Just a note to share: Now, I've kept a few pet rats in the past few years and never bred them, but I have bred mice and am breeding them now. This is just something I feel someone thinking of breeding rodents might want to consider. Mice tend to establish a "tight" breeding colony that, after only a week or two, has NO room for new members! Any additions to that colony WILL be killed, and possibly canabilized on! Eewww!! Sooo....if you eventually want to add "new blood lines" for genetic strength, you have a couple choices. My favorite is to pick a few females, 2+, especially younger ones from recent litters, and add one or two new males and put them in a new separate cage/tank. Another choice is to keep smaller colonies, ie... one male and one or two females only in numerous tanks/cages. If you have the space that would work well.
What currently is your male/female ratio and how many setups do you have? How many does each yeild monthly?
My larger one I just started a month ago started with 4 females that another apprentice gave me and two males from the pet store (I'm specifically going with the brownish natural ones that are usually sold as 'fancy') One of the males died from a strange wound that I still haven't figured out. That one produced about 20 young so far. I just started a new one with one of the original females and a couple female ofspring and two more store bought males. This time I'm not feeding the usual seed diet due to shell waste and such. there's a FortiDiet pellet that's sold for mice and rats but I'm not using that either. Instead I'm trying a combo of dry dog food and rabbit pellets. It's kindof an experiment. they seem to be doing really well so far. Captive bred rodents should only be used when you don't have any wild caught quarry. I would never make them 100% of the diet for more than a couple weeks. I'm also trapping and freezing sparrows to alternate with the mice. A little while ago our F&W guy brought a Barred owl that was hit by a car to my sponsor to care for until it was releasable. He fed it all wild mice caught by conventional mouse traps in his basement, saying that captive bred mice just "aren't the same". (shrug) I'm a believer.
Do regular pet mice breed fast enough to provide good amounts of food for your bird? Or for a RT for that matter?
I have read/heard that rats are capable of up to 20 litters per year, but I think that's stretching it. I would say that the average is about one litter per female per month, and the average litter size is about 6. Fed 50/50 with wild caught prey or CB quail would probably work well, I'm sure.
but that many litters will kill a female rat or mouse in that year also. i have been breeding rats and mice for years selling them to pet stores and such. I have found that it is better to breed a female every other month. that way she will stay sterile and alive for that matter, much longer than if she does have a litter every month. And sometimes you get cannibalism of the babies by the mother... i couldnt figure this one out for months...
i had this new female she was six weeks when i introduced her to her new female and male "roomates" and that specific cage had not produced a single baby for 4 months... although i knew she was getting pregnant. She would swell up and id wake up the next morning and she would be skinny as a rail. Well i could never find babies in the cage or anyting but, just 4 days ago i caught her in the act, she gave birth to a few babies (6 that i found at the time) but she was eating them as she pushed them out...so i put her down. that was weird...she would pop one out, pick it up eat it, and pop out another, eat that one and so on... wierd!
We run about 60 female Rats and 3 males that keeps our snakes fed and a couple of our local pet stores supplied and we have probably 30-40 regular customers. We also keep around 100 breeder mice for our pinky trade.At first opportunity I always switch our personal reptiles over to rats as they do better on them VS mice.I have three breeder cages for the rats where the girls live with the males then just before they deliver they are moved to a Rack system and put into plastic tubs where they stay till the little ones wean.The little ones go into a community cage that will hold about 200 and the girls get a short rest and then are reintroduced into the breeder cage as a group.Moving singles is dangerous as the ones already there will fight them but as a group no single gets picked on and not having babies in the breeder cage keeps down fighting.Our sponsor we met through his purchasing rats from us.Got a choice between raising rats or mice the rats are alot easier.If a pair of rats averages 12 little ones and they start producing in two months and averaging the same in a years time barring any accident a Pair of rats could produce 15,000 rats. Saw that on NatGeo the other nite.Our rats and mice get 24% dog food from Walmart,Whole Corn(something to chew on) and vitamins and electrolytes in their water and we have never had any problems with our rats and get large healthy litters --Jim
Answer any questions I can.You can figure a Rat lasting about 2 years +/- a month or two.We have one male thats still going at 2 years and still producing big litters.I know his age to the day as he was hand raised from a breeding just to be one of our breeders.Females will breed back soon as the babys pop out and will deliver the next batch about the time they wean the first ones--NOT reccomended as this will shorten their lifespan by quite a bit.Another tidbit of info is I have had Rats deliver in a pan by theirselves wean that litter and then produce another litter without ever being reintroduced to a male.Female mice will occasionally turn on a male and kill them so if you are breeding mice you will need to keep a couple backup males in a seperate pen (long as there are no females with them they should get along in the bachlor pen). I hate mice if its cold they eat the babies,hot same days too long same,days too short same,anything and they eat the babies.Mice are hard to raise or at least alot harder than rats-Jim
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
Noel its hard to say I cant smell ours for the rats-LOL.I have them their own barn as far from the house as I can get them without too long a hike to take care of them.Rats/mice are urinating Champions of the World and they do stink. They drink lots of water and it runs right through although it dont smell like water by the time they are finished. If you are planning on raising again I would reccomend Rats as they reproduce quickly with not nearly the problems the mice have and grow quickly with a crawler rat weighing up as much or more than a grown mouse.We have a pet rat in the house that my youngest grandson plays with and her cage gets changed once a week and smell isnt noticeable but quantity makes a difference--Jim
Dodge Truck,Blue Dog,Treed Coon dont get much better!
hehehe, I used to breed gerbils.....accidentally of course.....Started with a couple and ended with about 25 or so.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion................ and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."