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Post by aleronferrets on Jun 5, 2008 8:11:38 GMT -5
This is something I have thought back and forth about. Just don't know if I have the space (and really I'd probably end up with mice that had to be kept as pets LOL). There is one area of your breeding program that you seem to be a bit mistaken about and that is that breeding daughters to their fathers will produce less healthy offspring. This is a bit of a misconception in general about breeding animals. Mice have been proven through breeding for research animals to have a high tolerance for inbreeding without decrease in litter size or health. You could in theory have just one male to use for multiple generations and outcross to an unrelated male (buy one from a different source)once the original one was too old for breeding. This is a pretty good article: carawatha.tripod.com/inbreeding.htm
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Post by josiesmom on Jun 5, 2008 12:20:14 GMT -5
Intersting article, they note horses as an example of "linebreeding" aka "inbreeding" and they want to clarify that such in breeding doesn't CREATE the genetic problem, juts allows it to surface. They maintain that bringing such defects to the surface actually does the breed a favor - I doubt you could convince the thousands of quarter horse owners that have horses bred from "Impressive" who have HYPP. A severe debilitating neurological defect that sometimes means the animal must be euthanized. The "Impressive" line was inbred ( linebred) to produce animals that were being pinned in the show ring. It has since been proved that beside the HYPP, this line also produces horses with hooves and limbs much too small for their body size whid predisposes the horses to navicular syndrome issues and curtails their usefulness as performance animals.
Line breeding in American Saddlebreds produces horses with extreme lordosis. Line breeding of Arabians has produced foals born lacking fully developed skin.
Linebreeding in dogs produces animals with hyp dysplesia.
While some line breeding may produce offspring with doubel the good qualities, repeated linebreeding produces offspring with definitely UNdesirable qualities, some even fatal.
Genetic diversity is a NATURAL protection for ANY species to succeed. Laboratory animals are a far cry from "natural" animals. And in the interest of science MUST be as genetically identical as possible to ensure the results of the experiment. Lab animals don't have to DO anything in order to survive. They are provided housing, provided food, provided water and don't get any sort of enrichments or mental stimulation beyond - which corner is the food dish in?
Lab rodents because of such "closed" breeding, couldn't survive even in the environments that most pet mice have to live in. There are strains of laboratory pigs that have been bred and raised in such sterile environments ( for the purpose of laboratory experiments) that they couldn't possibly survive exposure to what livestock hogs go through, much less what their wild cousins do.
I am not experimenting with my mice. I am trying to raise a colony as "naturally" as I can in order to offer my ferrets a "natural" food.
Right now I've got two bucks that will get swapped between the adult females. I'm sure there will be some father:daughter inbreeding as most of the white mice all look alike after they get a certain size. But I do have one white male and one colored male. Several white females and a few colored females. I'll try as best I can to interchange the colors and introduce a new male from an outside source as necessary.
Of course something to take into account is that in order to breed more mice, the females need to be receptive towards the males. I've already discovered that at least TWO of the white does refuse to accept the colored buck! They beat the ever livin snot out of him so I had to take him out and ut in the white male. The white male had no problems breeding with these two.
Cheers, Kim
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Post by aleronferrets on Jun 5, 2008 17:57:11 GMT -5
They maintain that bringing such defects to the surface actually does the breed a favor - I doubt you could convince the thousands of quarter horse owners that have horses bred from "Impressive" who have HYPP. Actually that is a better example of Popular Sire Syndrome. His recessive gene became a major issue in an entire breed because he was so widely used, not because he was inbred. With popular sire syndrome (actually many people call it "Impressive Syndrome") a sire, often a big winner/producer of big winners is used so widely that it both becomes difficult to outcross at all and that sire's recessive genes are spread through a large percentage of the breed. Had Impressive not been a popular sire that everyone wanted foals from and everyone wanted to breed to, his problems would have remained fairly contained. That is a whole different issues and has little to do with breeding feeder mice though, as outcrosses will always be readily available and there is no risk of having popular sire syndrome (well...maybe with show mice I guess) Linebreeding in dogs produces animals with hyp dysplesia. Sorry this is just not accurate. I have known lots of muttly mutts who were severaly dysplastic and plenty of tightly linebred/inbred purebreds who have excellent or good hip ratings. Actually using linebreeding properly, one has the potential to create a line which produces less hip dysplasia than the norm within the breed. While some line breeding may produce offspring with doubel the good qualities, repeated linebreeding produces offspring with definitely UNdesirable qualities, some even fatal. Unfortunately so does repeated outcrossing. Right now I've got two bucks that will get swapped between the adult females. I'm sure there will be some father:daughter inbreeding as most of the white mice all look alike after they get a certain size. But I do have one white male and one colored male. Several white females and a few colored females. I'll try as best I can to interchange the colors and introduce a new male from an outside source as necessary. I didn't suggest that you never introduce outside males for sure. I'd likely do multiple generations of inbreeding and than bring in an outside male but that is just me Actually it would be quite interesting to me from a breeding standpoint. Since you get lots more mice generations in the span of just a couple years than dog or ferret generations. FWIW Most likely your mice are already inbred, considering they are from a large commercial breeder.
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Post by bigsis7 on Jun 19, 2008 17:23:09 GMT -5
Ok so I was wondering how much does it usually cost a month to take care of them and does it save lots of money? Is it very time consuming to breed them? After Oliver's been eating raw for a bit I want to add some mice to his diet and thought this might save a lot of money. Do you feed them live or freeze them first? Thanks!!
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Post by tss on Jun 20, 2008 15:02:56 GMT -5
To start out with you will need at least 3 containers to keep them in (fish tanks or storage totes), some bedding (potting soil works well as I mentioned before), food, houses (a small box with a hole will work), toys if you want, plus at least one doe (two or more would be better) and one buck .
The containers would be between $5 and 15 each, potting soil or top soil is $1 per container, houses can be free, food mix will cost about $10, toys can be free (paper towel tubes, chunks of wood, old slippers). For each mouse you will probably spend between $2 and $5, so to start your colony you will spend about $34-64.
For a food mix I used kitten food, a small 1.5lb bag of Chicken soup for the kitten lovers soul is $2 or $3. A bag of puffed wheat or puffed rice cereal is $.50-$1.00, 1 box whole grain pasta $2-$4 (elbow, rigatoni, Riccioli, Stelline, Sedani Rigati, Penne Rigate, etc. Don't use slender ones like Spaghetti) and wild bird seed without corn $3-$4.
There would be 1.5 pounds of kitten food, about a half pound of puffed cereal, 1 pound of pasta and 10 pounds of bird seed makes 13 pounds of food, that would last at least 2 months.
You could feed that even cheaper then that if you just fed the bird seed but that isn't really complete.
As far as time consuming I'm not really sure because I only bred for pets, not feeders. It would save allot of money though.
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Post by nwheather on Jun 24, 2008 13:30:36 GMT -5
Very interesting! There is NO WAY my hubby would go for it though. He said "ABSOLUTELY NOT" on feeding live mice,even occationally for enrichment. ~thinking to myself~ I suppose if I were to try it, to see if they liked live mice, when he wasn't around, I could periodically feed live mice when he's on duty.....hmmmmm..if he didn't know.....good thing he doesn't read this forum...LOL
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Post by bigsis7 on Jun 24, 2008 13:34:50 GMT -5
Alright thanks tss! I'll try to convince the parents!
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Post by josiesmom on Jun 26, 2008 15:38:11 GMT -5
I'm staying away from high carbs for my mice - sems high carbs create a propensity for cancers and more male mice for some reason!
I have a horse so I feed a mix of crimped oats (for protein and some carbs) sometimes plain cereal oatmeal, black oil sunflower seeds (for higher fat - which is supposed to equate to higher female pup counts), leftover chicken, CGH, Rabbit bones(for calcium and nutritious marrow as well as teeth conditioning), apple cores for fiber/fruit, alfalfa pellets ( for greens - but they don't seem to eat much of these pellets) a handful of leftover ferret kibble (which they really really like and will miss when its all gone) and a mix of hamster gerbil food by hartz which looks pretty much like bird seed.
I have two female mice in each container, and then two large containers of the juveniles - one for males, one for females.
Currently I have 23 juvenile females and will need to get more containers!
The 13 juvenile males can stay together until dinner invitations get issued.
The drawers I'm using are working O.K. - but I'll need to revise their tops - some energetic females have managed to chew enlarged holes in the ventilation holes I've drilled! Hardware cloth ought to do, but I hate working with that stuff!
The drawers cost me 7 bucks a shot at Lowes, water bottles were 1.99 each, excercise wheels are 4 bucks each and food dishes another 1 or 2 bucks each. So each container for two mice is running about 15 bucks.
For bedding I use shredded computer paper, toilet tissue, paper towels, Kaytee Sofsorb and yesterday's news; about 10 - 15 bucks a month.
Since I'm already buying the horse feed the Hamster/Gerbil feed runs 5 bucks a bag, I'd guess I'm using another 5 bucks worth of horse feeds - so that's about ten bucks a month to feed the mice.
The housing costs are a paid for once unless of course I expand. So its running about 20 bucks a month to feed and bed 60 mice.
Considering buying feeder mice costs 2.29 each and I usually would get ten at a shot -and buy two to three lots per month. Raising them is LOTS cheaper than buying them! In a few months I should have a fairly decent supply of self sustaining mice to feed ( and freeze as necessary).
I am still buying a half dozen a week because my colony isn't self sustaining yet.
Just had another litter of twelve born two days agao! Fed two pinkies to a baby snake that Bugsy "charmed" leaving ten for the mom and nanny to raise.
Also looks like at least three maybe four more does are ready to whelp soon!
The benefits offered to your ferrets by feeding whole prey are immense. From a nutrient standpoint, to dentition, and gastric benefits, to psychological and physiological.
When your ferrets get to be ferrets on their own level it makes that bond with you all that more special!
Cheers, Kim
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Post by tss on Jun 26, 2008 17:32:03 GMT -5
Corn is the biggest carcinogen, Ethoxyquin is even worse and it's found in many mouse/rodent foods. The reason I made my own mix is because I new exactly what went into it. I had a buck that lived to be nearly 4 years old, he ended up dying because of a infected eye. I also fed alfalfa pellets (I forgot to list them).
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Post by aleronferrets on Jun 27, 2008 11:01:01 GMT -5
You certainly should watch feeding any commercial rodent foods, especially cheap brands like Hartz. Like low quality dog, cat and ferret foods low quality rodent food is likely to have a lot of fillers, bad chemical preservatives and poor quality ingredients. Not so good for raising "natural mice".
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Post by josiesmom on Jun 27, 2008 19:20:03 GMT -5
Well, I've got another litter born! Looks to be at least ten, but I'll wait a day or two to get an actual head count.
But also had a bit of a setback that could have been very tragic for the colony.
Seems the juvenile girls tipped over a food tin and then started using this as a hiding hole. But in digging under it they dug out all the bedding and it came to rest on the container floor. There were 12 young mice under that dish! I heard some squeaking and went to investigate. Flipping over the dish there was a strong ammonia smell, all the mice were damp and there was one dead mouse. Apparently they couldn't flip the dish back over and of course couldn't dig their way back out.
A couple of the mice were obviously brain impaired from the excess ammonia, these were fed to my snake as was the one already dead mouse.
I never dreamed they'd be able to tip over their dish and trap themselves within it!
SO no more feed dishes - they can scrounge their food from one corner of the bin instead! If I hadn't heard them squeak I have no doubt that just a few more hours and there would have been a whole pile of dead young mice under that dish!
SO I'm down to an even twenty young females.
Cheers, Kim
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Post by tss on Jun 28, 2008 9:28:26 GMT -5
You can also just use light plastic bowls for them. I often used large peanut butter lids, they are big and aren't heavy enough to trap the mice.
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Post by josiesmom on Jun 28, 2008 11:03:39 GMT -5
I figure that digging around a bit for their food will also give them something to do. Besides, I couldn't eat enough peanut butter to create food dishes for all the bins of mice I have! Mice like to compartmentalize their surroundings, so one corner is food, another sleeping another is potty and another is water. Cheers, Kim P.S. Its like a waterfall of micelets! hehe - I've got four more litters born! One is to a fresh doe ( her first litter) she only had three teensy ones. Another is 4 to a doe I just weaned her litter two weeks ago! Then a nanny to one already whelped doe had a litter of 8! So I separeated those two litters since one litter is already 4 days old and the larger pups would overpower the smaller pups. And it looks like two females soon to pop any day now still!
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Post by josiesmom on Jun 30, 2008 10:29:18 GMT -5
Here is an awesome sight for great info on raising mice! Granted it really is from a pet viewpoint but housing, breeding, feeding and other info is superb! www.fancymice.info/index.htmCheers! Kim
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Post by wmella85 on Jul 5, 2008 16:47:03 GMT -5
okay, what is culling and what does it entail??
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