|
Post by carnivorouszoo on May 27, 2010 15:32:04 GMT -5
How many females do you have in each group out of curiosity? I plan on doing pairs, smaller bins, easier to manage for me. Do you keep the males with them all the time or?? I'm enjoying reading your thread and learning from your experiences.
|
|
|
Post by fuzzymom on Jun 5, 2010 19:30:51 GMT -5
I have done pairs, small groups, large groups. All seem to work fine with no issues. I still get lots of babies. Currently I have 2 pairs, and 2 large groups of 1 male to 6 females. The males stay in 100% of the time. I keep my groups of 1.6 in 56qt tubs. They are very easy to clean and are lightweight.
Thank you for reading it and I'm glad you are enjoying it. I love working with these mice and I hope to add some interesting genetics to my colony soon. (We have beautiful brindle satin mice at work.)
|
|
|
Post by horse656 on Jun 6, 2010 8:44:27 GMT -5
that's awesome at what age do you find the best age to sex mice?
|
|
|
Post by fuzzymom on Jun 16, 2010 9:33:59 GMT -5
I'm slowly getting better at sexing rodents. With rats, I can sex them at 1 week of age. On rare occasion when they are only a few days old. With mice, its a little harder. I don't try sexing until they are 2 weeks old. At that point the females will have nipple spots and the boys won't.
As an update. I am swimming in baby rodents again. After a long period of constant changing of their food, I have them on cheap dog food. The store called to say they have my bag of Mazuri in so I will be getting that as soon as my job gets my paycheck sorted out (its a real mess. I'm short 2 paychecks because of a mix up)
Well Group A had a litter or two the other day and I see 2-3 preggos in the tub. This will be Group A's 3rd "cycle". After 6 cycles I might think about replacing them. We will see. I'm trying to breed for more blues. And long-haired satins of course.
Group B has had several litters. I see some black selfs in there (or they might be black tans) but the majority of the babies are agouti. I'm crossing my fingers for some blue babies.
I have an idle male. I need to pick out a 2 females to put in with him. Either that or I might feed him off and use the tub for a new group. I've been inbreeding so far and I need to get some new blood.
|
|
|
Post by fuzzymom on Jun 28, 2010 15:56:28 GMT -5
I fed off that idle male. So I have a tub that is big enough for a pair or a 1.2 group. One of my mouse pairs had a litter about 2 weeks ago. There is 1 female black tan (poor quality), 3 himilayan females, and 3 himilayan males. I might keep 2 of the himilayan females and cross them with one of the males from Group B. I might have a black self male in the group of weans I just pulled out of there.
Now that my paychecks are sorted out, I need to get another mouse tub put together. I'm having a hard time finding water bottles that hang over the side of the tub. Tomorrow I have the day off so I might go in search of some water bottles. I think if I had another group or two I'd be able to provide my snakes with all the mice they need. Of course, my female snakes will need rats just due to their size and the fact they breed, but at least the corns and males can go on mice. Once the snakes are taken care of in the mouse department, I can focus on adding another group or two to provide the ferrets with mice.
Breeding Females: 13 Breeding Males: 3 Hold Back Females: 3 Hold Back Males: 1
|
|
|
Post by horse656 on Jun 28, 2010 20:58:20 GMT -5
do you use small tubs? like with a pairing of 1.2? or do you use larger tubs such as 1.5 or something?
or if both, which do you prefer?
|
|
|
Post by fuzzymom on Jul 6, 2010 12:53:48 GMT -5
They both work equally well. I use 56qt tubs for my larger groups of 1.6 and smaller tubs for 1.2 or pairs.
I just pulled 18 offspring from my 1.6 yesterday. So I'm thinking of working with several different types of groups 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 and see which will give me the maximum number of babies. My largest "harvest" of babies from my 1.6 was only 30-ish. With 6 females, that is only 5 babies per female. Seems pretty low. Yet I had a 1.2 and got almost 20 for the two of them.
I've got some females that should breed in a few weeks (they are about 3 weeks old now, I breed at 8 weeks) I'm going to take 2 and make a 1.2, and 1 female and make a 1.1. Once I get some more females from my other group, I'll make the other groups as well that I mentioned before. I can report my findings here.
|
|
|
Post by goingpostal on Jul 6, 2010 19:09:11 GMT -5
I've never had luck with 1.4, didn't try more than that but had moms killing babies and babies just get squished and forgotten under the bigger ones, especially if you have litters happening a few days apart I see more runty pinks. I run 1.2 due to space now and end up with 25-35 babies normally, if over 30 I pull pinks at a few days old and feed off a few, do the same at 1 week old, let the rest get larger, they will do fine if you leave a huge litter but be smaller at weaning age, look 3 weeks old instead of 4. I like my double litters to be around 22-25. Right now I'm only feeding 4 ferrets, 1 cat and my ball python and I don't freeze them so this way I don't end up with 30 mice that need feeding off all at once, or worse if multiple tanks are weaning. Lately I've been feeding off half the remaining litter at 3 weeks and the rest at 4.
|
|
|
Post by fuzzymom on Nov 16, 2010 15:00:58 GMT -5
Long time no see forum!
I've been soooo busy lately. I am still breeding mice but don't have near as many as I used to. I have one group of 1.6 that are doing okay. For some reason they killed off a bunch of pinkies a few days ago. I also have a 1.2 with a litter of 11. (It was 22 but I fed off 11)
I actually have a plan I'm going to try out as soon as I move. I might try and do it here if I don't end up moving right away, but I have a lot of enclosures to make.
The Plan!-
I plan on running 16 breeding females. I will have 4 56qt tubs to start with, four females per tub. I will also have 4 smaller tubs (not sure of size yet, I'm still looking, suggestions would be great) that will hold 1 male each. There will also be 12 empty nursing tubs that will be the same size as the males' tubs.
The cycle will begin with the first group of 4 being split up amongst the boys. This will enable me to pick and choose which mice breed with which boys so I can breed for color. I will also be able to keep track of the offspring's lineage and be able to create a good healthy line of mice.
The four females will spend 2 weeks in with the boys where hopefully, they become pregnant. After the 2 weeks are up, they are moved into nursing tubs for 5 weeks. (If they don't have babies, they are returned to the "home tub" where they will await the next cycle. After 5 weeks in the nursing tubs, momma mice are put back into the "Home Tub" for a 2 week vacation. The weaned mice are separated by sex into "Holding Tubs" to either be fed off, or raised as a future breeder. Every time females leave the male tubs, the next group should be ready to breed. This way, I SHOULD get 6 week old mice every 2 weeks. .....right?
This will give me enough mice to feed ALL of my snakes that will be on mice, plus a few extras to sell or feed to the ferrets.
I might expand it to 5 females per group, 5 breeding males and 15 nursing tubs, but we shall see. I require 11 mice per week for the snakes. If I'm lucky and each female has a minimum of 8 babies per litter(and I have 4 females), I'll be getting roughly 16 mice per week. That is 5 extra per week. If I get more, that's even better. If I decide to run 5 females per group, I'll have 9 extras per week if they have 8 per litter.
I also plan on having a few harem style groups going and those will be used to breed for pinkie mice, which I need for hatchling corns. I need 7 per week currently, so having a few groups dedicated only to producing pinks would better than pulling pinks from litters I need to grow up for larger snakes.
|
|