I own a four year old female pied that exclusively eats mice. When I got her a year ago she was 800 grams. Now she’s just under 1500 grams, not empty.
She’s on jumbo mice.
I’ve been planning to breed her next season.
But since she’s a bit of a special case, I was wondering what weight would be safe to breed her?
One of my biggest concerns would be that she lays eggs but then isn’t able to get back up to weight. But also I was thinking after laying she may be more inclined to take rats. If anyone has experience or information regarding breeding mousers please lmk
Any animal can get back up to weight, it is just a matter of timing that is important. If you do breed her and she stays a mouser then you may just have to only breed her every two or three years instead of every year.
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The last thing I want to do is risk her health just to breed her. Do you have any thoughts on what would be a safe weight to breed her at? I wasn’t sure If I should wait to breed her until she’s a good amount over what most would consider a minimum weight.
At four years of age, she is probably fine to try breeding now as she is sexually mature enough. The whole “weight” thing came in to being when people started pushing for the shortest time to be able to breed an animal and needing a “benchmark” to justify by.
One note for you though:
Something people do not really consider - breeding in and of itself, even for an animal in peak condition, is an inherently risky activity.
For what its worth have you tried offering her an ASF? If you can find a ready supply of them, I had 2 mouser females that eagerly took to ASFs and then grew much faster once switched over.
No I don’t have a supplier anywhere around me. But I have been wanting to try an asf for both her and Atlas my seasonal eater for a while. If I ever find someone that produces them I’ll 100% see if they like them.
Once you can locate some, I highly recommend the ASF, they’re an excellent feeder in general but in particular for ball pythons. They don’t get much larger than a small rat, have a great temper when colonized properly, and although they breed a bit slower compared to some other rodents, also naturally excrete lower levels of ammonia than most species of rat and mouse do, virtually any scents from my enclosures are unnoticeable with regular cleaning. If you haven’t looked through it already, we have a great thread on them here.
I started breeding them about 6 months ago, they are slower to start because of their slow growth rate, but once they get going they have huge litters, and as long as their higher protein needs are met they are very good parents, its been great so far. I’ve since stopped breeding regular rats as I don’t need them to supplement the demand anymore.
One thing that worked for me was trick feeding with two snakes that would only eat multies (asfr’s)
I had the preferred pray item on one tweezer, let them smell it and rubes the scent on the substrate, heated the rat which was always refused previously.
Its hard, but I hold both in the tub, then when you have the strike, switch the preferred prey item to the one you want. You have to be fast.
It got two of my multi only feeders on to rats after about 4 of these trick feedings.
It also got a chick only feeder to take rats eagerly in time.
No guarantee but it worked for me.
I think chicks are worse than mice nutritionally (Others please correct if I am wrong.)
I would only try chicks for a non feeder of many months. Actually I had one that didn’t feed for 10 months that that worked with, (it was probaly a live feeder that was sold as a F/T feeder)
then trick feeding got it onto F/T rats.
If you have a mouser, i would try Multies or/and and rats as the new trick food source.
Also small similar sizes to the mouse its used too might help.
I would suggest nutritionally, best to worst is, ASFR, Rats, Mice then chicks.
Again, others feel free to educate me further.
Yeah I definitely have no intention of using chicks as a staple source just to try to get my guy atlas eating again.
I have tried scenting rats but mars just looks at me like I’m stupid haha
