Mice....

[Lizzy001]

Im thinking of breeding mice/rats in the future..... But i KNOW my mam will have none of it...anyone know any good points about owning mice or how easy they are to keep for my mam to know....and bad point just for me to know!:rolleyes:

[BoidKeeper]

When I was in university I used this thing to breed mice in the storage closet of my two bedroom apartment.

http://www.ssnakess.com/photopost/data/504/289mice_rack.jpg

I had to clean it every two days to stay a head of the smell. I used one male for all three cages and just moved him from one to the other. I kept three females per cage. Less males means less smell.

The good points are money saved, money saved, money saved. The only other good point is that you have them on hand, which is convenient. I now live on my family’s old farm and I have an old building that I put a rodent breeding room into. With out it I could not maintain my collection. The most it cost me a month to breed my rats and mice was $135, $80 of that was spent in heating the room in the month of Jan. To feed my collection if I was to pay what I charge for rodents would cost me over $150 a month. This way I feed my snakes and make some money selling to a local pet shop and some local herpers.
It is a lot of work and if I could afford the money up fron to order a years supply of even just rats for my collection I would. But if your just breeding a small amount then it's not that bad but it still means more mouth to feed and more cages to clean.
Good luck,
Trevor

[reverendsterlin]

I can't think of a good reason to raise mice except for $$$ savings but once you add in the expense of your time, food, initial housing costs, smell(stink really), and the hassle that savings seems to evaporate (at least in my case) plus 1000 frozen mice are simple to store and easy to thaw. You usually can get 100 mice for about $30 USD and shipping here is about $9. I buy in larger quantities so my cost is even less I figure I use about 1200 adult mice a year and spend around a bit over $400-500 a year sometimes less when I find a deal (speaking of deals rodentpro is running jumbo rats at $1.25 minimum 45, and small rats at .49)

[Lizzy001]

thanks for the reply......i think i wont get them until im a bit older and can PAY for the costs of keeping them...thanks for helpin out!
Lizzy xxx

[Pixie]

I would suggest you breed rats instead of mice.

Having bred mice for about a year now, I just started with rats and the difference is HUGE! Especially for the smell, mice REEK!!!! I'm giving up completely on the mice now and breeding rats only.

Rats are cuter more social (mine let me pet them all the time :) ), and easier to keep clean.

Just the smell factor switched me over!!! I have my mice in a closet, they are completely cleaned out twice a week and it still stinks...

Pixie

[Lisa]

What kind of snakes do you have? The advantages and disadvantages are different.

the main advantage is money, if you have a big enough operation. I find rats smell less but they are really personable and easy to get attached to, which makes them harder to kill (immagine trying to kill your pet). Mice on the other hand are bitey smelly little buggers and it doesn't hurt as much to kill them.

Another advantage is you have full control of what they eat and you can have better quality then what you might get from the pet store.

They are alot more work then just buying frozen and when you count your time you may not be saving money.

[Lizzy001]

i have corns

[Lisa]

so the largest size rodent you would need is a fuzzy rat (eyes not open yet, about the same size as a full grown mouse.) depending on the size of your snakes. Depending on how many snakes you have it may be cheaper for you to just buy a bunch prefrozen of the internet, I can't say cause I don't know what kind of sources you have for rodents in the UK. Oh yeah if you decide to go with rats over mice get Norwegian rats (ratus novegicus) instead of Ship rats (Rattus rattus). Ratus ratus are mean and nasty buggers.

[Linds]

For people with large collections, one of the reasons for breeding rats is to obviously save money. However, it may not be cost-effective for people with only a few animals, it can still be worth it to breed your own animals for quality control. This way you know what conditions your feeders are being raised under and what they are being fed, etc. All this is under your control so you do not have the worry of inferior quality feeders.

If you already believe your mom will have issues with you breeding rodents, then you may have an easier time with rats if your snakes are feeding on those. Mice are quite messy, stink regardless of how clean their cage is (in fact if you clean it too much the males will scent the cage even more), and they bite. Rats on the other hand, though they take up more space, are relatively social, don't smell as long as you keep them clean, and prodiuce larger litters (in my experience).