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Post by marylouise235 on Nov 8, 2010 12:00:29 GMT -5
My question is how many breeder female rats/mice/gerbils do I need to get enough offspring to feed my 2 guys an all-prey diet?
Let's say I feed rats one day, mice the next, then gerbils, then rats again. And I need 1-2 rats per rat day, 4-6 mice per mice day, and 4ish gerbils on gerbil day. So each month (every 30 days, 10 days of rats, 10 of mice, 10 of gerbils) I'll need 10-20 rats, 40-60 mice, and 40 gerbils. (check my math, correct me if you want). I know gerbils aren't as prolific as mice and rats also.
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Post by horse656 on Nov 8, 2010 14:59:11 GMT -5
your going to need a ton of gerbils as they don't reproduce that often. i believe someone has tried and spent a month trying to get them to breed and once they did they weren't that many babies. and i think it didn't go well, so they feed them off. i would suggest hamsters instead of gerbils, but that's just me. mice have around 10 babies, also some only have a few, and some have more, so a few females would do it, if your going to give them breaks in between the pregnancies, then i would get about 10-12 females and however many males you want to have. I'm not sure how many babies rats have so, i can't help with rats.
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Post by goingpostal on Nov 10, 2010 9:59:56 GMT -5
Well you need to swap it up, that's a diet of only rodents, I would feed larger prey a couple times a week, rabbit, chicken, quail, venison, etc. Don't even bother with gerbils, so not worth it. Mice reproduce every 21 days or so, 8 breeding females would get you at least 40-60 mice monthly if you breed back to back, but keep in mind you also want different sizes, mine get pinkies rarely, weanlings a lot and small adults but I have to keep mice around 2+ months to get to adult size. Rats take a long, long time to get to a large size, honestly cheaper to raise only to weanling size and buy larger ones frozen IMO.
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