Post by bluecoyote on Sept 18, 2010 23:53:18 GMT -5
OK i've done some snooping around in this part of the forum and i'm feeling confident.... kinda
when i was in high school, about ten years ago, i took an agriculture class, an animal bio tech class and joined the FFA.. so far from what i've read here, breeding mice is not too different from breeding cattle... i also owned five rats(3 male, 2 fem) and two mice(fem) but i never bred them. i bought them all from pet shops because 1. i wanted a pet rat and didnt have the sense to stop at one....
2. my friend had a pet snake and like a dummy i went with her one day to buy snake food... she had a couple of little golden satins in the box and i BEGGED her to let me have them... luckily they were both girls lol
Anyway,
I am going to start with a small scale colony just to test myself.
I'll have two bucks and two does... and like i read in one thread, i'll choose the best buck out of the two and let Sookie have the other.
i have two aquariums(10g and 30g) and tons of totes... all i need to do is make suitable lids for them and buy the water bottles, then i'll have a place for the weaners.
due to the convenience i'll be setting them up in the barn. i have a safe place for them where they cant be raided, wont get over heated, or freeze to death(not much danger of that in Florida anyway, but still) and they wont be a bother to the humans in the family..... as i recall mice smell strongly of peanut butter for some reason.. and my husband is already opposed to breeding mice, but... the barn is MY domain. and as long as they arent living in the house he cant say anything
I KNOW Sookie will eat mice. i just dont know how many..... And my worry is two things.....
breeding too many or not enough.... and being finicky i'm not sure i can supplement other other meat in place of kibble just yet(yes i'm going to the transitioning/mentour next!)
I have good feelings about it though.... she's got great instincts for hunting(better than my cat even, i'll have to tell that story some other time)
It seems a lot of the ferrets here eat other kinds of meat too, which is my goal since i also have access to wild meat for my dogs - hunting season coming up means there will be gobs of venison and/or squirrel because thats all my dad eats.. i doubt seriously if he's eaten beef or pork in the last twenty years. all i have to do is ask and he'll send me a cooler along with bags of frozen bones and rib cages for the dogs.- BUT having access to all of that is ONLY good for the dog if my fert is going to turn her nose up at it.
btw, the mentoring program sounds awesome. i've never heard of anything like that before so i am DEFINITELY going to give that a try! i wish the old dog forum i went to had something like that..... as it was with them chatting about canine diet could lead forum wars that would last for weeks. Ol Roy was a dirty word guaranteed to inflame everyone, and BARF or Raw diets were just as volatile. I switched my dogs by myself - with everyone protesting all along the way - and only had one friend who was feeding the same diet. but because she lives in Canada and owns sled dogs.... i guess that made more sense than someone in Florida feeding raw to bulldogs
and lol the thing that makes me laugh out loud in regards to my ferret ... when i mention her diet i have lost count of the people who have said "She's a rat, they dont eat meat" or "You mean ferrets arent rodents??"
and they are SERIOUS!!!
when i was in high school, about ten years ago, i took an agriculture class, an animal bio tech class and joined the FFA.. so far from what i've read here, breeding mice is not too different from breeding cattle... i also owned five rats(3 male, 2 fem) and two mice(fem) but i never bred them. i bought them all from pet shops because 1. i wanted a pet rat and didnt have the sense to stop at one....
2. my friend had a pet snake and like a dummy i went with her one day to buy snake food... she had a couple of little golden satins in the box and i BEGGED her to let me have them... luckily they were both girls lol
Anyway,
I am going to start with a small scale colony just to test myself.
I'll have two bucks and two does... and like i read in one thread, i'll choose the best buck out of the two and let Sookie have the other.
i have two aquariums(10g and 30g) and tons of totes... all i need to do is make suitable lids for them and buy the water bottles, then i'll have a place for the weaners.
due to the convenience i'll be setting them up in the barn. i have a safe place for them where they cant be raided, wont get over heated, or freeze to death(not much danger of that in Florida anyway, but still) and they wont be a bother to the humans in the family..... as i recall mice smell strongly of peanut butter for some reason.. and my husband is already opposed to breeding mice, but... the barn is MY domain. and as long as they arent living in the house he cant say anything
I KNOW Sookie will eat mice. i just dont know how many..... And my worry is two things.....
breeding too many or not enough.... and being finicky i'm not sure i can supplement other other meat in place of kibble just yet(yes i'm going to the transitioning/mentour next!)
I have good feelings about it though.... she's got great instincts for hunting(better than my cat even, i'll have to tell that story some other time)
It seems a lot of the ferrets here eat other kinds of meat too, which is my goal since i also have access to wild meat for my dogs - hunting season coming up means there will be gobs of venison and/or squirrel because thats all my dad eats.. i doubt seriously if he's eaten beef or pork in the last twenty years. all i have to do is ask and he'll send me a cooler along with bags of frozen bones and rib cages for the dogs.- BUT having access to all of that is ONLY good for the dog if my fert is going to turn her nose up at it.
btw, the mentoring program sounds awesome. i've never heard of anything like that before so i am DEFINITELY going to give that a try! i wish the old dog forum i went to had something like that..... as it was with them chatting about canine diet could lead forum wars that would last for weeks. Ol Roy was a dirty word guaranteed to inflame everyone, and BARF or Raw diets were just as volatile. I switched my dogs by myself - with everyone protesting all along the way - and only had one friend who was feeding the same diet. but because she lives in Canada and owns sled dogs.... i guess that made more sense than someone in Florida feeding raw to bulldogs
and lol the thing that makes me laugh out loud in regards to my ferret ... when i mention her diet i have lost count of the people who have said "She's a rat, they dont eat meat" or "You mean ferrets arent rodents??"
and they are SERIOUS!!!