Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I raise mainly rosy boas. I have a small feeder colony using pet store fancy mice. My problem is the retired breeders are too large to fedd to most of my rosy boas, except for some of my largest coastal rosy adults. I have tried to breed my colony to produce a small adult with no success. What would be the best mouse to use that would give me small adults but a good size litter? Where can I purchase these mice? I have searched for oldfield at reptile shows but no one has them. Thanks

>>I raise mainly rosy boas. I have a small feeder colony using pet store fancy mice. My problem is the retired breeders are too large to fedd to most of my rosy boas, except for some of my largest coastal rosy adults. I have tried to breed my colony to produce a small adult with no success. What would be the best mouse to use that would give me small adults but a good size litter? Where can I purchase these mice? I have searched for oldfield at reptile shows but no one has them. Thanks

Glades Herp has peromyscus now and then. Expensive, but they have them.
glades mammals

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Sonya

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with the software.

I had the same problem with rats I raised for my corn snakes. I used to give the retired breeders to a rescue org. When you consider how many rats came out of each breeder, I figured that the ease of breeding rats compared to mice made it a good deal. I think if you try to breed deer mice, you will find that they are a pain and not very productive. You will probablly come out ahead just giving the retired breeders you have now away and not messing with deer mice.

DeMak

Harland Supermice strains, most popular is Swiss Websters, all produce about 17 to 25 pinkies per litter if diet, cold water, and group ratio are keep appropriate. Litter size will deminish as the adult females get older or are over producing depending on the circumstances. There are several breeders on the feeder forum who offer them and in a previous December post one breeder has contact information.
I keep several strains in 1.3 ratios, housed in the 7 1/2" X 11" Lab Boxes with no problems. If you are using ten gallon tanks you could go 1.4 safely. Separate pups out as they develope into groups of 6 for feeder or 1.3/1.4 if you are cycling in new breeding groups.

I wouldn't go with peromyscus, and every single strain of mice that produces big healthy litters, are of necessity big healthy mice! Smaller mice don't have the physical inside space to have large litters. As was mentioned you are out of luck as far as finding a small mouse with large litters. Peromyscus has tiny litters, and is tiny, swiss websters have large litters and are large bodied. One person mentioned rats... Since I have found a source who wishes to purchase my excess rats at a very very profitable margin for myself, I have been slowly increasing the number of rat colonies I have. The newborn pinks are good for my larger '03 hatchlings, The fuzzies are great for my yearling colubrids, the hoppers are great for my younger ball pythons, and the young adults are good for the bigger balls. When they reach full adult size they are worth more to me sold to someone else than used as feeders for my animals. And they grow just as fast as mice, which means they get huge quickly. More food bang for the buck... so to speak.
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~Sasheena