Mice Birth.

[Syst3m]

Well, my first venture with mice breeding started off slow.
1.2 since I thought my snake collection was going to be small ( yea right ). One mouse didn't get pregnant for 2 months the other ate her first 2 litters. Then both seemed to get pregnant within a few days of each other. I noticed plugs in both of the females a 2 days apart.

One of these girls had 12 babys and the other had 15
1 was eaten by a jealous mom to be and 2 were still birth from the second mom.

24 survived so far! I'm not going to know what do do with all of these.

Anyone else breed mice? I wanna know what you see for average litters. Right now it seemed the one mother was having trouble with 11 of her own, I'm not sure whats going to happen with this litter now being 24 with only 2 moms.

[Tim_Cranwill]

10 or 11 average for my girls....

[Cas]

Congrats on getting going! Just got my 1st litter of mouse babies today actually... 7 of 'em (and wow, I didn't realize newborn pinks were so small!) Hopefully they'll survive... my colony is 2.3 right now (mouse that was supposed to female, well, wasn't) with another girl so pregnant that if she doesn't pop soon I think her eyes will start to bug out. The boys seem to have worked out some sort of arrangement, hopefully the peace will hold until my mouse rack is finished.

(btw, why haven't you fed off and replaced the baby-eater?)

Dawn

[SilverTongue]

I breed mice and my average litter is 10-20 If you mice are eating the babies then I would try to balence their diet more. It sux and it is costly but a large bag of hampster (multi mix type stuff) and a bag of dog bones or dog food will help quite alot. A lot of mice breeders just feed their mice dog food and that is not healthy. Just keep in mind that whatever goes into your mice goes into your snake. So if you only feed your mice dog food then that is all the nutrents your snake is getting.

[Richard Welter]

I maintain a group of about 50.600 and I feed them lettice, rodent chow, rabbit pellets, and high protein dog food. Buy your food in bulk and you will save a bundle. Just remember SilverTongue a very good mouse breeder adds new blood to there colony once every six months. When feeding you snakes try to sex the mice and hold back the females for future breeding. Good Luck

[Syst3m]

My diets are very diverse, they get Lab blocks, Gerbil food, Sunflower seeds, and alfalfa. The reason the baby eater did not get fed off is first I didn't have anything big enough to eat her.
Second her first two litters were still born so I didn't take much stock in the fact she ate them. Third, she was carrying 15 babys I was hoping I could get her to birth so I could at least freeze them for my corns. Apparently she was just jealous of the other mouse. She birthed 15 babys 2 were stillbirth and she chose not to eat even the still born. The best I can figure why she at the first born of the other mothers litter is she was jealous, kept trying to steal babys to clean and would injure them accidently, but then the taste of meat/blood probably intised her to eat them. She hasn't hurt a baby since.


She at one of the other mothers babys, wich I didn't really understand. Since she was 19 days pregnant.

My only real concern right now is the pinks, I would like for all of them to survive. I wan't them to be my future breeders.


Cas, as far as 2 males go. I would seriously cull one of those males fast, if either one of those suspects that those babys are not his he will kill all of them faster then you can snap his neck.

You might not have any problems but I wouldn't risk it.


Anyways to sum this up, I just want to know if I should do anything to ensure all of these pups get enough to eat. The mothers seem to do a good job but I know how hard it can be fighting for a place in line when your a runt.

[Richard Welter]

I think you should clean the cage out and add a layer of people towel. The layer of paper towel is used for warmth and to make sure the the babies stay out of a cold area. You must add a layer of shaving that is about 0.5-1.5 cm thick. The mothers don't eat each others babies all the time, what you can do is make sure there is plenty of water (use 2 water bottles). Also make sure there is lotes of food to eat, and make sure the food is very easy to eat. As time goes by you will have a 2.10 group of mice and all the females will work together making sure that all pinkies and babies are feed. I hope this helps. Thanks Richard Welter

[Syst3m]

I've got a pretty generous layer of litter in there and they do pretty good. Food is laying on the floor and in a feeder bin too.

As far as the mother eating the baby. I think she was jealous. Either injuring the baby and getting overzealous trying to clean it. Or just getting overzealous period since the other one gave birth. Since that mom gave birth to her own litter all seems to be cool with the colony!

You use 2.10? do you have any trouble with your males eating litters? I was thinking 1.10 was going to be my group size, my male seems to be able to get the job done rather well apparently.

[Richard Welter]

I use two males, because I have read books on animal behavior. When you have to males together they compete and produce more sperm and therefore mate more and it just comes to me as being more successfull. I hope this works

[SilverTongue]

When you have to males together they compete and produce more sperm and therefore mate more and it just comes to me as being more successfull

Or the strongest most dominate one will rip the weaker one to shreads. I have unfortunatly seen this first hand

[Cas]

Sys3em, I moved one of the males and the other 2 girls today to my new rodent rack... they were getting along really well though, even caring for the babies at the same time... maybe I just have odd males. (the behaviourist in me was tempted to leave it and see what happened... but I'd rather keep the pinks alive than satisify my curiosity).

Richard, do you actually keep groups of 2.10, or do you just plan to? Normally you'd be asking for trouble. If you want the competition to get your males mating more, you can just add another male for a few seconds... or probably even bedding from another male's cage would do the trick to get those homones flowing. Rotation would work to... where you add the females to a cage with 2 males to be mated, then move them before they give birth. Wouldn't protect the males from earch other of course, but you wouldn't risk losing any pinks to them.

Dawn

[Tim_Cranwill]

I have been keeping three 1.4 colonies. Should I add more females to up the "production"?

How do you guys work it when you need some pinkies, some fuzzies and some full grown? Do you set aside colonies for certain aged mice, or just pick out some babies early and leave some to mature?

[SilverTongue]

yes that is what I do, besides my mice do not have birth at the same time. So I have mice of all ages all at once. I just take what I need and leave the rest

[vanderkm]

We have kept colonies of up to 1.15 without a drop in production of babies, but there is a real increase in smell and it requires a large cage to deal with all those hoppers. It tends to result in a colony with females having pups continuously so there is a real range in age of babies in the communal nest and new pinks may fail to thrive when competing with pups near weaning. I find that up to 1.5 works well, so if a few adult females die as the colony ages, there are still some to carry on.

The only time we have had any luck with more than one male is if they are father and son, and I am not sure that the younger male is actually contributing much to the breeding success. When we have left young males to mature in a colony if a sire has died, it takes a long time before mature females recognize them and accept them and we usually lose a couple cycles of breeding.

We remove, kill and freeze youngsters at various stages continuously from various cages - may leave the entire first litter born in a cage to become fuzzies or hoppers and then continue taking from each subsequent litter to make sure there is not an overwhelming total of babies at any time.

We try to take females out as fuzzies or hoppers if not retaining them for breeding, because the males grow a lot faster than females after weaning so cost less to raise to adults. We wean from multiple colonies at about 4 weeks, pool them (males and biggest females) in large feeder cages and select the most rapidly growing from these groups for replacement breeders, rest are killed and fed or frozen at appropriate size.

mary v.

[tai_pan1]

Mary, you seem to have a wealth of knowledge! How many snakes do you have? How long have you been keeping them? I enjoy your posts, keep it up.

Mike

[Syst3m]

My concern with more then one male in the colony is not the males fighting its the pinks getting eaten. I was curious if when you used 2.10 do the males tend to cannibalize the pinks?

[Tim_Cranwill]

So far I've just been keeping pace with what my feeding schedule is for my snakes. Now I am starting to get some back stock. How long will frozen babies last???

[vanderkm]

Mike, Thanks for your comments - we have about 30 snakes including common boas, carpet pythons, various milks, rats and corns and several that are rescues for our reptile club. Enjoy breeding rodents too - just mice and gerbils but have had fun working with siamese, burmese and other color varieties.

System3 - though we don't typically keep more than one male in a colony, they are not usually the pinky killers - it is inexperienced, nervous or aggessive females. We have seen a big difference among strains of mice, some females don't tolerate any disturbance of the nest and are not cooperative mothers. We have culled them (red and blue color mice were really bad for us). Males are usually fine with their own babies but will kill any if they are introduced to a group of females that have babies. Mice seem to be are best if there are no additions to a group once they start breeding - females are quite territorial and not nearly as accepting of each other as rats. If adults in a breeding group die or are culled, we will extend the life of the group by allowing replacement females to grow up with their moms. This results in some inbreeding, but the young females have the support of a goup of adult moms for raising their litters and they often turn out to be our best producing groups.

Cranwill - if frozen in ziploc with air removed, we have used fuzzies, hoppers and adults that have been frozen for 3-4 months and there is no freezer burn or deterioration evident. The fresher the better though. They seem to keep best when they are tightly packed in bags - we pack them flat in rows of two or three, nose to butt, rather than just tossing them into a bag - easier to get the air out and they fit in the freezer better. Pinkies do freezer burn quicker though.

Mary v.

[Syst3m]

Thanks Vanderkm,

I've done some extensive reading on mice and rats. But most of them are from breeders of fancy mice and rats, so the situations I encounter aren't really covered. I would like to keep colonys of 2.10. I do feel that the dominance struggle in the ranks will definatly increase the hormones and encourage the males and females to breed much sooner. This round it took almost 3 months for my mice to have a living litter. And that was not without its headaches.

So far out of the 24 pinks that were born alive and lived more then an hour are doing great. I'm going cull the males from this group and introduce fresh males to them so I can keep the gene pool diverse.

Are there any color of fancy mice that you recommend I stay away from when I purchase new males for the colonly. I've heard that different strains are tempered different. Also are there any strains that tend to produce more? or produce less?
Wich strains tend to make the best mothers?

[vanderkm]

Hi Syst3m,

The basic pink eyed white is well recognized as one of the most prolific and sound of the fancy strains, but they are not 'fancy' enough for a lot of people. I would avoid long hairs, rex coats (wavy) and red or pure blue colors. The ones we had tended to be weak. The red strains are genetically predisposed to obesity and we found they were very aggessive to babies. Satin coats were also less viable than normal, but not as bad as rex or longhair, where we tended to have a lot of eye problems. We had good luck with black/white or brown/white spotted strains, but are using almost exclusively siamese/burmese now. They are based on pink eyed whites and have large litters and are great moms - very calm mice. We use a dark eyed cream and merle line as an outcross to keep genetic diversity.
I will be interested to hear how your feeder colony develops, keep us posted.

Mary v.

[Syst3m]

Thanks vanderkm,

I was looking at some of the brown/white mice for my colonys.
Those siamese are nice looking too. Its good to know that the ones I want are going to be good parents. Now I just have to get them. :) Thanks for the help.