Is it hard to breed mice for snake food?

Question

how?

Answer 1

If you have a large or growing snake collection, then obtaining good quality food, all year round, can be a problem. To ease this a lot of snake keepers also breed their own mice. Breeding you own mice can be a time consuming business and should not be undertaken without serious consideration.

Housing
Firstly you need to find a place to set aside for the housing of the mice. Male mice can have a musk like smell. They scent their territory and if you have more than one male the smell can be offensive to some people. In any event if you are going to breed mice in numbers to feed a snake collection you will need several cages. It is therefore best to have the mice in a well ventilated loft, garage or other out building. I breed my mice in a converted loft area. The temperate can be very important. Too hot or too cold and the mice will stop breeding. If the temperature is above 90oF the mice may die. I have found the ideal temperature to be between 75 and 80oF. I maintain this most of the year by using a thematically controlled electric fan heater. In very hot spells I have a cooling fan and air conditioning unit that start up automatically. Most breeders don't resort to all this thematically controlled equipment but I like to pamper my breeding stock. By controlling their environment I am assured of continuous production all year round.
Next you need to find a "container" to house the Mice. Most people start off breeding mice in cages they buy from pet shops. These are ideal as long as you ensure you buy mouse cages and not cages designed for hamsters, gerbils or other small rodents. Mice cages have a smaller space between the bars than cages designed for other rodents. Therefore, if you choose the wrong cage you will soon have young mice squeezing through the bars. Wood shavings make an excellent substrate and doubles as a bedding material. Half bails of wood shavings can be obtained from larger pet shops or farm suppliers. These half bails work out much cheaper than the small quantities supplied by many pet shops.

Feeding
To start off you will most likely get your mouse food from a pet shop. Once you have a few cages it is cheaper to buy rodent pellets from a specialist supplier. If rodent pellets are not available in your area contact a farm supplier ( FARMWAY Ltd. is a very good one ) and ask about pig breeder pellets. Rodent and pig pellets come in 20 or 25kg sacks. These pellets are specially produced to contain all the nutrients that your animals need, so no other "tit bits" need to be offered. Although most of us still provide some extras. Drinking water must be available at all times. The bottles supplied by pet shops for smaller rabbits are ideal. It is possible to buy a fully automated water supply system that you just connect to a tap.

Breeding
Mice can start reproducing at an early age. Both sexes can start breeding at 6 weeks of age and continue until they are about 12 months old. A females first litter often produces a smaller number of babies, as do those from female over 9 months of age. Breeding mice is an easy business as long as you remember one simple rule. That is ONLY ONE MALE TO A CAGE. Multiple males will fight and can kill each other. Multiple males cause damage to females and often kill the babies that are produced. Having multiple males also results in the males producing more scent.
If you have a single male and a few females, in a cage, they should produce babies every 18 - 28 days. Producing large number of mice is best done with the harem method. (One male to several females). I have found that 2 to 4 females to one male in a standard mouse cage works fine. How many young they produce depends on their environment and breed of mice. Most "pet shop" mice produce small litters of about 3 to 12 babies. There are some laboratory breeds of mice that produce litters of up to 25 babies every 28 days. However these laboratory mice can be very difficult to obtain.

Cycling
To get constant production it is best to have several cages of mice at peek breeding age. ( about 3 to 9 months of age ). One way to do this is to date every cage that you set up. ( Each cage should only contain animals of the same age) As mice are weaned at 5 or 6 weeks of age I use these mice when setting up new cages. You can set up a new cage, or group of cages, every month. Once a cage is established never introduce new mice to it. The established group will attack and may kill the new "intruder". If you established a new cage every 4 weeks you would need 9 cages and have the following results.
Cage 1 approximate age of mice 6 weeks
Cage 2 approximate age of mice 10 weeks ( first small litters born )
Cage 3 approximate age of mice 14 weeks ( start of best production )
Cage 4 approximate age of mice 16 weeks (Good production at this time)
Cage 5 approximate age of mice 20 weeks (Good production at this time)
Cage 6 approximate age of mice 24 weeks (Good production at this time)
Cage 7 approximate age of mice 28 weeks (Good production at this time)
Cage 8 approximate age of mice 32 weeks (Good production at this time)
Cage 9 approximate age of mice 36 weeks ( production of babies starts to drop )
Cage 10 approximate age of mice 40 weeks ( Remove all mice from this cage and use cage to start new breeding group, This cage becomes cage 1 again).
Cage 1 is set up using young weaned mice from cages 5,6 or 7. In this way you set up new cages using weaned mice produced by adult mice that are in their peek.

Conclusion
In conclusion I would say that breeding your own mice can be done with a little though and effort. The better you look after the mice the better the quality and quantity of the young they produce. Breeding your own mice means that you never have to worry about running short of mice for that growing snake collection.

Answer 2

Breeding mice is a bad idea unless you have experience or someone with experience helping you or things will quickly get out of hand. Also, unless your snake's first strike is completely perfect, the mouse will fight back and possibly injure the snake. 1. Do not keep them anywhere near the snake room, the mice will freak out and most likely have heart attacks because they are so afraid. 2. no, just keep the mother around, she and the other females will take care of them. 3. Yes, there are, like broccoli could go with the HEALTHY mouse food you buy(they do need mouse pellets to chew for their teeth). Look up what other vegetables would work. 4. Keep them at no more than 6 mice a tank, have anymore in there and it will be cruel to the mice and fights could break out between the mice. 5. Make sure to hold them and treat them like normal pets to give them the nicest life possible before they die. Remember, frozen is always a better option and is more safe for your snake!

Answer 3

VERY easy... 1 male and up to 5 females depending on how many mice you need. If they aren't breeding for you a good trick is to only change out half the bedding at a time, to keep their scent in there. And actually, you very rarely have to take male mice out. They'll actually help keep the babies warm. I manage 6 or 7 breeder tanks at the pet shop I work at, and the only problems arise when you have 2 or more adult males in a cage... However, depending on how many snakes you have, it's really not worth it. Rodents can be high maintenance, and can SMELL (especially mice!! I can tolerate getting crapped on, peed on, musked on, and bitten by a LOT of things, but the smell of dried mouse urine still grosses me out). Often times people who breed feeders spend more time caring for the food than the snakes. If you just want to avoid constant mouse runs to the pet store, buy bulk frozen (pretty cheap) at a swap or show... You can order offline but shipping is horrendously expensive.

Answer 4

Depends on how many snakes you have to feed. Mice breed rapidly, every 3 weeks you will have a new litter of pinks. What size of feeders do you need? Keep in mind you will have to clean them often, as they smell. And feed them good quality food (you don't want to cheat your snakes out of healthy food). Then you will have to have proper bedding, cages, water bottles, wheels, etc. Healthy mice means healthy snakes.

When I had several dozen snakes, we kept a large tank with 1 male and about 8 females. We rotated the females so that they didn't "burn out" from over breeding. We also got a new, unrelated male every few months to keep the blood lines clean.

I would keep the pinks for those that ate pinks, and would use a CO2 chamber for larger mice. We'd freeze them and use as needed (kept a seperate freezer for feeders).

Our mice also ate very well. We had a base food of Horse blocks (blocks of horse feed). They were also fed fresh fruit, veggies, nuts, and bits of meat throughout the week. We gave them lots of toys and things to climb. Fresh water every day. Ice cubes in the summer (they'll lay on them to keep cool). Handled often (this was for my sake, I don't like aggressive animals, even if they are destined for food). Cleaned their cages twice a week, more if it was hot.

I also bred rats at the same time. Same goes for them. It can save you a bit of money if you breed your own, but in all honesty, the amount of time, money and evergy combined made it more expensive to raise our own feeders. We supplimented that by selling to the local herp community.

If you would like more details, please email me personally with your email in the text (I can't seem to reply via Yahoo).

Answer 5

Unless you've got a large # of snakes to feed, why bother? The time, expense, & hassle you'll have to put up with just really isn't worth it unless you have absolutely no access to frozen pinkies/mice. The time & money you'd spend on the mice could be spent on making even better conditions for your snakes.

Answer 6

EASY - but unless you have lots of snakes you will have more baby mice than you need - so its best to buy frozen and feed those...

Answer 7

no just get a male and two females togeather and they prity much do all the breeding themselves.. but unless youve got more than 4 or 5 snakes its realy more hastle then its worth...

Answer 8

Nope, you just put a female and male together and in about a month or so you have babys, take the male out or he will try to kill and possibly eat the babies. Keep a cage for males and females.

Answer 9

No there like one of the most likely animals to breed and produce a lot

Answer 10

just buy an adult male and a female. put them in the same cage. In around 25 days you will have about 10 babies.

Answer 11

No, I used to do it when I was a kid.
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