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Serious about Breeding your Mice? Here's some
encouraging counsel to make things easier for you.
You may want to raise your own mice for pets, for selling to
the pet trade, or for live pet food, so you will consider breeding
your mice. Here are some things to consider and/or acquire
before buying your breeder mice.
1. You will need the proper type of housing for your mice.
If you can afford the cages sold by pet stores especially
for mice that will be your best bet, but other types of
containers will work fine as long as they have adequate
ventilation and floor space. You can use rabbit hutches,
fish tanks, Tupperware bins, and many other types of cages.
Just make sure that with whatever cage you choose, there are
no holes that a small mouse might be able to squeeze
through, and that mice can't escape easily when you open the
cage for feeding and cleaning or you may have a mouse hunt
on in your house.
Choose a spot for the cage that will not be too hot or too
cool, so that your mice will breed well. Also make sure that
the mice will be protected from disturbance by potential
predators such as dogs, cats, rats, or children and that
they have good ventilation. Make every effort to ensure that
your mice have a day of twelve hours of light and twelve of
dark and you will get the best breeding from them.
2. You will want the right type of bedding, and plenty of
it, so that you can change it often to help keep the cage
clean and your mice healthy. You can buy prepackaged bedding
material at your pet store or use shredded paper towels or
some other nontoxic porous material.
Also get clean sawdust and lay it a couple of fingers deep
as the bottom substrate and it will absorb liquids and
reduce the odor. (You may be able to buy larger quantities
of sawdust from a feed store at much lower prices than the
small bags at the pet store.) Spread the softer bedding
material on top of the sawdust.
Change the sawdust every week or sooner if you notice an
odor, and replace all the bedding every two weeks.
3. Buy a good small animal water bottle and make sure it is
securely fastened to the side of the cage, with the water
outlet at a height easily accessed by the smallest mice. Be
sure to keep it full of clean, fresh water at all times, and
wash the entire bottle every week in clean hot water to
prevent algae or mold growth.
If you are going to be raising many mice in more than one
cage, you can buy a watering system that connects to a tap
and runs fresh water to each cage automatically.
4. Buy a bag of mouse food from your pet store. You can use
hamster, rat or even pig food if necessary, but in any event
plan to also offer your mice fresh fruit and vegetables and
maybe the odd treat of mealworms or the like every few days
to supplement their diets.
Put a small non-tip pet feeding dish into the cage, and
clean and refill it daily with the commercial feed. Feed the
fresh supplemental vegetables and fruit or insects in a
separate dish, a small saucer will do fine. Be sure to
remove any fresh food that is not eaten within one day, to
prevent insect pests and mold.
Read more about breeding your mice and caring for the babies
Breeding Mice here on this website.
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