Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was thinking ten dollars apiece. I've been working with this strain for a while now and it seems to be a simple recessive trait. Slogan maybe something like " Feed your Piebald only the best... piebald mice!"
(This is just a joke I'm hoping the boa forum has more of a sense of humor than the ball python forum)
Also does anyone else breeding their own food find themselves breeding for certain traits in the mice and rats?
Just asking because I tend to do just that. The snakes don't really seem to care that I've bred a solid black hairless rat they just want to eat him. Go figure.

i think its a interesting idea, but i cant really see many people paying extra money for designer feeders. i did however find myself breeding for particular traits when i did breed. in my case it was brown mice with white tipped tails, thats about as fancy as i got. good luck with the mice traits anyway.

big fat litters...LOL

I just try to mix it up and I do see things pop out from time to time. 6 weeks ago had a litter where blues popped out of nowhere. I'd had them a long time ago when I was breeding for pet store stock but had not seen any in quite some time. Looks like I'll have to save some back as breeders but they (2 solid, 2 hooded) are all females.
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Thanks,

Dave "Rainbows-R-Us"

0.1 Wife
0.2 kids
4.12.136 Brazilian Rainbow Boa (OK, I'm only keeping a few of the 136, just tickled pink with my production this year)
1.1 Ball python
0.1 BCI "Elvira" normal from 1989
1.0 BCI albino / het-anery
0.1 BCI Hypo / het-albino
0.1 BCI Anery / het-albino
0.1 BCI Hypo (possible super)
1.0 BCI albino het stripe
1.0 BCI salmon hypo
0.1 BCI ghost

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

It's who I am...I have to meddle!
I'm working on hooded and full body blues, champaign, and lilacs...
These colors are recessive rather than color bred. It almost acts like a dilute gene. (cream becomes champain, brown becomes lilac, and black becomes blue) They happened one breeding. I only ever had the cream, brown, and black rats...
Here are a few...

A hooded blue and white...the big rat was once a solid blue, but has grown some caramel coloring where his white would have been...real odd.

full body lilac

Champaign hooded

Here is a cream hooded (with black and blue hoodeds) to compare with the champaign in the pic above

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Delusions of Grandeur feed the EGO...

LOL, I can't do that!!! A few years back, I started producing rats that had split face patterns/colors like you generally see on a torti cat. It looked pretty cool, and I found myself not wanting to feed these off....their sole intended purpose! I ended up with a lot of them, and finally had to "man up" and quit playing with the "pretty rats". I also had a similar thing with silky mice, and now prefer to only breed albino mice/rats! No color, no cool hoods, stripes, patterns, etc....just juicy "white" meat! LOL, snake keeper confessions! Take care!

Paul

Ok, I confess. I try really hard to get certain colors or patterns too. I have nearly every color available. Even those two-toned rats too ( a whole tub of them). Hairless rats and starting to get a good number of patchwork rats also. As for mice, I like the ones that are called "fox". They come in a nice shade of grey/blue or brown with completely white underbellies. Also I tend to hold back brindle satins. But mostly everything is a feeder.

Scott

>>I was thinking ten dollars apiece. I've been working with this strain for a while now and it seems to be a simple recessive trait. Slogan maybe something like " Feed your Piebald only the best... piebald mice!"
>>(This is just a joke I'm hoping the boa forum has more of a sense of humor than the ball python forum)
>>Also does anyone else breeding their own food find themselves breeding for certain traits in the mice and rats?
>>Just asking because I tend to do just that. The snakes don't really seem to care that I've bred a solid black hairless rat they just want to eat him. Go figure.
>>

I have blue hairless,hooded hairless,albino hairless,an I am currently working on getting some hairless dumbo's,I have siamese dumbos an had blue dumbo's,but the boa's got hungry,lol!A neighbor got one off of me an it is a female but he dont take to good of care of it an I dont want to infect anything I have so Unless by chance one day I run across another co-dom fashioned dumbo then that was probably the end of the blue dumbo rat!To me their just food but to the kids an the pain in my side their are a few pet rats[Until they go to bed,lol]I raise my own teddy bear hamsters an panda bear,s an black bears also an I just got a blonde panda bear hamster in my last litter neat!The ones that are mean are usually food too especially a black bear hamster now them can be mean!Have tried rabbits an succeeded in getting babies,but she never cared for them,so she became snake food!Sorry any rodent in our house that is mean or dont care for her babies is boa food,period!Sorry I rambled on,But it's cool to see others working with the different traits in the rodents also!Take Care all,Eric[Hypoboa]
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E&C's Exotic House of Reptiles

NP

...My current colony of rats has been going for about 15 years. I have only brought in a few males from outside the colony during all that time. The first few years with this colony it was fairly common when cleaning cages for one to bite me. But, biting me was a capital offense. The punishment was swift and sure. Any rat that bit me, even a momma with a new litter of babies was imediately killed and fed to the snakes or put in the freezer. Any mother rat that killed her babies was also immediately put to death. Over the years my entire colony has developed a very civilized personality. No matter what I do with them they do not bite and they always take good care of their babies. They have been selectively bred for personality and it has worked very well. I have had a few hairless ones show up in litters. Just out of curiosity I have bred them back to other hairless ones. The hairless ones have generally had small litters and the babies have not been very hardy. The colony had been reproducing for several years before the first blue one showed up in a litter. I kept that rat as a breeder and now have quite a few blues.
...I have tried raising mice seveal times. I can raise mice but they will sometimes kill their babies just because the weather changes. Mice are smelly evil little SOBs.
Jeff

>>I was thinking ten dollars apiece. I've been working with this strain for a while now and it seems to be a simple recessive trait. Slogan maybe something like " Feed your Piebald only the best... piebald mice!"
>>(This is just a joke I'm hoping the boa forum has more of a sense of humor than the ball python forum)
>>Also does anyone else breeding their own food find themselves breeding for certain traits in the mice and rats?
>>Just asking because I tend to do just that. The snakes don't really seem to care that I've bred a solid black hairless rat they just want to eat him. Go figure.
>>

i do the same, my mouse colony is about 15 yrs in the making,my first mice were from Scott Selstad (who makes vision cages, he used to be ,maybe still is, a rodent breeder "Lab Plus" i added some ICR albinos i got from Dan Sutherland about 7 yrs ago which have huge litters and a few multi-colored "pet shop mice" along the way. i have always fed off any that had an attitude or hurt their babies, if babies were killed in a given cage, i wouldnt take any chances and would feed off the whole 1.4 group (guilt by association). i so rarely have bad mothers anymore, and cant remember getting bit by a rat in over 6 years. i also play with color traits just to make it fun, i use to sell to petshops when i lived in california and i had requests for certain color phases. john yocum

I've been working with hairless rats, hairless mice, fancy mice, colored hairless of both, spiny mice, and some neat colors of mice and rats. I tend to agree with you guys about the mice they are on the messier, meaner side of the spectrum but I've got some of the lab strain that produce usually between 18 and 24 babies at a pop, which I've bred into the dif colors and strains and they seem to have picked up some of that trait. Halfway considering doing guinea pigs and hairless skinny pigs. I'm gonna have to get more snakes to feed!