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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on Aug 31, 2009 9:57:52 GMT -5
lots of genes!
Question- Why would a mouse eat babys? Twice i have had a mouse eat some babys. I am not sure who it is though i do think i know who it is.
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Post by fuzzymom on Sept 11, 2009 10:38:52 GMT -5
A mouse will eat it's babies for a number of reasons....
A) A male will kill and possibly eat the offspring of another male to clear the path for his own potential offspring.
B) The mouse is stressed. If conditions are not right, a mouse will not waste her energy trying to raise a litter when there is so much against her. She would rather destroy the current litter, save up her strength and try again later when conditions are better.
C) This kind of goes along with B, but food and water. If a mouse does not have enough of either food or water, she will use her own offspring as a source of nutrients and moisture. Make sure your mice have a good quality food, provide lots of fresh water.
D) Some mice just are not meant to breed and raise offspring. Sometimes there is no reason and they just do it. If I have a female that is killing off her litters, and I can find no problem with her food, water, or living environment, I will normally cull that female. If she is in a group and it is unknown which female is killing the litter, then I will replace the entire group. That is my plan anyway.
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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on Jan 22, 2010 12:09:28 GMT -5
I have not posted in a while, so here are some much needed updates!
After having two bins of mice, I downsized to only one bin. I had three albino females, and one brown female to a brown male. The brown female started to randomly pop out babys with white after a good two months of poping out brown babys.
I kept one female with white so that I can replace my older white females with new, more fertile females! Plus, that means the ferrets get a while mouse when the time comes. ^.^
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 22, 2010 20:34:44 GMT -5
The brown female carried the albino gene then. And so does the male. Because it is a recessive gene, each baby only has a 25% chance of being albino (that of course is if we are talking about albinos and not black-eyed whites). So it is quite possible she would produce mainly agouti (brown) babies and then suddenly pop out albinos from time to time.
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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on Feb 15, 2010 23:19:37 GMT -5
the thing is. The baby's aren't albino. They just have a white stripe, or dot on their hind end.
I only have three females at the moment. One having her first baby's in a couple weeks, one having her second batch in a couple weeks, and my oldest female having her baby's in a couple days.
oh, and now she is producing at least one baby with a white patch every litter.
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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on Feb 15, 2010 23:20:05 GMT -5
oh! and how do you feed chicks?
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Post by fuzzymom on Feb 16, 2010 12:52:09 GMT -5
Hmm, I'm not sure about the patch. Might just be a genetic marking. Any chance of a picture of one of these babies with the white stripe/patch?
And as far as feeding chicks, do you mean feeding food to the chicks or feeding the chicks to the ferrets?
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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on Feb 17, 2010 10:57:43 GMT -5
Like feeding chicks to ferrets. Do you just buy live chicks and let the ferrets try and eat them? or...?? I have 3 eating mice completly, and the other 3 are on 3 different stages of eating mice. SO! I would like to try to get the other three to eat chicks as a diet change.
I don't have a photo right now, but I'll try to get one later.
Also, How expensive is it to breed rats instead of mice? Do they produce better?
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Post by fuzzymom on Feb 18, 2010 15:55:29 GMT -5
With rats, I find them to be better breeders in general. I used to breed rats on a small scale (I was building my colony) and loved breeding them. I got around 10 per litter. The only problem is, they eat more and take up more space. The average ferret, if eating around 1.5oz per meal, would only be able to eat a 30-50g rat in one sitting (30g being a little over an ounce) so you would have to be careful about producing too many and ending up with extras that outgrow your ferrets. As far as the chicks, I would attempt to feed them pre-killed or f/t before you try live (just in case the ferret doesn't know what to do with this new strange food item)
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Post by AnimalFarm2006 on May 2, 2010 23:26:14 GMT -5
Never did get a picture. Sorry. I'm picking up rats something this week or next. I am most likely going to hand over my mouse colony to a breeder that I handed my other colony too. Yay!
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