Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone here breed there own mice to feed their snakes!?I want to try it, frist for a better food quality, and also for the price, because it become more and more expensive to feed my snakes.

I've read some books about, but i want the opinion of people who experienced it! Is this really advantageous!? how many mice do i need to start!? anythings you can tell me will be appreciated!

thx

I've been breeding my own mice for a few years now. I started because my snake collection was up over 100 and the weekly feeder cost (even at 50 cents each) was getting to be too much. I've since cut my collection down to under 50, but still breed my own mice. It's quite a bit of work, but it's really worth it in my opinion.

Yes, I breed my own mice. I really don't know where to start, but here it goes.

Pros- 1) I LOVE watching ANYTHING reproduce, so this alone outweighs the cons, IMO. Many people think you're crazy for even speaking kind words about a....SNAKE?!!, so if you like to keep animals in general, watching them grow and reproduce, then why listen to anyone's cons?

2) If you do it right, then yes, it can save you $$'s.

3) You know where your supply is coming from.

4) If you keep small snakes like I do, scarlet kings, red milks etc., then you have the best way to feed them the appropriate size. In the past, I have bought supposedly one-day-old pinks, and I call....bull $hit! Not to say that there aren't many trust worthy companies out there (because there are), just that a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch, when it comes to the price of shipping etc. etc.

I could name a few more pros, but I’m kind of rushed right now, so I apologize, but these are the best ones off of the top of my noggin.

Cons- 1) They STINK! You really have to clean the cage/cages a lot more often than most herps. So be ready.

2) If done wrong, it will cost you more time and money than buying frozen, food, bedding, just some things to think about. If you only have a few snakes, and $ is your only concern, then stick to f/t.

3) YOU have to kill the mice, if you do the best thing for your snakes when it comes to feeding, IMO, and feed f/t. (a couple of live mice once in a while, I think, is actually a wise idea, supervised of course.)

OK, sorry I got to go, but this is not a complete list on either of the pros and cons, but feel free to email me if you would like some photos and detailed set up info. Hope it all works out for you, and good luck on what ever you choose.-Brett

I tried it once but it was too time consuming and male mice really stink bad as they mark their territory...

It is as easy as it sounds but you should start with 3-4 females and a male...house them in a fiarly spacious enclosure...pine shavings or aspen is even better...also quality food and water...as long as it is done right it could save you lots of money if you've got an extensive collection...

We pay 50 cents a mouse...so we spend 208 dollars a year on mice for our 8 snakes...if I ever try breeding mice again it will be in a shed or a garage...plus those little bastards are fast...if they ever escape you'll have a fun time catching them without a mouse trap...
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Chris Vanderwees
REPTILE SALES AND INFORMATION
E-mail Me
1.3.0 Bearded Dragons
1.2.0 Green Basilisks
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1.3.0 Veiled Chameleons
1.1.0 Corn Snakes
1.0.0 Tokay Geckos
0.0.1 California Kingsnakes
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I vote no. We tried it once, they stink to high heaven, they bite and its a pain in the butt. Easier to just buy them in bulk frozen and stash them in a small chest type freezer!

I breed both mice and rats. So far the Rats have each had two litters with their third due Thursday/Friday of this week. I love them they produce large litters and the corns LOVE THEM. They also stink a whole lot less then the mice do.

The mice to date (I've had them around a month) have not produced squat, and if they did, they ate them before I found them. I have to clean out thier cage twice a week because they stink (I also keep them in my daughters room, she seems to like them and the smell doesn't bother her). If my daughter weren't so attached to the little heathens, I'd feed them to my 4 yr old corn.

So if your snakes are big enough, go with rats, they grow faster to edible size vs. mice. Where it takes over a month to get a full size mouse it takes 2 weeks for a rat to reach the same size.

Just my opinion.
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Chantel a.k.a. sillygirl
"I came, I saw, I adopted"

2.3.0 green anoles (Stumpy (M)), and the rest remain nameless.
2.2.0 green tree frogs (Romeo & Juliet, Bonnie & Clyde)
0.0.3 D. tinctorius (Cobalt froglets)
0.1 Anerythristic 'B' (Charcoal)corn snake (Popcorn)
0.1 Snow Corn (KandyKorn)
0.2 Amel Corns (KornSilk & KornMuffin)
0.0.1 Normal Corn (PepperKorn)
1.0 Creamsicle Corn (Kream)
0.0.1 Giant African Millipede
2.4 Domestic house cats (Bad Boy (m), Bart(m),Sasha(F),Little Bit(F),Spirit(F)
1.0 Rottweiler (Jake)
1.2 Rats (new additions with no names yet)
1.4 Mice (My step-daughter seems to think they are pets)
1.0 Husband (David, who loves all my critters too)

>>Does anyone here breed there own mice to feed their snakes!?I want to try it, frist for a better food quality, and also for the price, because it become more and more expensive to feed my snakes.
>>
>>I've read some books about, but i want the opinion of people who experienced it! Is this really advantageous!? how many mice do i need to start!? anythings you can tell me will be appreciated!

Yes, I breed mice , rats, gerbils and dwarf hamsters....along with mealworms and cockroaches...but hey.
Better quality is a given. You know what you are feeding, that when you kill and freeze they haven't laid around half a day and that they are the sizes you want. And you can package how you want and with the numbers you need. I vac seal and can just toss a pack out to thaw.
Pros....
As above as well as having a ready supply of live to prekill or scent with when you need it.
I sell my extras and cover a lot of my costs. And that is wholesale.

Cons....
You are gonna need space and time to clean and feed. Containers can run from tanks to sterlite tubs to racks and cost is gonna vary. To me this is way offset by the above advantages.
The other con is smell. I bed with shavings and a couple handfuls of rabbit pellets per mouse tub and have a minimum smell. Rats get rabbit pellets/cellsorb and have hardly any smell and no upper respiratory stress.
The last con to many is killing. I would personally rather kill my own and know it was done right and take responsibility for that then trust a pet store person or the feeder seller. Some do it right and some, who knows. At the same time I have bought bags of frozen mice that when thawed were nasty.....killing your own you know they didn't rot before you froze or fed them. Once you learn how to use CO2 or efficiently separate a spine it is easier. Having grown up killing animals to eat it is a mindset for me. Some folks have a hard time with it.
You might very well go over to the feeder forum and get input there too.
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Sonya

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

In 2001 I bought a single rosy boa, followed a bit later by 2.1 california kings. I got tired of going to the petstore to try to get the right size mice, and with the Rosy being a very picky feeder I especially hated buying mice that would go to waste. And I was spending $1.00 to $2.00 on the mice. Hubby wasn't keen on mice in the freezer, but I was keen on snakes, so live mice was the only purchase option. (gotta keep domestic bliss going right?). So when his kids were here at Christmas, we took a vote. Could they handle it if their new stepmum would raise mice to feed to snakes? Well the unanimous decision was that so long as some would be pets, particularly the 1.2 starter group that the 1.2 kids could name, then it would be fine. Thus my husband was sunk in his attempts to thwart my mouse breeding plans.

Well Soon I got fascinated by the genetics of the mice, and I got more and more, and then I had to justify all the mice, so I got more snakes. Now I have enough snakes to justify my mouse breeding colonies.

As far as the pros and the cons, they were listed well by another reply, but I'll just talk about what I've experienced.

To begin with the three or four week old mice that I purchased took forever for them to breed. But once they started they were right on schedule. Cannabalism was an issue, but not too bad. SMELL was a huge issue, since at that time we rented a house, and hubby didn't like to share his air with mice. So I kept them in a room with an outside door, and cleaned them two or even three times a week. It actually cost a bit to begin with, making lids for cat litter pans, buying plastic critter cages, water bottles, bedding, figuring out the best food.

Now, however, I have thriving mice colonies that do what they are supposed to do... create babies. Of course I still have fun with the genetics of the mice, and create all sorts of bizarre strains of mice. But I feed them when I clean them, they are in their own shed, I change their water, feed them, and change their bedding twice a week. It takes me about 2 1/2 hours to do all of that. (35 mouse cages, 2 gerbil cages, 3 rat cages). I spend about $300 per year on the mouse food and bedding, probably less, but that's the maximum. I sell extras to the petstore, and last year I made between $500 and $750 from sales of mice, not to mention a few nice trades of mice for snakes. The mice produce between six and twenty offspring per litter, and when it's feeding time for the snakes, I have rats for the pythons, adult mice for the adult colubrids,a nd every smaller size for the neonates and the juvie snakes. I figure that if I make a $250 profit off of the mice yearly, and don't pay a dime for the feeding of the snakes, and all I have to do is spend a couple of hours twice a week, it's not a bad scenario.

Mice do bite, they do stink, and they can eat their babies if things aren't perfect. But in general, I enjoy them. Rats are as fun, but I've only just got started on them. The Gerbils are even newer, and I should have my first gerbil litters at the beginning of February.

So anyway, if you have more than a few snakes, if you have the space to raise the mice, and the tolerance of the work and stink that goes into keeping them, then raising mice is a good plan. But if you don't really like the idea of having to raise the mice and care for them, and/or you have a small number of snakes, the better bet is to buy in bulk frozen and not worry about it. Again, it's all one of those things that ends up coming down to personal taste and preference. You won't really know if it is for you until/unless you give it a try.
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~Sasheena

I now have a better idea of the good and the bad things with breeding mices!! it have been very interesting!!!

If anyone could told me trick about killing mice.... it is possible to do this with CO2!? can you explain!?

I'm a little bit worried about killing mice, im the kind of girl very sensitive, im gonna love my mice and get attached to them, so if there is a way to kill them without pain, i would be very happy!!!

Thanks
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0.0.3 Corn Snake
0.1 Red Eared Slider
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0.2 Cats

I wrote up a "instruction sheet" on CO2 for a friends web site a couple months back. Check the link at the bottom.

Since writing that and taking that photo of the setup I have had to move to a larger kill tank. Just today I did in 80 mice and 20 rats.........so that tank just was not accomadating my needs any longer. I also have begun slowly seeping the CO2 into the kill tank rather than priming it as I suggest in the instructions there. I see less struggling and gasping from the rodents when the CO2 is seeped in very slowly until the appear to fall asleep, then I flood the tank with CO2 to finish the job.

Hope that helps some
Good Luck

http://www.junglemistreptiles.com/co2.html

I have been doing the "un-thinkable" for about a year, you know what I'm talking about,...and that set-up looks pretty darn fine. I have a small colony of mice, and just want to know if this is the most painless (in your opion) way to properly get rid of them? Does CO2 really kill painlessly? I’ve done the math, and think that being constricted is far worse than getting suffocated, so I’m not saying that's what you said. Really just want to check- What is the best way to kill a mouse, and not just one or two, because I have this prob. also. I hate having to kill them and I just wonder if CO2 is really painless, like so many people have told me? IMO, there is no painless way to kill a mouse, unless there is some vary expensive and hard to get "pain killers" available; which can create more problems. Not just by our own standards but taking their own pain and suffering into account. I like you blue-prints, and I’m going to make a model myself. Thanks-Brett

How do you accomplish the supplies being so in-expensive? What are you using for litter and feed?

I'm only keeping 9 tubs of mice, and 5 tubs of rats. I am using rabbit pellets and pine mixed for litter It takes almost the entire 50# bag of rabbit pellets weekly ($10) and about 1/6 a bale of pine (whole bale is $8, so 1/6 is about $1.30). I feed Country acres dog food~ they go through a 50# bag about every 2 weeks (Dog food costs me $10 a bag, so about $5 per week) and I mix in Rolled oats (About a bag a month, at $10 for the bag, so about $2.50 a week) That makes about 18.80 a week, times 52 weeks in a year~ I spend approx $977 a year on the rodents! (Ouch, I never added that up before!)

Where are you making the savings? Is it the rabbit pellets? What do you use for litter?
Thanks!

>>How do you accomplish the supplies being so in-expensive? What are you using for litter and feed?
>>
>>I'm only keeping 9 tubs of mice, and 5 tubs of rats. I am using rabbit pellets and pine mixed for litter It takes almost the entire 50# bag of rabbit pellets weekly ($10) and about 1/6 a bale of pine (whole bale is $8, so 1/6 is about $1.30). I feed Country acres dog food~ they go through a 50# bag about every 2 weeks (Dog food costs me $10 a bag, so about $5 per week) and I mix in Rolled oats (About a bag a month, at $10 for the bag, so about $2.50 a week) That makes about 18.80 a week, times 52 weeks in a year~ I spend approx $977 a year on the rodents! (Ouch, I never added that up before!)
>>
>>Where are you making the savings? Is it the rabbit pellets? What do you use for litter?
>>Thanks!

YIKES! I am wondering what my costs are anymore as I haven't done an analysis in about a year. But I can't imagine going through the bedding you are each week. Why only 1/6 bale shavings and a whole bag of rabbit pellets? I use shavings for the mice(here it is $4/bale) and add a couple handfuls of pellets into the corners of the tubs. My tubs have 1.6-1.9 in them and any and all hoppers etc. I change the tubs every week to ten days and I am not having much if any smell. The rats get only rabbit pellets as bedding. I only put in about 3/4 inch of pellets. Again, changeing every 10days with 1.3 rat groups. I have 5 rat cages and 5/6 of mice one of gerbils and one of dwarf hams, and four bins of roaches and two of mealworms get kibble all the time, also feed 5 rabbits and I still have 50# last a couple weeks.
Dog food I buy for the same ($10 for 50#) feed a bullmastiff and two border collies and all the rodents. I also feed oats/corn/touch of sunflower seed and recycled caged bird mix especially to the hams and gerbils. Have 50# each of corn and oats and a couple scoops of sunflower....lasts like three weeks plus. Dog food lasts week and a half or two.
I sell mice and rats to a local pet store and that helps.
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Sonya

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

I recommend that you breed RATS instead of mice. If you are breeding corns, then you will need a few mice in order to have live mouse pinks for the baby corns. The rat is the better choice since a rat at 3 weeks of age is the size of a large mouse. So you can wait 2 months for the mouse to make a healthy meal for an adult corn, or you can wait 3 weeks or less for the rat. Understand that the rat is WEANED at this age and the female may become pregnant soon after delivery. You can freeze a weaned litter of rats and expect another litter soon afterward from the same mother WITHOUT having to separate them into a "growing" container as you would have to do with mice to let them get large enough for an adult corn snake. Also, in my experience (I've produced many hundreds of both mice and rats for my snakes) the rats DO make the better mothers. So I concur with the other post in that a rat is much less likely to eat the babies.

Also, it is definitely the truth that mice stink A LOT more than rats do.