Stocking up on mice

As I've found out, one of the joys of having a snake is the regular driving to the pet-store to buy your mice dinners Since I cant always get out to the store on a routine basis, I was thinking of stocking up on mice..say a month's worth (maybe about 5 or so mice).

So my question is this, for those who keep/breed mice, is this really a viable option or would the time and effort required be too much? I read somewhere that breeding mice is almost (if not more!!) work than keeping your snake..which I'm trying to avoid, so breeding is not in the question..just stocking mice.

How do I do this to make this as effortless as possible? How many mice can I keep in a cage (say 15"x15") at any given time? From what I know about mice, it's probably best to keep only females together, right?? Any special substrate, or can I use my snake's aspen?

Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated as always

now i have never bred mice but i have had them as pets. they do smell if not kept clean on a constant basis. if overcrowded, they will fight. can use aspen. if you breed, be prepared for babies and quite a few of them. males and females will need to be kept separate. i really just didn't like the smell, boys are worse then girls. for a 10 gallon tank size 2 females are ok provided you have places for them to hide from each other and things to keep them amused. males can fight if kept together a little too cozy. hope that helps

get your snake eating f/t, and you can keep a month or two (or six) supply with no effort at all.

How many snakes do you own currently? Are you planning to own more in the future? If you only have one snake, than I would avoid breeding mice, it would be easy to get out of control and you end up with way too many. The cost of feeding and cleaning the mice can end up costing more than just buying 4 of them a month.

If you do have many snakes, than the cost of cleaning and feeding them will certainly cost a lot less than buying them from a store.

As far as your questions, keeping females together is a good idea, they all help in the raising of young. Though careful when introducing new adults to established colonies, this is a good way to have mice fight with each other. A 15 x 15 cage can hold a good amount of mice, as a start, one male to three females is probably more than enough for you. Figure an average of 13 babies per female, that is 36 babies on average per month if the male breeds with all three females. If you have one male and one female, that is 13 babies you need to feed off. In one month, if you only have one snake to feed, you will have 9 other mice to house, if you do not properly separate the males and females, than you can end up with a lot more really quick.

I caution you because when I started breeding mice, I did not have enough snakes to feed to rid myself of the mice, so I ended up constantly freezing mice and giving them away. It was such a hassle that I had to buy more snakes to eat all the mice I was producing.

Originally Posted by Junkyard

It was such a hassle that I had to buy more snakes to eat all the mice I was producing.

so THAT'S what happened.

So, I've only got one snake at the moment..will be looking to get another when I shift my BP into a larger cage. So I dont need to breed mice, nor do I want to. I just want to stock a bunch of mice so I have one hand, rather than going to the pet store every week which is not always possible. So ideally, I'm just looking to keep 5-6 which I will feed out, and then restock once a month.

I will start looking at F/T at some stage, just want to get my BP eating regularly, and then I'll try shift him onto frozen. For now, it's live all the way.

get a small cage (i used a hermet crab cage) and hold the 5 or 6 in there until you want to feed.

www.bigcheeserodents.com when you want to feed frozen.