Bad Rats!!!

[sapphire_moon]

wow, your stronger than I am! I couldn't do it if I thought of them as pets! I would feel 10 times worse than I do now!

Though I do have one female mouse that I'm about to retire after she shows the other 2 how to be mom without killing the litter lol.
After she raises this litter, she will be retired, maybe to her own tank, it depends on whether or not I feel she likes company.

[Auskan]

Will you get her another female for company? A couple of weeks ago I killed off and fed a large female that I had retired. She had been kind of a pet, had a name etc, and I used to handle her a lot. She took ages to get going with breeding and was about 5 months old before you had her first litter, then had 3 in quick succession, was a great mom. The other mice in her colony died off (of old age) and I had to set her up with new cagemates and it never really worked. She had another litter and ate them all, so I decided as she was almost a year old and apparently not going to be a good mom, she may as well be useful for something LOL.

[sapphire_moon]

if I got her another female it would just be one from her own litter, she is a great mom, and this female has NEVER ate one of her own babies.

I say her OWN because I had one mother that just plain sucked, was obsessed (litterly would throw herself at the top of the cage if I took it out) with the wheel, and when she had her babies left them in the "nest" (she didn't even construct one) when I found them they were cold and near dead.

I put them in with this mother and she killed more than half of them, but about 6 of them lived (the other female had a litter of about 15, she killed 2, so 13, then the other mother killed the other 7 off (but I also think something was seriously wrong with them that she could sence but i couldn't). But she took care of the other babies and her babies great, and is currently living with one of her own daughters and a baby from the litter she raised.

I was thinking she might enjoy getting away from all the other mice, but they are also "colony" animals and it is probably instinct to want to stay with a group.....so still not sure, either way she won't be bred again.

It wouldn't matter if I killed her off or not, my snake is not big enough to eat her (she is huge anyways, lol).

[Stockwell]

Michael... Yup, even for one cage, veri-flow valves are the way to go... People assume they are expensive but they are cheaper than water bottles at 3.95 cdn. The tubing is cheap from home depot.
I have a holding tank that uses one valve, and its fed from a gallon pickle jar that was free from the local Pizza joint. I have a tube going in to fill it and one coming out to the valve. You can run the system on a siphon principle, so you don't even need the usual barbed fitting coming out of the reservoir
I use a humidifier T valve which is on my cold water pipe. I just open it to fill the reservoir, so I don't even have refill water from a bucket or garden hose like some do.
I fill my water system only once every two weeks, and I add food about once a month, and clean every two weeks.. Now that's low maintenance.
The maintenance interval for food and water is simply a function of the reservoir size.

[Stockwell]

Originally posted by CHRISANDBOIDS14
Mykee/Roy,

I've been using the auto watering system from Freedom Breeder for my mice, the resevoir needs an air hole to let air come in as it empties, how does that system not need air? I cant see bubbles sucessfully making it back up to the resevoir from the drinking tips. So how do you operate the system without air access?

C.

Christian, bubbles do not occur unless you have a vacuum like in a water bottle.. Bubbles must backflow into the bottle to replace the water that leaves it.
In both the variflow system Mykee and I run and your freedom system, the water flows out without any backflow of bubbles.. It's simply a gravity feed system with the reservoir always higher than the nipples.
Our systems are not entirely sealed, and would not work if they were, but as long as the reservoir has a lid on it it keeps dust out.
The important difference is that water only flows one way and that is out.
In a sealed water bottle, with ball bearing type sipping tube, air must replace water, so as the rodent licks, air, and rodent spit, shavings, and god knows what gets pulled up into the bottle.
This doesn not happen with variflow valves.
The mouse pushes a small rod which opens a valve and water flows only one way, as it has positive head pressure.