problem with pinkies

[bassett524]

I have 1.4 mice. trying to breed them for food obviously. I get the pinkies fine, monitor lives them. My snake refuses to touch anything that isn't moving or furry. My mice are producing just fine, pleanty of water and food is always given. I seperate the mothers when they have their babies and I leave them seperate with their babies but all the pinks seem to keep dieing within 3-4 days after birth. I wanted to raise some into hoppers eventually, and will eventually need to replace dried up breeders too. I was wondering if any of you have any suggestions. I've done a lot of reading, but have still only been doing this for a month or so. Any advice would be very helpful through my inexperience.

[Quigs]

I think the best advice on this would be, just leave them be and let them do their own thing!

I don't even look in on my colonies everyday. They have plenty of food on top and usually an 8oz water bottle last mine just about a week!

I'm running 10 colonies from 1.2 to 1.4

Were these babies the first litters? Some (not all) first time mothers will canabalize all or some of the first litter.

Another thing to mention is this...

I don't move males or females! They all stay right in there cage through out the whole ordeal. Males won't bother the young as long as they are HIS! And the other females in the colony will actually share the responcibilities of rearing the young, even if they aren't theirs.

Possibly moving them all around is causing too much stress?

I know what you mean about not a lot of info out there on this. I have pretty much taken to trial and error on breeding rodents.

For the most part they are super easy, just make sure you clean the cage at least once a week! When I have pups, I take the parents out first and put the into a bucket. Then I grab all the pups and place them in another container with a little bit of the old bedding they were in. Dump the cage, clean, add your substrate back in ( I use shredded aspen), put the pups in relatively the same place as where you got them and put the adults back in!

Sometimes, they will leave them there, most times I notice the females move (but not harm) the pups after a cage cleaning. Almost like a "MY BABIES, not yours" kind of thing! I have had great success with this manner.

I've also heard people say you shouldn't touch the babies with bare hands. You know the old saying, if you touch it, the parents won't take care of it anymore and it'll die? Well, I reach right in there and grab them out bare handed all the time. To my knowledge this hasn't caused one bit of problems yet. Hell, sometimes I'll snoop around in there and look and count the babies by moving the mother off of them and moving babies around.

I guess my last thought is...and this is just my observation of my own coloines! They get used to the routine. I have several adults that will crawl right into my hand on cleaning day to be put into the holding bucket. Pups, that I have bred and raised that are now producing are the best, in my opinion. You have been handling them their whole lives and do the same things routinely every week!

Sorry for the babble, I started getting a little long winded but I hope this may help you a little bit. If you have any other questions feel free to email me and I'll try to help ya out. By no means would I consider myself "expert" but I do know what has been working well for me!

Regards,
Quigs aka Mouse Wrangler

[LLAP101202]

I tried leaving my females and babies in with the rest of the group and it ALWAYA ended up with dead or eaten babies....are you removing the mother and babies AFTER she births????this could be the problem.....if you have 3 females in there and one gives birth..its not always the mother you will find sitting on them trying to nurse.....they baby sit for each other......if you take out the wrong female she will have no milk for the babies and they will die within a few days....I have had this happen...I ALWAYS remove my pregnant females a few days before they birth into a seperate container...if you have more then one pregnant female you can put them both in together thats fine but do not ever add one AFTER one has already birthed or she will fight the second female added "protecting" her young but if they start out together as pregnant they usually do fine.....you can usually tell if a female is about ready cause you will wonder how can she possibly walk being that fat lol but I generally move them out when I see a noticable bulge and usually its not more than 4 days later they birth.....every now and then a first time mother will eat her babies even if seperated...not much you can do...they are young its first time they dont know what to do...however they usually dont do it the second time or after....I have had 1 or 2 in the 2 years I have been breeding them where I had females that would just always eat the babies....these became feeders after 3rd time. hope this info helps.

[bassett524]

thanx for all teh advice guys. I have been removing the females frst chance I notice they're pregnant and fat so they have had their babies by themselves. I think I'm going to try leaving them in the origonal cage and just see what happens. There is only one male so hopefully it won't be a problem. Thanks again

~Mike

[LLAP101202]

well good luck...my males have always eaten the babies....the females wont breed if they are nursing so the male will kill them so "mommy" will pay attention to him again and not the babies.....

[bassett524]

I'm hoping I have enough femals to prevent that, if anyhting I can just seperate the male if I notice him doing any eating.

[Quigs]

I have never seen this in my colonies. In fact generally when I notice fresh pinks being born or very recently born...the next thing is seeing (and hearing) the male chasing the new mother around and doing the deed again right away!

On another note, seperating the male is a bad idea. It is sometimes very hard to re-introduce him back to the colony. The females will see him as an intruder and possibly kill him off.

The only time I have heard of males killing babies is when they are not his own.

Like I said before, if it was me...I would just sit back and let nature run it's course. I don't remove anyone once the colony is setup.

Wish I had a camera handy, I would post some pics. I have what I call my "host" colony, they are a 1.3 pairing, the only ones that are in an aquarium. (20G long) Right now, at this very moment there are (besides the 1.3 adults) 1 weaned, 3 or 4 weanlings, about 12 fuzzies (eyes are open on a few and then there are about 15 pups that were born tonight. So that's what....5 generations living together?!

I usually freeze off the males as soon as I can establish who is what. For the most part I tend to see an even keeled representation of sexes. And on ocassion I will grab from this "host" colony to feed off, but for the most part all the females are kept for future breeders.

Quigs