high yield mouse strain 25+ per litter

Does anyone know where I can reacquire a high yield mouse strain. in 1992 I had purchased mice from fluker farms. This strain had litters of 15-21 the first couple of litters. After that, they would consistently produce litters of 25-29. In 1995 we had a major flood here in New Orleans. we lost all of our mice. When I tried to reacquire these from flukers I was told that they no longer sold mice.They did tell me that they got their mice from Betty at the mouse house in Arkansaw. She told me that she got hers from Simonsen labs. I cotacted them and they told me they had no such strain The best they had was swiss websters that averaged 12-15.which does me no good I presently have Quackenbush mice they have 15-16. Any help or info would be greatly appreciated. thanks Gordon

I have no doubt that you will find what you are looking for in Simonsen mice. When we first contacted Simonsen labs in the early 90's inquiring about the output of their swiss webster strain, they told us the same thing. However, we soon discovered that they were being extremely conservative in their numbers as our mice would consistently drop 20+ babies in a litter. If you are looking for quality mice, you cant go wrong with Simonsen. Look at it this way. Even if you do get standard litter sizes (which is highly doubtful), you will still be working with the healthiest mice on the planet. Hands down! Simonsen is years ahead of the game in producing the absolute strongest strain of mice in the industry!

Mike Durbin

did you find your strain you were looking for drop me an email at mana420@yahoo.com I might be able to help

A year ago I purchased some simonsen mice. I got 5 different strains (some for some fancy mice experiments). The swiss websters I got did reproduce readily, and had litters of eight or nine. As they acclimated and got to the second generation, i was getting maximum fifteen pinkies. They never improved, and eventually my swiss webster colonies got sickly and died. I also purchased one ICR mouse from them (they were preparing to discontinue or limit their production of ICR, so one was all I could get). I crossed the female ICR to one of the swiss males, and in turn crossed the female offspring from THAT litter to my own fancy strains that already had litters of 17+. My new strain often has litters between 19 and 22 babies. The one thing that baffles me about these mice, is that the babies are HUGE. They aren't tiny little pinkies, but instead they come out the size of some of my fancy mouse strain fuzzies! I remember when I was preparing to get the swiss websters I was told about their large body size, and was actually surprised at how small they were compared with some of my own strains. I have to admit that the swiss/ICR/Fancy crossed mice are the best I have. Big huge litters, huge babies, tons of milk, docile, never cannabalize, never bite, and even calmer than usual hoppers. They are also long-lived, the original fancy mouse I started that strain with, and several of his females only recently passed on, about a year after I put them into a breeding group. And there was never a drop in production until they hit the year mark.

Anyway, I know some people have a lot of luck with pure swiss websters, I didn't. But I also had a lot of problems with all of my Simonsen mice. The hairless mice each went blind in one eye, and 75% of their hairless descendants also go blind in one eye. The C57BL/6 (black inbred mice) had only deformed babies, even though there were not supposed to be any deleterious recessives in these guys. They sent me replacements, and those too produced deformed babies. The DBA mice (inbred) were good breeders but mean! They hybridized really well with my fancies however, and I've gotten the cutest mutation from their lines (dumbo eared mice). Again, they should have been homozygous in 99.997% of their genes, so there should have been no hidden recessives. It was an interesting experiment with the mice, and I think it improved my mouse colonies, but I have none of the pure strains remaining that I purchased in December '02.

Just wondering if anyone found a supplier for these mice?I am on the hunt for some Swiss Webster mice but havent had any luck.And leads would help.

i know this is an incredibly old thread, but i have mice like that. i call them my "pancake mommys" because when about to drop, they are so fat they fill my entire palm. ive gotten 52 pinks from 3 moms.



i still produce.. at LEAST 12+ babies per litter. all of my mice are outcrossed with swiss websters. mostly i have tri-colors and hypos tho. i have one "pure" swiss webster colony, that are unrelated, and they produce well, but, no where near as well as my other mice, litters of 9+ pinks are common. i try not to have more then 1.4 in a group.

i came across this thread when looking up rodent rack building plans/suggestions.