Best feeders to raise?

[kimbyra]

Nerys- Those are the most beautiful rats I have ever seen. I didn't even know that people bred them to be lovely colors like that. Wow.

 

[SnakeCreations]

makes it more interesting breeding them for colour as well as food... if i am going to have to spend part of my week cleaning out stinky mice, well, then they may as well be easy on the eye, and produce something to keep my attention for a few hours...

Hi N -

Those were great pics... thanks! I'm with you....I really am enjoying my little mice. It looks like a very nice set-up and your mice are quite mellow. How many do you keep together? What about male/female ratio? Where do you get your breeding stock?

Thanks again!

Tonya

 

[nerys]

ta

(mice though btw..)

i am busy leading people here in the UK astray with my mice... lol... i post picss of them on a reptile forum, and now there are another 4 or 5 colonies of "nerys mice" at large in the uk..

mouse genetics are leave me truely flabbergasted though i have to say..

i thought corns were bad, then i thought royals were bad, but mice put them both to shame!

silver agouti - for example got this explanation back

The first mouse with the warm silver grey colour definitely has the Agouti modifier; I'd be inclined to guess it's actually a Dominant Whitebelly Agouti on Blue with the sable modifier - I think it's called Blue Marten Sable.

coffee fox i called it... my mouse guru said - definitely a Fox (chinchilla Tan - which implies that your lot carry Chinchilla somewhere in the woodpile - which would be indicated by that lovely whitebellied silver agouti). Top colour could actually be Lilac - dilute Blue plus dilute Chocolate. If I wanted to test that Blue fellow, I might try breeding it to this one (assuming compatible gender!) - if it's blue, you should get no true-black looking babies.

fox are white bellies with any top colour, tans are ginger bellies with any top colour...

silver satin - is told as - possibly a lilac (dilute blue plus dilute chocolate) but it obviously isn't the pink-eyed variety that is labeled as silver on my non-American source (which has the genetics info).

and when asking about the lethal yellow gene i got....

Don't breed them to any other yellow/orange/red mice or sable-coloured mice (And I'd avoid solid white/cream mice that had a yellow/orange/red/sable parent, too), as they carry the same Lethal Yellow - it's only lethal as a homozygous, however. I would be inclined, if you wanted to avoid the homozygous state, to breed only to self-coloured mice that are chocolate, black, slate blue, dove, lilac - not agoutis at all. Agouti can hide lethal yellow, Tan (and fox) might carry it alongside, but I'm not sure - but the recessive self colours don't carry the Lethal Yellow gene at all (otherwise they'd be Agouti or yellow as AY is dominant to Self aa) and thus your litters won't be picking up the double homozygous gene

at which point she totally lost me!!!

good fun though, smelly, but good fun..

N

 

[nerys]

the tanks i use are large gabbers

dimensions are...

27.10"w X 18"d X 10"h

and i tend to start off with one male and 4 or 5 females, then build it up to 10 or so females.. over time (allows me room to keep nice new ones)

have found that if you swap the babies at hopper size, they integrate ok into existing set ups.. mostly ok, you do get the odd casualty, but with 100+ mice thats the way it goes sometimes.. they are not all the same afterall

males come out as soon as i see they are male, and unless i want to grow them on a bit... the males will fight, even if you house all males in one tank.

what tends to happen is the least dominant male, gets his knob bitten off (can i say that over here??) which is not too nice...

i have one large gabber with 30-40 growing on females in.. and i can add into that young hopper females whenever, but i can't do the same with males.. i have one tank with two brothers, a golden satin, and choc tan satin, that i know someone wants off me, and another tank of about 10 males, but i can't add one to the other, as i would at that age for females..

the tank of 10 was 12 last night, but i had a willy-nibbler.. so had to loose the nibbled and the nibblé.. still the corns don't care about their tackle..

breeding stock... god, all over.. i am uk based, for once i find it easier to get stuff than you over the pond? surely not... i started with 4 females from a snake friendly rescue, and a male i was given by a friend... i have three friends who breed also, so i got the odd one here, and the odd one there from them.. i order a few from a trade supplier too... so that added new lines also. and i am terrible for shop visiting, and net shopping... so have added a few oddballs like that.. have to say though, most of what i have now though, is beginning to be home bred *chuffed* so a lot of colours i have only seen in pics, or in my stuff!

there is no Q laws for rodents traveling in the EU, marsupials yes, rodents no (rabbits are laggomorphs and don't count btw) so if anyone is EU and wants to come get some... let me know lol

N

 

[Bobo's Mama]

Agouti can hide lethal yellow

I have an Agouti female and she is quite fat, even when she is not pregnant. She had a litter on the 28th. Although she is probably pregnant again, I do allow post-birth mating to occur, she shouldn't be showing yet. Here she is in all her fat glory. She weighs 48g.

 

[nerys]

ooo what a cutie!!!! i should weigh mine... i call her "hamster mouse" she is so fat... i swear someone stuck a tail on a hamster and gave her to me! either that or she's been down the 192 and stopped for a re-fill at every gas station...

the only thing i have to watch is that if they inherit a double copy of the lethal yellow gene, they die basically..

N

 

[PatrickBateman]

Is the smell of mice vs. the smell of rats really a huge difference? I have a colony of mice right now and they really stink. I am thinking it might be a good idea to switch from a 1.4 mice colony to a 1.2 or 1.3 rat colony. How long does it take for a rat to get pregnant and have babies? Are there any big differences between raising mice and raising rats?

 

[hartsock]

I have been pleasantly pleased so far with my ASF rats, but only one of the females is giving birth, of the other two, one looks preg, but not the third one. They don't have much smell to them at all. Really, and so far they haven't bit me and have been somewhat friendly

I keep them and a two colony of mice. I prefer the ASF rats, but I haven't gotten them to the point of using as feeders, so I hope the snakes will take them.

 

[wax32]

A. This is a really old thread.
B. Yes, mice smell way worse than rats.

 

[Billy Graham]

What is the best food to raise or the easiest is the wrong question folks.
What you should ask your self is what is the best food for my Herp's? The answer is.... Do you eat beef everyday of you life? I would put to you that with the Herpiculture starting to pay more attention to the health of our animals that more and more food companies are offering a wider diet for Herper's to purchase. A varied diet of rodents, birds, and other small mammals is going to be what the wild snakes eat and I'd recommend that duplication of nature is what will keep our herps healthy and will give it a long life.

Billy Graham
Preaching about food today.

 

[hartsock]

What is the best food to raise or the easiest is the wrong question folks.
What you should ask your self is what is the best food for my Herp's? The answer is.... Do you eat beef everyday of you life? I would put to you that with the Herpiculture starting to pay more attention to the health of our animals that more and more food companies are offering a wider diet for Herper's to purchase. A varied diet of rodents, birds, and other small mammals is going to be what the wild snakes eat and I'd recommend that duplication of nature is what will keep our herps healthy and will give it a long life.

Billy Graham
Preaching about food today.

Well, hate to disagree, but I think you are TOTALLY wrong on this subject. Just because something doesn't duplicate nature, doesn't mean that it is bad for your snake. If we wanted to go with a complete natural experience, then we would need to add parasites, go long periods without food, flood the vivs every now and then, etc. Trying to give your snakes a varity in diet is asking for trouble, mainly because if you hit on something that they become desirous of, then you are going to be stuck because they may not eat anything else. Ask my grey ratsnake that won't eat anything but rat pups. Or my Russian Rat snake that suddenly went off of rats and will only take mice now because one day I gave him a mouse that one of the corns refused. Not only could that cause problems such as trying to find feeder birds if your snake decides it only wants birds, but it blows the whole "varity of diet" theory out of the water. No matter what you do, there is nothing natural about keeping snakes. No matter how you set up the viv, no matter what you try to recreate, as long as they are within that cage, tank, or whatever, it is not a natural experience. And it's because of that, that a cornsnake will live 20+ years in captivity compared with a much shorter lifespan in the wild. Now, which shows a better life of health?