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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 25, 2008 13:18:24 GMT -5
Current Number of Breedable Females: 3 Current Number of Breedable Males: 0 Number Litters Produced: 0 Number of Offspring Produced: 0
My 3 females are now big enough to breed. (My minimum breeding weight is 25g for breeding females) Today I will be going out to get a male to put in with them. I'm so excited to finally be able to start breeding mice. My rats have all but stopped producing right now since two of my females aborted their litters. After a good rest, they will be weighed and paired up with males this week.
Since this thread is all about my mouse colony, I will post updates on litters, offspring, husbandry issues, ect. Oh and also pictures (once I find my camera).
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Post by tsslilsis on Nov 25, 2008 13:31:24 GMT -5
Good idea (for the thread)!
Do you plan on doing back to back breeding or are you going to be removing the male once "The deed is done"?
-~Ketlin
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Post by animalsgetrevenge on Nov 25, 2008 13:42:24 GMT -5
Yay, I'm excited to read your about progress!
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 25, 2008 13:47:01 GMT -5
The male will be a permanent roommate. I plan on holding back several females from the first few litters to build other groups. (Take one female from each first litter and put them in a 10g and introduce a male to them). This way I will start building up my colony. I hope to have 4 breeding groups of 3. That will give me 12 breeding females. That is enough offspring to keep me in mice, at least I hope. 12 litters (at best) per month.
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Post by tsslilsis on Nov 25, 2008 13:53:59 GMT -5
Be prepared for around 132+ babies per month then.. That is a lot to start out with.
I asked about the back to back breeding because it does put a strain on females after a bit, as they can be bred right after birth and with the male in there they probably will.
-~Ketlin
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 25, 2008 14:00:58 GMT -5
I feed a high quality food so as long as the females are not looking unhealthy or losing weight, they should be fine. I bred this way before and had no issues. The females will produce about 6 litters each before they are "retired".
I don't breed my rats back to back though. They do better with a break in between.
So my females are a black and white, a brown, and a black. What color mouse should I get? There is a reptile store about 20 minutes from here that has really cool colored mice. I was thinking about going there tomorrow to get a male.
Once I have the money, I'm going to have my friend build me a rodent rack, which is essentially a drawer unit for breeding and housing mice. It is a multi-level unit with sliding out drawers/pans that fit snug up against the wire mesh "lid" I guess you could call it. I'll have to take a picture of my rat rack once I'm done cleaning for the day (and when I find my darn camera. I swear I cannot find that thing!). My rat rack is incomplete as it was my first time doing anything with tools and wood so the top level is missing (we can't put the last few pieces on because they won't fit).
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 25, 2008 14:04:22 GMT -5
Twitch herself will put away 2-3 per day, so lets say she's eating 3 a day, that's 21 per week for her. Plus I have 14 snakes, 2 of which are not big enough to eat full grown mice, but do eat pinkies and fuzzies. So that is 12 snakes eating adult mice, probably about half would eat 2, but lets just say they eat one each, thats 12 per week. Add that to 21 for Twitch and thats 33 per week times about 4 weeks per month, and that is a lot of mice. Wow actually it is 132. Hahaha. So I'll be breeding just enough.
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Post by tsslilsis on Nov 25, 2008 14:09:05 GMT -5
Since your breeding for feeders and not pets it doesn't really matter what color you get. If you were breeding for Tri's or brindles, etc then you would worry about what color male to get but with that you would need to go in depth and try to figure out what their genetics are and what they would make when combined. It is hard stuff to get into, but fun.. Though not done for feeders. If you go into that you might end up with some munchkins that are too cute to feed to the ferrets.
-~Ketlin
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 25, 2008 14:15:39 GMT -5
I like choosing colors because it is just interesting to watch what makes what and all the neat colors that are produced. I mean, one time I threw together an albino male with a brown female and got all black babies. It was interesting. I've never had a black and white female before so I'm interested to see what she throws. The easiest male for me to get will be an albino since the store 10min up the street sells albino feeders.
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Post by tsslilsis on Nov 25, 2008 14:20:34 GMT -5
These were pets but when I had a broken marked black/white and a pink eyed white and lilac broken marked they had mostly black and white babies but they also had a chocolate colored baby.. She looked dark when she was young but got lighter and lighter as she got older. An albino should still get you some variety. Chocolates are very desirable, but they aren't supposed to happen when you have parents with pink eyes.. So she was indeed a surprise.
-~Ketlin
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 29, 2008 9:57:23 GMT -5
Current Number of Breedable Females: 3 Current Number of Breedable Males: 0 Number Litters Produced: 0 Number of Offspring Produced: 0
I just got in about 12-13 mice from a co-worker. He has two pet mice, one male one female, and they keep having babies, so I took some off his hands. Not sure of the sex ratio that I have. All look to be about 5-7 weeks old. Any males will be old enough to breed, but the females I will have to hold back a few more weeks before they are ready to breed. I'll get the sex ratio and post it up and decide which male will go in with my females. While QT is a good idea, these come from a trusted source. His mice are not sick and he keeps them in good conditions. Not sure if I will wait for QT for the male mouse that will breed my females.
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Post by fuzzymom on Nov 29, 2008 10:16:36 GMT -5
Current Number of Breedable Females: 3 Current Number of Hold Back Females: 8 Current Number of Breedable Males: 7 Current Number of Hold Back Males: 0 Number Litters Produced: 0 Number of Offspring Produced: 0
7.8 sex ratio. Seven males and 8 females. The females are averaging around 17-19g each. My minimum breeding size is 25g, so they have a bit of growing to do.
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Post by fuzzymom on Dec 7, 2008 8:30:40 GMT -5
So this morning I wake up to a squeaking sound coming from near my vacuum. All three cats are starting at this spot and so I stagger over to them to find Ramman, my biggest cat, playing with a mouse. The mouse was one of the new males I had gotten from a co-worker. Since the mouse was severely injured and all Ramman would do is play with it, I took him downstairs and fed him to the ferrets. (Damien took the mouse but I'm not sure who ate it. That is a step in the right direction for Damien though. He accepted whole prey from me. ) So after that I went to check on the male enclosure (they are in a 10g with no lid and until today, no one has tried getting out, but I guess one did last night) and that one seemed to be the only one to escape. We fed one the males to my corn snake, so we are down to 5 male mice, but I will probably end up feeding them all off to my snakes. Still waiting to see some pregnant females from my first breeding group. I think they have another 2 weeks to go before I have a chance of seeing babies.
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Post by fuzzymom on Dec 21, 2008 22:00:29 GMT -5
I just got a whole bunch of mice from my co-worker again, but this will be the last time. He gave me the mother mouse and her current litter of pinks.
I think I have a pregnant mouse. Either that or she's very fat for her size. I'm going to weigh her tonight and see if she's gained more weight than normal.
My main focus is mice right now, as I would like to start feeding the ferrets more mice. And I would like to be producing my own feeders for my snakes. I think I have around 15-20 female mice to use as breeders. I'm going to need way more than that to supply my ferrets with the number of mice they need per week though.
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