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 #1639124


Animommy
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 Pinkies until???

Last nite i got my 1st "hoggie"; she is 8 months old so obviously on pinkies. i understand that females only get a max of 3’, so i am ASSUMING that they grow slowly & wonder about what age they start feeding on regular size mice?

The reason im asking is because i currently have a bag of approx 75 mice that i cant use anymore, and figured if the hoggie wont need them for a while, i will sell them to someone who can use them, but also am not sure exactly how long they can stay frozen for & be okay?

Thanks in advance for your replies.
02/26/08  06:55pm

 #1639646


JackAsp
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   Message To: Animommy   In reference to Message Id: 1639124


 Pinkies until???

Mine was eight months old and I put her straight on fuzzies. I fed her the smallest ones first, starting with one every five days, and by the end of the bag she was eating three big ones every five days, including when blue. Then I bought hoppers, which at 15-16 months she’s currently eating three of every six days. Her appetite stopped being entirely predictable on the five-day cycle, but all it took to solve the problem was a one day change. I could no doubt give her a single larger mouse every 6 or 7 days, but there are so many of them to a bag that most of the batch would be over a year old by the time it got eaten, so... really not nutritionally prudent. Assuming they were rotated properly and are fresh when you buy them, my understanding is that the nutrients start to drop after about six months, so you wantt o stick with a size that you’ll use up most of during that time. If you already loaded up on pinkies, give her a LOT of them, clear that bag out of the way, and go for fuzzies or hoppers. As for the adult mice, though, she’s still got quite some time. I say just give them away.
02/27/08  12:24am

 #1641532


Animommy
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   Message To: JackAsp   In reference to Message Id: 1639646


 Pinkies until???

Thanks much for your reply! Yea, they said she was about 8 months old, but is still WAY too small for fuzzies yet-hmmm...ill get pics up soon! She’s so dang cute! We named her Matilda LOL!
02/28/08  03:47pm

 #1642003


JackAsp
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   Message To: Animommy   In reference to Message Id: 1641532


 Pinkies until???

Might be small for her age if she wentoff her feed for a while, but Rodentpros fuzzies aren’t exactly... remotely resembling anything consistant. I mean, we’re talking everything from 2 to 10 grams in one bag of 100. If you weight them out and put all the 2s in a baggie with a "2" on it, all the threes in a "3" bag and so forth, the smallest ones still ought to be no problem and as you run out of little ones she’ll grow into the bigger baggies.
Hognoses can take a pretty hefty fuzzy in relation to their size anyway. Not only do fuzzies squish and collapse in there to fit better (their bones aren’t really solid yet) but hoggies have a pretty thick durable neck with proportionate tubing in it. Their bodies seem to deal pretty comfortably with a full belly as well. To give you an iea how big a meal they like, mine went from 389 tp 427 grams when I fed her yesterday, and when she was younger many of her meals were significantly larger, percentage-wise.
Not sure how small yours is, but this is what Bebe looked like the day I got her.


Actually, the lens I was using exaggerates the perspective and makes her look bigger in relation to the pennies than she actually was. She was a hair thicker than a dime, but still thinner than a penny. I was usin a peanut butter jar lid as a soaking dish, to give you an idea.
I got her on a Sunday, dropped off her sample at the vet’s on Monday, and found out on Tuesday she had pinworms. Instead of doing the force-tubing thing, I opted to spike her fuzzies with Panacur, and could only pull that trick off witht he largest fuzzies in the bag. Which she ate. Happily. After that I worked my way up from the smallest, but I’m saying that in that picture, at 58 grams, she could already take almost a hopper.



02/28/08  09:26pm


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