breeding mice for exotic petfood

I'd like to thank Roy Taylor for this guide. It contains all the information needed to breed mice for exotic pet food, while still being short and easy to digest. Thanks Roy.

Breeding Mice

You will need the following:

Suitable housing for your mice, standard pet store cages for mice/hamsters/rats are ideal as they are specifically made to suit rodents but as long as there is a good level of ventilation and enough floor space most containers can be suitable (fish tanks, rabbit/guinea pig hutches etc), this includes a water bottle.
Suitable bedding and floor material, good quality bedding is a must if you wish to breed your mice, bedding is sold pre-packaged in most pet stores but you can make your own from cotton wool, shredded towels etc, sawdust is a good floor material as it is porous and also helps cut down on smell.
Suitable food, mice food is the best but hamster/gerbil/rat food will suffice, where possible you should supplement your mice’s diet with fresh fruit and vegetables, mealworms and wax worms.
Patience and some self control not to keep checking on the babies once they are first born.

Housing

Once you have your suitable housing arranged you can put in your sawdust, a rule of thumb is about 2” of sawdust over the entire cage, you can then put in your bedding, the mice will move it to where they want usually so placement isn’t usually important. Situate your water bottle wherever you want as long as it is secure and is within reach of the mice. You should change the mice’s sawdust roughly once every 5 days and the bedding roughly once every 2 weeks. If the cage is dirty or starts to smell before the 5 days then you should change it. The water in your water bottle needs to be changed daily and the water bottle itself needs to be taken out and washed in hot water once a week to discourage mold growth.

Feeding:

Provide a small bowl/dish with mice/gerbil/hamster or rat food in and change it daily, if you are able to then supplement the mice’s diet with fresh fruit and vegetables in a similar dish as well as mealworms and wax worms when possible. Fresh fruit and vegetables help promote better digestion and bone and organ growth as do mealworms and wax worms.

Breeding:

This is the part that has the least to do with you, as long as they have favorable conditions the mice will breed, once the mice have bred you will have a gestation period of around 19-21 days males and females reach sexual maturity after 7 weeks and so they can breed from 7 weeks so you will be quickly inundated with baby mice so be sure to have enough housing available, average litters of pups are around 5-10 per litter, they are weaned onto solid food after 21 days and so you will need to keep an eye on food levels in the cage. It is vital that within the first 7 days you leave the mice’s housing alone, no removal of bedding or disturbance of the nest or picking up or touching the babies as sometimes the mother will abandon or eat her young. It is advisable where possible to stop inbreeding as this can sometimes cause complications and produce unhealthy offspring.

Caring for the young:

Up until they are 21 days old the mice’s mother will do most of the looking after of the pups for you. Once they pass 21 days and are weaned then you care for them just as you would the adult mice.

Culling:

For culling there are 2 methods generally used. A widely used method for large scale breeding (due to cost of CO2 canisters) is CO2 poisoning, the rodents are put into a container which is then flooded with CO2, the rodents drift off to sleep and never wake up. It is recomended you keep the mice in there for five minutes to make sure they are definatly dead. For younger mice longer times may be required as they are particularly resiliant to CO2 (this is thought to be down to them spending alot of time deep in burrows at the start of their life). Another method, often used by people breeding small numbers for personal collections is to sever the spine of the mouse. This is done by using something hard and thin (a metal bar for instance) to deliver a quick hard blow to the neck of the mouse, the metal bar is at this point held where the hit took place and the tail is pulled sharply, seperating the spine. The result is an instant death.