Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been breeding rats for 20 years and they're great but these mice are really pissing me off. It takes forever for them to mature enough to start reproducing and then they always eat the babies!

I have a 1.3 group in a 5 gallon and after months and months of feeding these things, finally last week discovered that 2 of the girls were quite pregnant. A few nights ago, Buttons delivered. The next morning, Chocolate had her litter. When I went to check on them that morning, I discovered a whole pile of dead babies. ??? One or some of the mice had gone through and bitten out brains and organs to kill them all. They had food, they had water, they weren't crowded, there was only one male...I don't get it. ??? I pulled out all the dead babies and parts but left the live ones in because it looked like Buttons and Chocolate were sharing the workload. Well, that lasted about 3 days. Today, I just found all of them dead and in pieces all over the cage.

I have a clutch of Florida Kings that are still too little to eat rat pups so I need the mice for them but this is so freakin' irritating!! I hate mice...I hate their smell...I hate their temperament. I only have them because I have to and I have no more cage space to give them seperate housing. Now I wish I had pulled all the babies out and froze them as soon as they were delivered...darn it.

I was able to find 4 pinks that were mostly whole and washed them off to give them to the Kings but now one snake has to go without a meal. Those darn mice!

Thanks for hearing me vent guys.

I have never tried this, so I am a little reluctant to suggest it. All my snakes are now too big to try this on. Has anyone tried to cut the hind leg from a rat pink for tiny snakes? You would get two from each pup. Just a thought, I hate mice also.

DeMak

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When I lived in Japan a few years ago, we had many young kings and corns. The reptile specialist (that we were raising mice for at the zoo) taught us to use all four legs of adult mice to feed to the smaller babies when we didn't have enough pinkies to feed. You cut the deceased mice up like chicken, wings and legs, and it gives you four meals for the snakes. You don't want to do it exclusively because there is more nutrition in a whole pinky carcass than there is in just the leg meat... We used the body to feed to our larger snakes, they didn't seem to miss the legs. If we had too many, the turtles had no issues eating what was left.
Thanks.

Sorry to hear about the mice problem. Generally, it doesn't take that long to get mature mice but if you put somewhat adult together, the first litter is almost always eaten. They stress out very easily. I always remove the first litters because of this and freeze them. The second litter should be much better. The ratio you have is good also, but I've had fairly good success with a couple of males and several females, but I also use somewhat larger tubs too. Things work better if you put them together when they are pretty much hopper size. When I do this, I may get 6 or 7 pregnant females and they'll have them all at once. As for the smell, yes they smell more than rats and one adult mouse eats about a third of what a rat would. Although, I breed alot of mice, I'm starting to switch several of my colubrids over to small rats.

Scott

Doesn't that encourage canabalism? You can't do that with rats because the males will kill off all the babies to make sure it's their seed that gets passed on. I figured that mice would probably have "issues" with more than one male in a single colony.

I don't keep more than one male in most of my tubs, but I do have several tubs with a bunch of mice (10-15). In one case, I have a tub with 4 males and 14 females and there is 78 babies in a huge pile right now. Three other females are pregnant and I will probably pull the pinks out due to competition as the brood is mostly fuzzies now. Mainly, if you can get the mice together as hoppers, I tend to have less problems (stress, fighting, and cannabilism).

Scott

Never had any problems with canabolism with my mice, first time mothers or otherwise. The only time I had a female start killing her babies was when I was cleaning the bins, and that was the day the only pregnant female decided to have babies. I didn't notice because she still looked quite big, and only had about 6 babies so I must have interrupted her labor.

As for putting a couple hopper males in with females, I haven't had any luck with that. I can keep brothers together without much fighting but two brothers and a bunch of females resulted in one male being badly biten. The second male was only in there because I mis-sexed him.

How I house my mice is in deep sterlite containers with a mix of pine shavings and shredded newspaper with a couple coffee/drink trays cut in half. I also put in toilet paper tubes. I also try not to clean on the days they have babies, to eliminate stress, waiting about 2 to 3 days after the last batch of babies to keep them from killing and eating their young.

Sometimes the males will really get after one another and you're right about brothers. You're also correct about cleaning them. They are more likely to eat the babies when cleaning the tubs. I've had pretty good luck when cleaning tubs though. I generally grab the whole batch of pinks along with some bedding first and put them into a corner, then transfer the mice. I also use toilet paper rolls, paper tubes, and paper towel rolls that are cut in half. I use a very fine pine bedding that is kiln dried.

Scott

that house 19 adults and 78 pinks?

Just curious
MissHisssss

I forget the size, but I'll look this evening and repost. But it's a large, clear and long tub that I picked up from Walmart for extra's at the time. The mice will go through cycles sometimes so at times I'll have alot of litters at one time. I usually pull out a large number of hoppers and put them in this tub, usually for selling and feeders. But I had weeded most of the males out and was using it to hold some females until I cleared out a couple of colonies (I had one that was eating babies constantly and the other has an obese gene in them and all they do is have one litter and stay fat). I usually don't keep that many together though. Well needless to say, I had a small pink explosion. I'm just going to keep them together until they become hoopers. I use the standard 27 quart sterilite tubs from Target or Walmart to house my mice and deeper ones for the rats. I use two racks. One that is 4 tubs high by three across and the other 5 tubs high and 4 across for a total of 32 tubs plus a few extra setups on the side.

I like mice, then again, I haven't bred rats (plan to soon). I've had great success with mice, but echo the statements earlier that mice have trouble with their first clutch. I can get mine to breed at about 2 months of age. How soon can rats breed?

Rats can breed at 4-5 months but it's better to let them get a little bigger first, of course.

It's been cold here so it wasn't until the weather warmed up that they started breeding. That's why I said I had been feeding them for "months and months" as I started with weanling/hoppers last fall.

This was these girls first liters so I'll give them another chance. I'm still pissed off at them! *sigh*

I live in San Diego so my mice bred all throughout winter without any breaks. I had a group of 1.2 (very young group), that was reduced to 1.1 after both females gave birth to their first clutch (it was a brutal and bloody mess). I now just keep my groups as 1.1 ( I have 3 breeding groups). Which is more than enough to produce food for my young rosy boas and ackie monitors. I also grow some out to feed my ball pythons, but I'm planning to switch them to rats soon.

Good luck!

I have some beautiful red eyed cream, chocolate pointed siamese colored mice that take FOREVER to mature. Especially the males, it seems. I put together a 1.4 group at the same time I put together another group of a different color (which was even younger than the siamese) and the other group was on their 3rd litter before a single siamese popped. This was the second group of siamese that did this, so I know it wasn't just this one groups problem. They have huge litters though, and are good mom's too, not to mention they are beautiful... but the waiting 4 and 5 months for them to start producing just isn't worth having more than the two colonies I have of this color.
MissHisssss

That's really interesting...I wonder why different colors mature at different speeds. I can't think of a single reason why that would make any sense. LOL! But, I'm really glad you brought this up because I was thinking I had abnormal mice!

Actually, I'm thinking it's more the male of this color that is taking so long to mature for I've noticed that if I put a female with a different colored male she will get pregnant faster. (She'll still be the last one in the colony to get prego though). I've never used a white with greyish black pointed siamese male before (or are these called Himalayans?) so I don't know if it's just the red eyed cream chocolate pointed siamese that does this. Weird. Of course there are other factors that can keep mice from producing too, but just thought I'd throw this situation on the table for ya all.

MissHisssss

sybella, not sure if anyone really said this but a 5 gallon IMO is way too small for the number of mice you have in there--these aren't fish where 1 gallon per animal is ok. overcrowding creates stress and even though they are smaller than rats, they need more room. For more room but not a lot more volume, sterilite containers are good as they don't need a lot of height, just floor space. Good luck with your future litters.
Sue

They really have a lot of room. The mice are full grown and when I first looked at them, they were all laying in their food dish. It makes me laugh that they all fit in there. LOL!!

Anyway, the 3rd female is getting huge so she should deliver soon. This will be her first litter so I will pull the pinks and freeze them as soon as she has them.

Then, after this, if these mice kill their litters again, I'll try giving them more space. The majority said that mice usually kill their first litters but maybe your right and they do feel crowded.

Thanks for your input. This is really frustrating for me.

I kept regular mice and spiny mice for a long time. The regular ones-- I had one get pregnant once, and she was wired to begin with but I made the mistake of picking her up as she was in labor before realizing there was a pinkie on its way out..needless to say she killed all of them. The spiny mice I bred intentionally and though mom and dad shared a 10-gallon just fine, the babies were moved to a new cage at weaning. Then when I stopped breeding, mom got to keep 2 daughters as company and dad got a son....after months of happily living together mom killed both her (now adult) daughters. So, I know that 5 gallons looks like plenty of room and they might all squish into the same place at times, but if they want space they need to have it available. I would not keep a group in anything smaller than a 10 gallon with several places to hide to keep the stress down

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