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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 5:59:00 GMT -5
I decided to invest in glass10 gallon tanks this time around. M first go at raising mice went fairly well, but I was using plastic bins and lids. After a while the mice had chewed through the lids and around the water bottle holes. THe plastic retained their odor too, so they never really got CLEAN.
So I finished them all off, froze 'em and fed 'em!
This past October I decided to begin again and picked up 6 mice from a pet shop. They were a scruffy bunch and I wondered if any would simply live, much less breed!
I don't believe much at all in any processed animal food - so promptly put them on a mix of 100% old fashioned oats, patio style (no hulls just the seed and nut meats) bird seed mixture, suet and left over bones from the ferrets meals. This past couple weeks Walmart has had large bags of freeze dried meal worms so I added those to their diet. Boy do they like these!Offered some to the ferrets, but had no takers. Funny because Roman, Windy, Fizzle and Crystal go nuts over LIVE super worms!
Walmart sells 10 gallon tanks for 12.97 and lids for 7 bucks. Water bottles are 2 bucks. I get paid every 2 weeks so I'd pick up one or two tanks per pay period as finances allowed. I have 8 tanks now. The lids are nice because they have small round "hatches" that I can pour their feed through.
I fashioned water bottle hangers from wire coat hangers so saved some bucks on that and also created some protection against chewing on the bottles.
I use Equine pine pellets for the ferret's litter pans, and this is used for the mice substrate too.
AS the mice got chummy with each other they soon multiplied. Their clean homes and better diet as well as exercise soon had them growing strong and large.
I separated the boys into one tank, the young girls in another and allowed one male to have three to 4 females per tank. AS those families grew I decided to divide the tanks using hardware cloth. So I have two family groups per tank - 8 to 10 adults. The exercise wheels can hang on the hardware cloth, and unique notches in the lids allow spaces for the water bottle hangers. Each end of the tank has a feeding hatch. So far so good, except that the hardware cloth allows the mice to climb and some are chewing on the underside of the lid. Will have to get a couple spare lids.
So now I have 12 breeding spaces, one tank with juvenile females, one with juvenile males. Within the 12 breeding spaces there are 12 males and 37 females with currently 70 babies!
Several males have gotten dinner invitations. Aggressive females and cannibalistic females were culled also. A couple died from fights and a few suffered from something that resembled the "feinting goat" syndrome. If startled by a light turning on, or stressed during cage cleaning a few would zip around their tank , then go rigid and die!
The white ones tend to have the larger litters so I am culling the shaggy coated and multi colored ones. They are located in my bathroom which is an interior room with no natural light visible. This means a fairly steady temperature but I control the lighting. So far this has resulted in fairly regular litters and relatively sane mice.
When they finish chewing through these plastic bottles, I'll upgrade to glass. But for now everything is working and it won't be long before the mice are actually part of their weekly meals!
Cheers! Kim
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Post by Sherry on Feb 16, 2012 10:01:01 GMT -5
Sounds like what you're doing is working! Congrats
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 11:17:43 GMT -5
Thats gonna be we quite the village. Good luck. I have pet gerbils and know rodents like to burrow and nest. Wouldnt aspen or corn cob bedding be a better moisie substrate. It doednt seem pellets would retain heat or be comfy at all they since they are hard pellets. Also I know your not that fond of kibble but there is a really good rat food called oxbow regal rat. Rodents also love to eat hay and build nests with it. No alfalfa though. Another tjinh if you don't have any is theor teeth continously grow and they need to chew to keep them down. It helps with boredom to PO. Apple tree branches are good as well as willow. You can buy packs of these at nesrly every pet store. A small wheel in each would be great rodents love to run and bet the exercise would be really healthy for them...to be eaten.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 14:04:47 GMT -5
Omg please forgive my typos, my phone was having issues.
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Post by goingpostal on Feb 16, 2012 14:50:08 GMT -5
Aspen stinks and gets nasty pretty fast, I use wood pellets for my mice and just throw a little aspen for nesting, but they also have a variety of cardboard stuff to rip up and chew. But mice don't nest and burrow anywhere near what gerbils do.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 15:34:30 GMT -5
I use a TON of bedding in my girls cage it's a martins r 680 it was my rattie boys. I put carsboard around it to contain the aspen. Since I use so much bedding it never smells unless the cage needs cleaned really bad. I didn't know mice burrow any less then gerbils that's interesting. Using wood pellets and handfuls of aspen sounds ok enough. You should really get some hay though. Its cheap and really great for nesting and should make up 75% of their diet. Suebees rat mix would be a great addition. You can remove the dog food in exchange for something else. You can lower the fruits too. Sent from my SCH-M828C using ProBoards Attachments:
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Post by goingpostal on Feb 16, 2012 19:50:26 GMT -5
If you just have a couple mice aspen might work, but I have at least two females per 10 gallon tank, sometimes with a male, and more often with two litters, I am cleaning the cage about every other day if there's babies and two times a week if not, I can't stand it smelly or really dirty.
I have no idea how people afford to feed that mix to a lot of mice, or how you are supposed to feed it without the mice making a horrible mess and wasting half of it. I feed a base of mazuri 6f or harlan teklad depending on who I order through and add a grain mix and fresh veggies on occasion. On the food note, my local pet store was feeding all their mice and probably every other rodent there for years RABBIT pellets, I asked her to order me a bag of her rat food once and that's what she got in, it was nothing but alfalfa, I couldn't believe her mice lived off that.
I had gerbils briefly and they shredded everything in the cage and had it almost completely full of stuff all the time, it was quite hilarious. They are a ton cleaner than the mice though, that was a nice change.
Kim, I have plastic water bottles and they last, I did have a group of bad chewers and gave them a glass bottle but kept forgetting when I cleaned cages so they ate a few bottles, I culled them all and that seemed to solve the problem.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 20:11:22 GMT -5
The mix is just suggested more as a possible supplement. You can modify it as you like. My gerbils are really clean and lots of fun to watch. They are my spider gerbs always climbing on th cage walls and they are the greatest architects. I give them a toilet paper roll a pasta box and a cereal box and they shred certain parts of the boxs and incorporate them in their tunnels. Its amazing. Do mice do this? Sent from my SCH-M828C using ProBoardss
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 20:15:37 GMT -5
Oh and you can buy all the ingredients at a store like Earthfare (where I got mine) probably trader joes and whole foods. Its really cheap because theres no packaging.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2012 23:30:07 GMT -5
Interesting menu, but one I'll pass, I don't even eat processed cereal anymore - so puffed rice is out. Pasta is full of wheat gluten so that's not good for them IMO - gluten = glue - and doesn't offer them any benefit. There are pumpkin seeds in the bird seed mixes I use, as well as safflower, sunflower, millet, milo, pistachios, peanuts and thistle. So these seeds seem to suit the mice quite well. The suet I get has cracked corn in it and they go nuts for that. When the budget permits I get them live crickets. But the freeze dried meal worms have been a delight to them. I absolutely refuse to offer them any pelleted foods or lab blocks - mainly because of the high sugar and corn content and besides who knows what else is in them? Seeds I can identify. Seeds too require the mice to use their paws and allow them to forage among the pellets.
Salad scraps and fruits before getting dressed or seasoned get offered too. So all in all their diet is fairly well rounded. Offers natural use of teeth and paws, provides interest and doesn't cause rot or waste.
Toilet paper and paper towel rolls offer them chewables and tunnels. The ferret leftover bones too, make great chews as welll as offer them marrow and calcium. Mice enjoy raw meaty bones too - so when I toss in what the ferrets haven't finished its a free for all! Funny to watch one mouse push another away while trying to eat the bone!
The pine pellets do offer them digging & burrowing activities. In the past I've tried Aspen shreds, care fresh, shredded paper and regular pine chips. These pellets work best. I only have to clean the tanks once a week. If there is a nest of babies I can scoop around the nest without disturbing them.
At a constant 70 degrees, the room doesn't allow them to be chilled. But I'll give them 4 pieces of toilet tissue, ripped up into 1 inch squares when they are getting close to whelping.
It never ceases to amaze me how huge some of the mice get before whelping! Had one white mouse have a litter two nights ago and the final count was14 pups! What I have seen is that contrary to what many online sources say - is that the males have ALL been kind, caring and supportive of the females and babies! Its the females that show aggression and cannibalistic actions!
The magic grouping number seems to be four - three girls to one male, but occasionally its only 2 to 1 and in rare cases 4 to 1. Once the group is formed, they stay together and I simply remove the juveniles as they get weaned.
I've considered raising gerbils instead of mice, because of reports that gerbils are less smelly. But as noted, they dig constantly, seem to require much more space than the mice and need to chew and shred things. Mice don't seem to require these things. When you look at the way they are raised in lab environments - not even offered an exercise wheel or tunnels - my mice have got it decent.
There isn't much fighting and the litters have been coming regularly. Just this week 4 litters have arrived!
Cheers, Kim
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Post by slinkytiger on Feb 17, 2012 2:28:15 GMT -5
It is so cool that you care about the life of the mice - even though they are destined to be a food source. I used to breed mice & can't imagine myself not bonding with them! lol- the ferrets would have to have a watch but don't eat enrichment experience. Here's a couple I bred - Shaggies (the longest coats I've seen in my neck of the woods)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2012 4:52:40 GMT -5
LOL ;D "Watch But don't eat!" Like THAT would ever happen here! Its more like," Hey! Watch what I'm eating!"
My bathroom is at the end of the hall. The hallway has a ferret fence blockade which I must step over ( kind of tough to do if I REALLY REALLY gotta GOoo!) But sometimes I open the panel and its a mad dash with 8 bouncing ferrets and one cross legged human trying to get to the door first! The mouse tanks are all on top of dressers in the bath and the ferrets will line up, look wistfully at the tanks, then to me and plead for a mouse morsel!
Yeah, just because the mice will all eventually get dinner invitations there is no reason why they can't enjoy their lives! This approach to good care for livestock goes back to my farming days - happy dairy cows make more milk, and it really IS sweeter!
Did your long coated mice hail from the African soft furred strains? I am finding that while cute, they seem to be lighter in build, exhibit the feinting/dying traits and have small litters, of course my long coated mice are also two colored (pied). I've been culling these first and eventually will be gearing the mousery towards all white smooth coated mice.
The previous colony I had turned out a LOT of silky, metallic coated mice. But again I noticed that the coat and color deviations made for smaller litters and smaller mice.
Since I want to use these as feeders - I'd prefer to get big litters and big well muscled mice. So that's another method to my madness of offering exercise wheels and a variety of foods.
When I view mice at pet shops now - even what I would consider culls from my mousery look better than the shop mice!
Cheers, Kim
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Post by slinkytiger on Feb 17, 2012 6:32:01 GMT -5
Hilarious! Love the way they know the meals are growing just beyond the barracade... Gotta wait til dinner time! For enrichment you could leave a piece of string, a nail & a piece of bamboo for the mcgyver ferret to work out how to scale the wall??? I come from downunder - very limited mouse gene pool. I don't think we have foreign mice. I bred from 1 male agouti (that didn't look like a mouse / had a koala shaped face) & he threw long hairs. Over generations coats & colours developed. More as a hobbie - lol. Didn't show up any problems. They were healthy, friendly & had good sized litters. I had to move so sent the whole colony to another mouse breeder person who sold them off. Line lost.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2012 20:45:49 GMT -5
So its coming up on a year since I restarted the mouse colony. Those original 6 from last year have turned in to 90 breeders in 14 tanks! Finally got a spread sheet set up for tracking and as of this moment I have 147 mouse morsels that will offer 15 meals to my ten ferrets! 30 of the morsels are in the freezer already, 17 were fed tonight (some were extra large finished breeders) so there are 100 left to continue eating to get to feeding size.
I've been feeding at least 20 mice per week for a few months now. But I'd still like to get to a place where they are fed every other day.
This means another 4 shelf wire rack which will accommodate 12 tanks. My divider set ups didn't pan out. With a male in each side there was too much agitation. So I pulled one male out and let him run with 8 to 10 females.
This didn't work either, as some of the females eradicated the other's newborns. So the magic number seems to be 3 to 6 females per male in each tank.
Have been using pine pellets for bedding, but just tried a bale of kiln dried pine shreds. The bale looks like it will go farther than the pellets. Kiln drying removes harmful phenols and there are some chips which the mice have enjoyed chewing.
Still using the plastic drip bottles with handmade wire hangers that bent the right way helps prevent them from doing more chewing damage.
I keep culling the long haired mice. I'm surprised to keep seeing them come through as pups because all my breeders show smooth short coats now. The ferrets don't seem to care but I just prefer the build and look of the smooth coats. No more colored mice are showing up, all are white now.
I feed the mice ¼ cup food per day. My mix uses whole old fashioned oats, bird seed mix with millet, black oil sunflower seeds, grey striped sunflower seeds, safflower seed, peanuts, barley, wheat groats, pumpkin seeds, split peas, flax seed, freeze dried meal worms, raw meaty bone leftovers, salad trimmings, fruit skins etc and suet.
Their tanks get cleaned once a week it takes me two hours to clean and rebed 15 tanks. Water bottles are refilled as needed. Generally every three to four days.
Plastic hamster tunnels or cardboard tunnels and wire wheels offer them entertainment.
So all in all its been successful if slow building, but that's probably because the mice keep accepting their dinner invitations from the ferrets!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2012 0:32:42 GMT -5
I didn't read the whole thread. But, as a pet mouse keeper (someday I'll breed), pine is bad for the little ones. I'd suggest switching to shredded paper or if you must use wood, aspen. I use paper for mine. Healthier mice mean healthier ferrets. Also, many lines of mice the males must be kept separated or they kill eachother, often brutally. It's not suggested to keep them together past 4 weeks, 6 at tops. This may not be a concern as they are feeders but I thought I'd point that out! PEW ('white') mice are almost always larger and more robust than other colors. They tend to be more typey and easier to breed for the type we want in show animals. They're hardy and beautiful. Not sure why but using PEWs makes for good food mice too. Also, for larger and healthier stock, make sure to separate the males after the females are pregnant and ideally put the girls each in their own space. Back to back litters (from heat directly after birth) will be runty and weak and wear the mothers down. Give them time and you will have healthier mice overall and better food for your wee ones. Not to offend and again, just checked out the first post before having wayyyy too much to say, but good luck
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