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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 3, 2009 15:54:29 GMT -5
Yesterday I went into the closet to take care of the mice, and I found my white breeding female dead in their food dish Poor lady. I had noticed that she had been acting a little down for a few days and I am thinking the stress and pressure of taking care of babies was just too much for her. Yesterday I cleaned all the rodent cages and rearranged the cages to that all the rodents are back in the closet comfortably. I have 24 baby mice, and they all have closed eyes and possibly ears still. Crazy enough, they can already run pretty fast even though they don't know where they are going! Once the mice babies are weaned (in about 2-3 weeks) I am going to put them in my old fish tank that is about 35-40 gallons, and breed the mothers again. I will probably hold back a few females and see if I can get a new male from the woman I got the mice from. I believe one of my female rats COULD be pregnant, but I'm not sure. I sure hope so... I forgot how freaking stinky and messy rats are! In other good news... my parents are attempting to buy a duplex down the road from where Tony and I live. Right now the purchase is "Pending" because the inspection and more paper work need to be done, but if everything goes through, they could have the house by the end of February! Tony and I would rent the 2 bedroom 1 bathroom side and my parents would rent out the other side to make some money. The best parts are that 1. we would have a garage to keep the rodents in!!!! and 2. the carpet has to be replaced so my parents said we could get Pergo flooring... no more carpet! No more ferrets scratching the floors, no more carpet cleaning to get the ferret stink out! YAY!
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Post by bigsis7 on Jan 3, 2009 19:25:14 GMT -5
Aww I'm sorry about your female . Being a mom can be stressful and hard. I wonder if she ended up with the most babies? Baby rats and mice are so much fun! They just zoom every where! When their eyes open you're in for a lot of work ! They're everywhere!! I'll keep my fingers crossed for the complex!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 5, 2009 17:56:05 GMT -5
Thanks Big Sis.
Last night I went to take care of the mice and found that three baby mice were tiny and frail. The must have been the runts and it was obvious that they were too small and scrawny to compete for nipples and milk. I took them and fed them to the ferrets to take a little pressure off of the mothers. Those three babies were so tiny and pathetic. All of the other babies are nice and plump though, and a few now have their eyes open! So cute!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 7, 2009 18:48:27 GMT -5
So one of my mama mice has ballooned up again.... What the heck? The only male mice in the cage are only 2.5 to 3.5 weeks old... and if the mom is already bulging that means that she probably got pregnant about 2 weeks ago... WHAT? Did she get pregnant from her pinkies sons?
What is going on here....? She hasn't been around ADULT males since before she gave birth.
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 7, 2009 21:45:58 GMT -5
Where there any male mice in the enclosure within 24 hours after her giving birth? If so, they bred after she gave birth. There is a small window right after birth that the female can get pregnant again.
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 7, 2009 22:36:10 GMT -5
I took the males out about 24 hours BEFORE the females gave birth...
So strange.... I will keep you all updated on what happens! Luckily the first batch of babies will be ready to pull out within a week.
Any suggestions for weaning? So far most or all of the babies have open eyes, but they still aren't leaving their "nesting box" for any reason, so no one has touched the food and water except for the mommies.
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 10, 2009 22:16:02 GMT -5
Well, the mouse mama that mysteriously got pregnant again had her babies today. I didn't count, I just saw them in her cage. I knew she was going to pop yesterday, so I moved the mice around and stuck her by herself in a ten gallon tank. I was worried that there would be too much stress in the tank with the other 4 mothers and 20 babies who are not yet weaned. I didn't want her new pinkies to be competing with the big fat 2.5 week olds!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 13, 2009 18:44:19 GMT -5
I counted yesterday and the separated mama had 9 babies. Now I am waiting for my first batch of now 20 babies to be weaned so I can rearrange the mice back to how they belong.
Also, one of my rats is very pregnant.... any day now...!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 13, 2009 22:25:53 GMT -5
Well, a few hours after I posted "any day now" about one of my female rats, Ka-Blam-O! I went in there a few minutes ago and she has given birth. Unfortunately, I caught her in the act of eating one of her poor pinkies! I'm glad there was only a small piece of "meat" in her hands once I got in there... It would have been very difficult to see her eating a screaming pinkie... I gave her some dog treats to take her aggression out on.
Well... As of 5 minutes ago she had 9 LARGE healthy looking babies... I hope it stays that way! I will keep everyone updated, and HOPEFULLY I can post pictures in the next few days if she doesn't decide she is hungry again!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 14, 2009 16:58:47 GMT -5
Good news... All 9 rat pups are still alive. I can't believe how big they are when they came out of her... if something that big came out of my little ratty body, I'd be pissed off enough to eat it too! Haha!
The mouse mom who gave birth less than a week ago is doing great too. Her babies are starting to get their colors, some are turning black and some will be dalmations.
My other set of babies are almost ready to wean. I've seen a few drinking out of their water bottle and eating dry food. Last night I found one really skinny, weak baby so I fed him to Didjeridu.
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Post by bigsis7 on Jan 15, 2009 17:21:45 GMT -5
Yay! 9's a pretty good number! They are pretty big! They're adorable when their eyes just open!!
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 19, 2009 15:53:42 GMT -5
So there are 9 rat babies, as I said. 6 look like they will be white or cream like their mother, and 3 will be all black/brown or Berkshire... I think. They still have no hair, but the three have dark skin. I would like to start keeping more mice and rats for breeding, but I could be moving in a few months into a duplex my parents are in the process of buying. I haven't told my parents about breeding rodents, and I will HAVE to tell them before I move in, obviously. When I lived with them, I had pet rats, so it shouldn't be a huge deal, but I think they will be worried about the rodents escaping and living in the duplex! Haha... I should probably hold back on keeping more breeders.
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 19, 2009 22:37:19 GMT -5
So I already changed my mind about waiting to get more rodents to breed. Today when I cleaned out the rodent cages and tanks, I did some rearranging too.
Now my set up is like this: Rat cage A: One female rat, her 9 pups (1 week old), and 1 male rat Rat cage B: Two female rats, and one male rat. The male rat has been breeding them like crazy, he is quite a manly man.
Mouse tank A/ 35 gallons: 5 breeding female mice, 1 breeding male mouse, and 9 mouse babies (1.5 weeks old) Mouse tank B/ 30 gallons: 6 weaned female mice (suppose to be females!) Will be kept for breeding, one male will be added. Mouse tank C/ 10 gallons: about 10 weaned male mice... They will be dinner as they grow larger.
So my plan is to have two mice tanks of 6:1 and three rat cages of 2:1. This will give me about 1 mouse per ferret per day, or 28 mice per week, and 2 rats per day, or 14 rats per week. This will be PLENTY to supplement my ferrets everyday because that is 1 mouse and 1/2 rat each day, along with their raw and NV medallions.
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Post by nwheather on Jan 20, 2009 14:47:48 GMT -5
Sounds like you have a good system. Do you keep the male mouse in with the females the whole time or do you take him out for periods of time? I thought I could do the rat breeding, but they are more like pets & I decided not to breed rats after all.
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Jan 20, 2009 21:14:09 GMT -5
Well I just switched things around for the rodents. Before I had the males "visit" the females, but now I have arranged them so the males and females are in sets. I used to have pet rats, but I am not having too much of a problem feeding young rats to the ferrets My first litter of rats arrived one week ago, so my ferrets haven't eaten and rats that I have raised... that could be difficult after watching them grow for a month or longer and then feeding them to the fuzzies!
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