Reptile & Amphibian Forums

ALRIGHT!!!

I have 2 large females and a sub adult female in with a large male, have had them for 3 weeks and no signs of babies!???!?

I placed in a subadult male for some competition, but they all get along just fine....

What to do? Feeding them daily, lots of water, they are happy, happy & fat...

The mice, however, still eat all their babies. I'm gonna try fancy mice...the food quality ones just don't seem as healthy.

Thanks in adv.

Stevo

m

You have to understand that new colonies can/usually take up to 6 weeks or so for first litters but may take longer since you added a new individual to the mix. I'd suggest you just leave them be and let them do what the do.
-----
0.0.1 Varanus Salvator (Gator)
0.1.3 Varanus Exanthematicus (Adisa "long term captive" other 3 "yet to be named hatchlings"
2.0 Ferrets (Chaos & Kasha)
1.0 Cat (George)

>>ALRIGHT!!!
>>
>>I have 2 large females and a sub adult female in with a large male, have had them for 3 weeks and no signs of babies!???!?
>>
>>I placed in a subadult male for some competition, but they all get along just fine....
>>
>>What to do? Feeding them daily, lots of water, they are happy, happy & fat...
>>
>>The mice, however, still eat all their babies. I'm gonna try fancy mice...the food quality ones just don't seem as healthy.

Hate to be the naysayer...but getting ADULT rats sometimes leads to nothing. Rats will go infertile with age and you may be beyond that point. That said, keep them another couple weeks to a month and see. Adults also take longer to socialize and settle in than younger rats.

Mice cannabalize for a few key reasons. You are pestering them, in mouse language that means you are checking them more than once a day and or poking through the litter. Two, first moms often eat their litters. Three, too low protein and fat in their diet.
-----
Sonya

Haven't we warned you about tampering with the structure of a chaotic system?
Mrs. Neutron

Rats do take up to 6 weeks or more to get 'comfortable' with eachother before having babies. My new rat colony which I bought end of June only had their first litter this past saturday. Don't change anything, and be patient. You may want to get rid of the extra male though, though the males are getting along having two may wind up with one or the other or both, eating the babies assuming it isn't their young.

Feeder mice used for breeding really are not the best way to go. Most times these mice are kept in small over populated filthy containers by petstores so have little socialization with humans and always live in a high stress condition. Buying more socialized fancy mice sold as pets is better. If you don't need huge numbers of adults to produce all you need to feed your reptiles etc, you could take a bit of time and socialize the adult mice so they are use to you and trust you. Then they tend to be less stressed if you peak in on them with their babies. But you shouldn't peak in alot with first time moms. You can tell they have babies cause you can hear them suckling quite clearly. Just change food/water once a day and leave them alone otherwise.

Make sure you do have a high protien/fat diet for the nursing moms and weanings. I used mixed wild birdseed, dogfood and nutri-blocs for my breeding mice without any cannabolisms at all. The only time I noticed any cannibolism was when I was washing the bins and didn't realize one mother was in the process of giving birth...caught her attacking her babies after I moved her out of the bin..so I put her into another crate alone...but even then she was too stressed to not attack the babies after cleaning was done. Her next litter she didn't cannibolize though.