• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Breeding mice

Hoppslover

Hoppslover

New member
Is this worth doing? Only have 2 corns and was wondering if it is something I should consider or should I just keep buying frozen ones. Do a lot of people on here breed their own? I raise all my own feeders for my leopard geckos. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
 
I breed my own mice, but I have over 30 snakes. If I only had 2 snakes to feed, no, I wouldn't be raising my own mice. JMO
 
I wouldn't say it was worth it for just a couple of snakes unless you like breeding mice. It has its pros and cons - they do provide you with mice to feed your snakes. some snakes only eat live so they are convenient, and breeding them can be fun because there's a lot of color and pattern genes. Some of the bad things are that they do need to be cleaned a lot and smell, have to be fed daily and cared for, and it can be hard to get a colony going - they sometimes eat their babies until they get experience with raising litters.
 
I've thought about doing this for my one corn (hope to expand to a second to be a mate, and then young ones I've bred myself), and I think breeding mice yourself would be a good idea if your corn were eating adult sized mice.

I haven't done the math, but I THINK it may be cheaper to breed your own. You can always freeze the ones you've killed (CO2 chamber or other means) for later, and if you ever decide to stop, let the pregnant female mice (if you have any) give birth, raise her liter, and then freeze them all.
 
Well first determine what it cost you to get mice? For instance, Do you live in a city were the pet store is a few mins. away? Or do you live in BFE where it takes you an hour? Example. for me to get mice I use to drive 45 mins one way. The round trip would cost 1/4 tank of gas, 15 bucks in my gas hog. Then to feed all my collection for 1 week it costs me $35.00 in mice. So $50.00 a week is what it would cost. Obiviously I would buy a month worth at a time.($140.00) I could of order online,but I have 2 that will only eat live. So I got with a breeder and started with my colonies.

I started with 5 colonies. After the intial cost of set up it took me roughly 8-10 bucks a week to maintain them. About 20 mins a day to check on them and 1 hour on one day for cleaning. The rest of the story is a blurr, Now I have 20 colonies of mice, 2 ASF, 3 rat pairs. My average cost a week is about 25 bucks.
 
Well it was just a thought I had. With breeding my own roachs and mealworms for my leopards I have been able to see how nice it is to not have to depend on suppliers for my feeders. I thought it might be nice to do that for my corns as well. If I decided that I wanted to give it a try would 1 male and 1 or 2 females give me enough offspring but not too much for my 2 corns? I do breed my 8 female leopards and I do give them pinks after egg laying so that could be another outlet for the mice.
 
I only had one snake who needed to eat live pinks. He hadn't fed for 11 months, so I was more than happy to establish a small colony just for him, and cull any excess in the sizes I needed for my other 20 snakes.

Now I have managed to get him onto defrost mice, therefore my colonies original purpose is fulfilled. But I still have them because I adore my mooses. I love breeding them and seeing what lovely varieties pop out. And I like to care for them. The only thing I could do without is the incessant squeaking at night!
 
A large purpose built rodent cage. However, mine has no wire bars. It is a plastic base with a plastic lid. I specifically wanted this type, as from past experience in having 6 or 7 colonies going at the one time, I found out that hoppers can and will fit through the bars on cages that no not have a high enough base. Even then, they will climb and get out. PLUS the fact my rodent cage is now fully plastic with the ventilation at the top, it means a less pungent smell, as opposed to an entirely open cage.

Moose baby pictures may persuade you to get a wee colony going :)

coomooses3.jpg


coomooses4.jpg


I FINALLY got a dove banded!

coomooses5.jpg


And a pearl banded

coomooses.jpg


coomooses6.jpg


coomooses7.jpg


mooses3.jpg
 
Would you have a picture of the plastic container by chance? And thanks for the pictures they are very nice.
 
Very nice colony Tula. Congrats on the dove colored one.

I finally got a brindle calico(thats what I call it).

fortdesoto001.jpg


Tula dont you find the mice just as addictive as the snakes?

fortdesoto010.jpg
 
^ Beautiful mice as well.

Hoppslover said:
Well it was just a thought I had. With breeding my own roachs and mealworms for my leopards I have been able to see how nice it is to not have to depend on suppliers for my feeders. I thought it might be nice to do that for my corns as well. If I decided that I wanted to give it a try would 1 male and 1 or 2 females give me enough offspring but not too much for my 2 corns? I do breed my 8 female leopards and I do give them pinks after egg laying so that could be another outlet for the mice.
Click to expand...

Just remember that if you ever have too many mice, you can always kill/knock them out (kill them please) and freeze them for later.

Tula_Montage said:
A large purpose built rodent cage. However, mine has no wire bars. It is a plastic base with a plastic lid. I specifically wanted this type, as from past experience in having 6 or 7 colonies going at the one time, I found out that hoppers can and will fit through the bars on cages that no not have a high enough base. Even then, they will climb and get out. PLUS the fact my rodent cage is now fully plastic with the ventilation at the top, it means a less pungent smell, as opposed to an entirely open cage.
Click to expand...

Your mice look great. Wonder if you could sell real pretty ones as pets, mind that they're healthy and kid friendly.
 
I breed mice because My family and I enjoy eating them. I will typically wait until they are adults, We throw them on the grill and the hair burns right off of em! YUMMY!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top