how my mice roll

KORBIN5895 · 01-28-12, 11:22 PM

So I basically am starting this thread as a general overview and personal reference on my mouse colony( or would colony of mice be the proper way of saying it? )

Anyway at the moment my mice live in a 4'x2'x3' deep freezer in my shed. The lid has an 8"x8" hole cut into it. This is where my 100 watt heat bulb and hood go. Inside I have a regular wall thermostat which I purchased for 10 bucks. I use a water bottle and a small cat food hopper which is mounted to the wall.

Right now for stock I have two males and eighteen females. I also have two eunuchs in there. I currently have 27 unsexed mice under 3 weeks old segregated inside a wire cage topper with 4 pregnant females and one female that gave birth to 14 pinks yesterday.

Snakefood · 01-29-12, 10:57 AM

you know, I am only starting my mouse colony, and I have 1.4. One female gave birth to about 8 pinkies 3 weeks ago and then another had a litter of 13 pinkies 1 week ago, the second mamma mouse seems to be the one who nurses BOTH litters the most and has lost all but 3 of her litter of 13.

I have always been told you do not have to separate mamma mice from the colony to give birth, that the colony all helps with the litters, but to lose 10 babies in 1 week??

What do you guys think, should I switch to rack system for my mice, and if I do should I put only one or two females in each tub????

exwizard · 01-29-12, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snakefood

you know, I am only starting my mouse colony, and I have 1.4. One female gave birth to about 8 pinkies 3 weeks ago and then another had a litter of 13 pinkies 1 week ago, the second mamma mouse seems to be the one who nurses BOTH litters the most and has lost all but 3 of her litter of 13.

I have always been told you do not have to separate mamma mice from the colony to give birth, that the colony all helps with the litters, but to lose 10 babies in 1 week??

What do you guys think, should I switch to rack system for my mice, and if I do should I put only one or two females in each tub????

Mice are trickier than rats and do tend to be more canibalistic than rats. That fact is true. One solution would be to separate the moms just like we do for our rats. The reason we dont do that for our mice is we have so many colonies and we dont have the space in our basement to do this for our mice as well. That being said, it is possible to leave the moms in the colony while shes nursing and when you have a lot of them it is easier to do just that.

Our rats are on a rack system consisting of 2 5-tub breeder racks that we rotate the females in and out of and that are occupied by 1 male in each tub. Plus there are 3 5-tub nursing racks that can be occupied by up to 3 moms in each tub but weve been trying to reduce the number of moms in each tub due to mom dominance fights. We also have 3 5-tub racks for growouts but since are numbers have been down, only 1 rack is currently being occupied.

Right now our mice are in 10 small colonies totalling 10.46 plus there are 28 pinkies and 17 fuzzies for an overall total of101. 13 growouts in addition to that but 12 of them are already spoken for. We used mouse breeder/lab cages for these and we have 4 lab/breeder cages for the growouts when we have more. We're basically out of growouts because we cant keep up with the demand.

Our rats total 8.31 breeders, 4 future breeders, 24 pinkies, 30 fuzzies, 8 large, 12 X large and 2 XX large for an overall total of 119 rats plus an entirely separate colony in another location.

This is our latest numbers and theyre a long way down from our peak of 600+ rats and 240+ mice. That was due to a double hit of increased demand and a pneumonia bug that wiped out a lot of our breeder rats but we're recovering from that. We dont have anymore sick rats and our numbers have been slowly going back up even with the increased demand.

Snakefood · 01-29-12, 02:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by exwizard

Mice are trickier than rats and do tend to be more canibalistic than rats. That fact is true. One solution would be to separate the moms just like we do for our rats. The reason we dont do that for our mice is we have so many colonies and we dont have the space in our basement to do this for our mice as well. That being said, it is possible to leave the moms in the colony while shes nursing and when you have a lot of them it is easier to do just that.

Our rats are on a rack system consisting of 2 5-tub breeder racks that we rotate the moms in and out of and that are occupied by 1 male in each tub. Plus there are 3 5-tub nursing racks that can be occupied by up to 3 moms in each tub but weve been trying to reduce the number of moms in each tub due to mom dominance fights. We also have 3 5-tub racks for growouts but since are numbers have been down, only 1 rack is occupied right now.

Right now our mice are in 10 small colonies totalling 10.46 plus there are 28 pinkies and 17 fuzzies for an overall total of101. 13 growouts in addition to that but 12 of them are already spoken for. We used mouse breeder/lab cages for these and we have 4 lab/breeder cages for the growouts when we have more. We're basically out of growouts because we cant keep up with the demand.

Our rats total 8.31 breeders, 4 future breeders, 24 pinkies, 30 fuzzies for an overall total of 148 rats plus an entirely separate colony in another location.

This is our latest numbers and theyre a long way down from our peak of 600+ rats and 240+ mice. That was due to a double hit of increased demand and a pneumonia bug that wiped out a lot of our breeder rats but we're recovering from that. We dont have anymore sick rats and our numbers have been slowly going back up even with the increased demand.

My rat racks are 8 tubs high, each female has her own tub and the male rotates around and visits each female for a week, then moves on. I have very high success, and very low mortality with this method. I was thinking of doing the same for the mice, except to have 2-3 females in each tub, but I'm not sure if I should do that or have only one female in each tub.

exwizard · 01-29-12, 03:57 PM

The reason we have each breeder tub occupied permanantly with a male is for space efficiency. The more females you have, the more pregnancies you have without creating the need for more tub space but you need to do what works for you. I have found that with mice, every time you introduce new animals they will fight. This is why we sparated our mice into smaller colonies that do not mix with the others. Less fighting that way since they are already bonded.

KORBIN5895 · 01-29-12, 04:09 PM

I segregate my pregnant females a few days before birth. My pinky death rate is always 1-2 on the first night. Other than a heat source failure my young have been doing great.

exwizard · 01-29-12, 04:48 PM

Yes this is always a good strategy with rats or mice. I just dont have the space for it all things considered with the mice.

exwizard · 01-29-12, 08:43 PM

The first pic is of the breeders and growouts, with the nearest rack actually being the growouts. The second pic is of the nursing racks. The third pic is of the empty racks that will be filled with more growouts when our numbers come back up. The last pic is of the shelving unit housing the lab/breeder cages for the mice. There is an empty growout cage there as well. (upper left). Thats basically our setup and there is room for more rodents, just no more room for any more racks or cages.

KORBIN5895 · 01-29-12, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KORBIN5895

I segregate my pregnant females a few days before birth. My pinky death rate is always 1-2 on the first night. Other than a heat source failure my young have been doing great.

Ok who has the crow because it is time for me to eat it.

I just lost the whole litter from yesterday! Why you ask? Because the females are only segregated by a mouse cage topper and some of my younger stock can wiggle through. Anyway one of then must have went into the delivery room and took all of the pinks to a nest outside of the segregated area and put them in a nest. Apparently she was unable to feed them.

Snakefood · 01-29-12, 09:53 PM

sucky!!!!!!

exwizard · 01-30-12, 01:48 AM

Oh man! Sorry to hear that!

KORBIN5895 · 01-30-12, 09:12 AM

I think of it as poetic justice. We actually just looked at a house to rent last night. If we rent it my wife won't let me keep breeding because she doesn't want the smell of mice in the basement.

exwizard · 01-30-12, 04:43 PM

We use a product called "Kennel Fresh" and it works very well in cutting any odor, even that of rodents. When you have your stock in the basement, you dont want to smell up the house and this is what has worked for us.

We are also going to be getting our rat chow directly from Kent Feed instead of a distributor. That will allow us to control the protein levels. We had to use 23% since the distributor specified that to them when they produced it for them. With the lower protein levels in the chow we will be getting, the odor wont be so bad either.

Snakefood · 01-30-12, 05:09 PM

where do you get kennel fresh?? my mouse colony is in the house right now, so I wouldn't mind getting me some of that!!

exwizard · 01-30-12, 06:52 PM

I will PM you the link to their website.