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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 22, 2010 15:01:11 GMT -5
Now that I am starting to breed my own mice and next month will begin breeding rats, both on a small scale, I am more interested in providing my ferrets with whole prey items. I require 8 small rats, 1 raw wean, and 2 large mice per week for my snakes.
I have 1.2 rats and a few mouse groups. 0.2, 1.1, and 1.3 (the male in the 1.1 is also the breeder male for the 0.2). I have plans to expand both the rats and mice and might get some gerbils as well. I'm trying to figure out what I could breed in order to bring my food bill down. I would like a 50/50 whole prey/raw diet or a mostly whole prey but I'm worried about variety. I can easily get males and females of gerbils, rats, and mice, but I'm not sure about anything else. Would it be ok to feed those three types of feeders and maybe 2 other meat sources? And how many breeders would I need. If you figure each ferret is getting 3oz per day, that's 1.5oz per meal, per ferret. Mice are about 1oz each. So I guess I need to figure out a menu and then from there figure out how many breeders of each type of feeder I need.
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Post by Lynxie on Jan 22, 2010 19:44:14 GMT -5
If you have the room you could always do rabbits.
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 22, 2010 19:54:54 GMT -5
I don't have space for rabbits at the moment, but once I have moved into a house I can start some kind of rabbit production. We were going to be moving next month but the house we were going to move into has electrical problems, so we are still on the hunt for a house. I saw gerbils at Petco for about $6 each. I was thinking of getting a pair or two once we have moved. That will give me 3 sources of food, though I would prefer more. Mainly I'm trying to figure out numbers. (how many rats/mice my ferrets should eat in a week, how many breeders I need, how much will feeder/breeder food cost, etc) My two breeder rats could technically begin breeding today if I wanted to go ahead and throw the male in with them. They are almost 15 weeks old.
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 23, 2010 16:14:48 GMT -5
I've been attempting to do math to figure out how many breeders I would need to cover my snakes' feeding needs as well as the ferrets' needs. Just for the snakes alone I will need 18 breeding female rats.
So can anyone help me develop a menu that is based on mostly whole prey with a few meals of raw meat that would be balanced. I can easily breed mice, rats, and gerbils. I have also found male and female hamsters at Petco, though they are a little on the expensive side ($9 per hamster) and I have no experience breeding them. Does anyone know how many litters they can have successfully? I know if you give proper breaks between litters mice and rats will have 6-8 litters, which is a good number for a breeding career. I'm not sure about gerbils but I did have a breeding pair a while back that had a nice sized litter.
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Post by josiesmom on Jan 24, 2010 21:32:28 GMT -5
OF course the prey you feed to your ferrets will depend upon the size /age of the prey and the size/age of the ferret. but as a general rule of thumb I plan for feeding the small ferrets the equivalent of 1 large mouse (or small rat or one chick) and for the larger ferrets (over 2 lbs - generally boys) I plan for TWO prey items per meal - fed two meals per day.
I also shoot for feeding a mix of ages of prey as in feeding weanlings/fuzzies/chicks and juveniles as one meal and then the adult prey as the next meal; that way they get a full complement of nutrients and especially calcium - because young prey is NOT very high in calcium.
I try to alternate prey and raw meals through the week. Because if they get a lot of whole prey (which they really really like) in successive days - when I go to raw - they'll thumb their noses until they realize I'm NOT going to give in and feed prey agian - sometimes this means they go on a self imposed fast for a day! They'll grudgingly eat their raw meal when they realize the prey isn't arriving.
Hope this helps! Cheers, Kim
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 25, 2010 17:29:04 GMT -5
Oh yes, age/size will vary. Twitch loves her pinky treats when I have them (I give her pinky mice as treats). I'm still wondering about hamster breeding though. There is no way for me to get african soft furred rats to breed as they are illegal in my area. I can buy them as feeders but they are very very expensive. So those are off the menu. That still leaves me with rats, mice, gerbils, and hamsters. When I eventually move into a house, I might venture into guinea pigs and rabbits. What about breeding my own feeder fish. They would be freshwater mollies or something similar. Would those be ok to breed/feed?
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Post by goingpostal on Jan 26, 2010 18:48:15 GMT -5
You need to figure out your breeding schedule to figure out production. Are you breeding them back to back, leaving male in so they are pregnant as they are nursing, giving them a break in between litters, etc. Mice gestate for 21 days, 3-4 weeks weaning depending on when you separate. I haven't gotten into breeding anything else so can't help there.
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Post by fuzzymom on Jan 26, 2010 19:42:16 GMT -5
I give 2-3 week breaks in between litters. I'm going to be working on a breeding schedule soon.
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