ga and thats where I live. They also give discounts on larger oders for example 1000 pinkies would cost $16. 100 pinkies are 18 cents a piece. I had to seperate the males cuz one was beating the other one up.
I may be getting a pair of red western hognoes next year too.
Are these good prices? But right now they are not selling cuz they are expanding. So if I do buy some more then I will have to get them somewhere else.

thanks,
john

No advice here, just wanted to get into a mouse discussion

We have just one snake, a 12" corn snake. The pet store charges $.99 per frozen pink, no discount at all for buying more than 1 at a time. Their live feeder mice were $1.99 so we decided, since we already had all the equipment, we'd just get some mice and breed them ourselves.

It's all working out as planned, we have 1.2 mice in a 55 gal. aquarium. The females both had litters within 12 hours of each other. Since our snake eats pinkies, we took 6 of the 8 initial pinkies for our snake food supply and left 2 with the mom. We did find one that had had it's belly ate open. We didn't see who did it, so we don't know. We decided to leave the 2 in there as a test to see what they would do. We did not take the male out either.

The next day the other mouse had 12 babies, and by the time we looked... ALL 14 babies were together and the mother mice were taking turns taking care of them. They will be 2 weeks old tonight and tomorrow morning. They have grown really fast, I'm assuming that's either normal or maybe they're getting extra milk since they have 2 mommas??

Our female mice are different, one is white and one is cinnamon. So, 2 babies are white and the other 12 are cinnamon. We will look in and see them each nursing all the babies.

We have even looked in and caught the male laying with the babies, keeping them warm.

The worst part for me is, the babies are cute! When thye were little squirming pink things, it wasn't hard to take care of them. But now they are cute, with little cute faces, and their eyes are opening, and when we look in the mothers stand over them and look up at us like they are protecting them. My husband says no problem, if I can't do it, he can. Trust me, he's going to end up doing it!

On the other hand, I do set mouse traps in my house when we have a wild mouse and I hate it when they get in my towel drawer and make a nest. Also, they STINK!!! I've heard rats stink a lot less and need less room, maybe we'll switch to rats if I can convince my kids.

Our plan is, once the babies are weaned, take them to the pet store. There was no point in keeping them all as pinkies in our freezer, by the time our snake could eat them all, she would certainly be moved up to a larger size.

Take care!

Tracie

I save some of the extra pinkies and put them in the freezer. I will let them fatten some up before they are fed to the baby cali kings and the baby western hognoses

john