Mice Birth.

[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.