Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a collection of around 20 snakes of different sizes. I was wondering how many mice I would need to feed these every week if I was to breed mice? They will all have 1-2 mice every 7-10days. So far I have 2 large cages that can hold 1.4-5 mice and 7 small cages that will hold 1.2 how many more cages will i need and how many mice to make sure I have a good source of mice?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Gazza

>>I have a collection of around 20 snakes of different sizes. I was wondering how many mice I would need to feed these every week if I was to breed mice? They will all have 1-2 mice every 7-10days. So far I have 2 large cages that can hold 1.4-5 mice and 7 small cages that will hold 1.2 how many more cages will i need and how many mice to make sure I have a good source of mice?
>>
>>Thanks in advance for your help.
>>
>>Gazza

I have spent the year feeding about 40 snakes. I have 6 colonies of mice with 1.6-1.9 per colony. I was barely keeping up part of the time and hit into my freezer for the difference. Personally I would double what you have for ladies and work with that. If they overdo then you can cut back but it would be a bummer to run out and play catch up. The other thought is are any of your snakes brumating this winter so you will not have to feed as many??
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Sonya

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

yea I'll be hibenating all the adults. but i have just started out so that is why the lack of mice so far, i need to get a large colony going then let the winter months help me to build up.

cheers

Gazza

If you need mostly adult mice to feed your snakes, I would get rats instead. It takes alot less time to grow up rat pups up to the equivilent size and weight of adult mice than growing mice up. I used to do mice at first for my corn snake but when he grew large enough to take young rats, I decided, once I got rid of all the mice to use rats instead. I originally had two colonies of mice, 1:4 and 1:5, produced anywhere from 30-50 babies per tube with most of my mice having about 10 babies on average. SOme will be a couple more, some a couple less but 10 was a good average. The largest litter of mice I had was 14 I think. Anyway, but the time these are weaned and are separated into a large grow up tank at 4-5 weeks of age and grow to adult size in another 3-4 weeks, I could have two batches of rats reaching the right size.

The excess food I sold off to another snake keeper in the area so that help recover the cost of feeding and housing all these mice. However with Rats, I don't need to keep the babies as long and rats don't smell at all as bad as mice, even when using vanilla in the water.