The 5 steps of breeding
If you ended up on this page, I assume that this link was forwarded to you as a result of wanting to start or improve breeding plans.
To begin with, breeding starts with the basic care and requirements of the breeding animals, which are also simply pets in addition to breeding purposes.
I refer you to the pages below for this information
To begin with, the biggest question that comes BEFORE all practicalities is the question:
Step 1: What do I want to breed and for what?
As a long-term breeder, the biggest piece of advice I can give, based on my own experiences but also a stable image of the breeding community around me, is never to start breeding for selling. People are as fickle as the weather, so this means no matter how well you have your affairs in order… You can never guarantee a sale.
As a breeder you are responsible for all animals resulting from your actions, which also means that you are obliged to ensure that all animals from your breeding receive the correct care at all times. Even if you do not sell the animals, you are either obliged to house the animals yourself, or to ensure that these animals are euthanized or culled in a humane way to avoid suffering / bad housing and therefore neglect.
The average litter produces 10 to 15 offspring, often 75% males and 25% females*. You hardly sell males, if at all, with a few exceptions. In addition, males CANNOT be housed together and splitting brothers with a maximum age of 9 weeks is a requirement to reduce stress and prevent the risk of fatal injuries.
*Percentage from a general survey within hobby breeding and assessed per litter. This means that although there is certainly a chance that this will be different, the chance of more males in relation to females is a more common fact. This also means that even though the statistics indicate that globally and theoretically the chance is 50/50, in practice this in most cases does not fall 50/50 within a total number of <10 litters.
Step 2: Choosing breeding animals
Not all animals that are sold are suitable for breeding, most breeders have strict requirements regarding their sale and therefore do not appreciate it if animals sold by them as pets are bred without asking or notification.
in addition, the animals sold as pets or sold with no known background may be predisposed to diseases and other genetic complications that in some cases are only reflected in reproduction.
The advice is therefore to only breed with animals of which a stable background is known and the breeder can provide you with sufficient information about the line. (how long has the line existed, what is the average lifespan, does the line have a predisposition to certain complications).
Step 3: Housing
In addition to the normal housing of the paternal animals, a number of additional accommodations are required. Think of suitable enclosures for pairing the parents (you don’t want to just place the parents in each other’s territory), you want to place the male back in his own enclosure as soon as the female is visibly pregnant.
Enclosures suitable for childbirth and nursing (these enclosures must be free of bars on the sides and free of any structure that can be climbed into or in which a mother can hide in such a way that babies cannot reach the nipples (tubes, for example). Mothers can sometimes be very heavy handed with the babies and reorganizing their nest, enclosures with bars can therefore be a risk for the mother to push babies out of the enclosure, and the babies can fall to death if they hang on the nipples while mothers climb, or can she leave the babies on a high surface and forget them.
Enclosures suitable for splitting the sexes of the babies at 4 to 4.5 weeks. From 4.5 weeks, mice can be fertile and thus reproduce with brothers / sisters. It is therefore a requirement to split the young males from the sisters AND the mother at 4 to 4.5 weeks.
Step 4: Costs
In addition to the basic costs for food and enrichment for the breeding animals, there are also the necessary costs for reproduction. Think of feeding all the offspring, changing all these bins & systematic anti-parasite and extra secure environmental care due to increased infection pressure. Babies are a huge bullseye for parasites and ivermectin (trachea mite/parasita) is harmful to them. This also means that since you cannot treat the mothers and babies through the blood during the gestation / nursing period, you will have to maintain the environment extra carefully to prevent a potential outbreak. This includes weekly routine cleaning of ALL accommodations & spraying accommodations and surroundings with beaphar miteblocker+. From 5 weeks the babies are old enough for a treatment with beaphar parasita, a decent breeder will ALWAYS treat his/her/their animals preventively before moving.
Then the medical expenses…
So much can go wrong with the reproduction. Think of basically all the increased amount of animals that can all be susceptible to respiratory infections, fungi, tumors and other problems.
Add the following risks to the reproduction:
*babies too big to give birth
*lack of contractions
*uterine inflammation
*deceased babies in the womb
*miscarriages
*sepsis
*decreased or absent milk production.
In the latter case, an option to humanely put the babies to sleep or a surrogate mother is required. Most breeders cover this by having 2 or 3 pairings done at the same time so that there is always another mother with a nest present.
Step 5: Offspring
Many websites still incorrectly state that splitting with 3 weeks is necessary and that moving with 4 weeks is fine.
Science and as an experience expert I can tell you that in 90% of cases where that happens they do not survive or miss a piece of social education, which means that they can develop problematic to aggressive or fearful behavior towards humans and animals.
Most stable good breeders use a splitting age of 4 to 4.5 weeks and a moving age of 6-8 weeks.
Mice start eating independently from about 3 to 3.5 weeks and only then learn to develop their own immune system. Mice are actually born prematurely, their ears don’t open until 7 days after birth and their eyes don’t open until 14 days after birth. Also, mouse babies cannot yet regulate their own temperature until they eat completely independently at 4 weeks. This also means that babies are completely dependent on the protection of their mother’s milk until they eat completely independently.
It is therefore also outdated that eating independently would be enough to go out into the wide world independently and to be exposed to all the stress factors and risks that come with a move. A new environment always has its own bacteria because of how someone lives / the presence of other animals / the family members who visit other places and come home again. The mice are used from birth to 1 type of bacterial environment, the one in which they are born. It is therefore not very strange that a mouse that is just learning to protect itself against other bacteria and viruses cannot handle this. These mice often become fatally ill.
Mouse-Info 