Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi all
need some working things out,i found a supply of cat pans about 35,so i want to build a rack, plus i have 12 large tubs i cud use for growing on,etc,
what i am wanting to do is breed min of a 100-200 adults,100-200,med,100 fluff 3-600 pinkis,per month,
so if anone who is produceing that amount or more cud answer it would be greatly appreachated,
pipatic reptileworld

Let's see if I understand this correctly......but first I will assume you are talking about mice. In one month you want to produce (I'll use the high end of the ranges given) 200 adults, 200 med. size, 100 fuzzies and 600 pinkies. Well, that's a total of 1100 mice in a month so you would need 110 females averaging 10 babies a month - which most mice will produce under ideal breeding conditions. If the cat pans are about 16x12x4 you can keep 1 male and 3 fems easily in each and you will most certainly meet your needs each month. For your situation I would stagger the breeders into 3 groups so each group gives birth at a different time each month. That way you will have, at any time in the month, babies ranging from pinky to weanling. Pull the weanlings at 18 days old (trust me, they will be fine) and keep them in the holding boxes to reach the medium and adult sizes that you need. When you pull babies that are pink or fuzz size, leave some in each pan because you don't want to take all the babies away from a nursing mama.....it will screw them up. Also, the remaining babies have less competition and will grow bigger. Now, if you have a freezer available for mice then the staggered groups may not be neccessary. I hope this helps.

Brian

>>hi all
>>need some working things out,i found a supply of cat pans about 35,so i want to build a rack, plus i have 12 large tubs i cud use for growing on,etc,
>>what i am wanting to do is breed min of a 100-200 adults,100-200,med,100 fluff 3-600 pinkis,per month,
>>so if anone who is produceing that amount or more cud answer it would be greatly appreachated,
>>pipatic reptileworld

thank you brian
that does help, so i ll build the rack first 5 tubs across 8 high to give a total of 40, which will give me a few tubs spare to be filled at a later date,

pulling pinkies at 18 days no problem ( i will have to keep a record of when there born do you ??)

leaving some pinks or fluffs in the tub with momma, what happens when new born arrive ?will the new or the slightley older ones still do well ?

with the grow ons tubs for med/adult and future breeders would they have to be sex seperated ,ie all male in together and all female in other tubs or kept in the groups they were taken from there mums ?