• 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.

how many litters?

Mdralston

Mdralston

New member
I am curious about breeding feeders...

I have been wondering, how many litters do you let your females have before you "retire" them? Is there even a limit, and how often do you let them breed? Just as often as they do, or do you put a "resting period" on each female after they give birth?

Also how soon and how do you cull the pinkies? I'm not going to breed feeders just yet, as I only have one small snake.(The begfining of an addiction!) But maybe one day I will have MANZY MANY MANY snakes.

I was wondering if there was a common standard way of doing things, or if it was just personal preferences.
:shrugs:
 
Personally I leave the females in with the males and let them breed back-to-back litters, supplementing their feed with some complete dry puppy or catfood. I don't have a set culling plan for retiring the breeders, just go by how well they breed and the general condition of the breeders. As soon as the females show any signs of ageing, if they start to look thin or their fur looks in poor condition, they're retired.
Right now I've got two females raising their last litters that will be retired when their pups are culled. By retiring, I mean culling, having had pet mice and gerbils get so geriatric they'd lost condition then died of old age I personally think culling them is kinder in the long run.
 
I agree with Janine. I have one grand old lady who must be REALLY old by now but she's still going strong and still my best producer. I have retired (and by that I mean culled) some of her daughters already. It depends largely on the mice.

But yeah, I do think its kinder to cull them off before they start losing quality of life.
 
Meg and Janine are really nice people. I keep pretty accurate records of each colonies production. When their average drops below 15 per week for the colony, I retire the whole colony. I select my new breeders from colonies based on their production. If a colony isn't productive, I don't keep any of their offspring for breeders.

I've never thought about the quality of life. How cold of me.
 
Last edited:
Hehehe Thanks Wade! lol

Well, Gypsy usually has litters of about 15 on her own. She's worth keeping around! lol

I recently culled my best breeder in my other colonny, not because she was old or not producing well (on the contrary!) but she was a NASTY piece of work and would fight with all the other mice (including the breeding male) and would kill all the other female's litters.

Cornflake enjoyed her immensely! Hehehe
 
I'm not nice, just not as organised as you, Wade! If I had the room to have a colony like yours, I'd have to be more ruthless. I cull out any mice that eat more than one litter of pinks, because that's a trait I really don't want at all. The PEWs I started with were definately more productive, but didn't seem to have the lifespan of the coloured-coat mice I introduced. Maybe it was bad luck with the strain, but my PEWs seemed prone to tumours too.
 
so how do you cull? how long do you guys wait before you cull the pinkies? what do you use to kill them? I saw someone mention gasing them. Is it harder to do the first time?

Sorry...I'm just very fascinated by the whole process!
 
When I have freshly hatched baby snakes, I am looking for brand new baby mice. My big snakes are eating retired breeder rats the size of a sports car.

I keep an inventory of what I have in the freezer and once a week I update it so that I can see how many weeks supply I have of each size of mouse and rat. What ever size I have the least of is what I harvest. If I am short on adult mice, I don't harvest any of the smaller sizes.

CO2 gas is the best way to kill the mice.
 
I cull as and when I need a certain size. Right now I have quite a few little ones so I am culling newborn, day old and two day old pinks mostly. But I always leave a few for the females to raise, I need hoppers and adults anyway.

Personally I never cull enough big ones to warrant having a gas chamber. Mine just get a good whack on the head. Pinks get flicked on the head.
 
I would have to agree with Miss Velvet. I am not breeding mice because of an alergy, but I know with the rats and hamsters I can cull babies to weanlings. I have snakes from 2007 that are eating day old rats, I have 2006's that are eating fuzzy rats and I have adults that are eating weanling rats. Anything that gets past weanling stage right now are usually future breeders I am keeping. Right now I am holding back 2 F2's to sort out why the blue color popped up. I am beginnig to think blue is a random variant since neither parent were blue and I have the grandparents none of which are blue as well. The color genetics are one additional thing I find fascinating.
Peace Scott
 
Blue is a simple recessive so their ancestors could have been carriers and not shown any blue for quite a few generations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top