i am thinking of starting a experement to enlarge the size of the mouse and hopefuly the nutrition of that mouse

now how i intent to do this is by selective breeding, i will pick the largest mice from two seprate unrelated familys and then breed these togiether. obviosley this will be through many generations and may require more than two blood lines, but this is basicley how i will go about it.

BUT
i may be able enlarge the mice but will that nesisarily improve there nutritional value for the snakes. i dont know wiether i will be produceing fat mice, mice with more mucle mass or any thing else.

i have also i have done a little research on useing geneticly engeneared mice but i i have alot of reservations on doig this i am not sure on what chemicals or anything else that may be risidul form any genetic engenering or inbreeding or the mice to produce these larger or obese mice

so if any one has done or has acsess to any reasearch that might help or that might want to do some brainstorming, or has any feed back at all to what i am doing it would be greatley apreciated

regards Alan

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Would small rats be easier than GM, or months/years of selective breeding?

You, if you choose the correct mice could generate a selectivly bred mouse that is larger than the norm, with muscle rather than fat. Basicallychoose one with a large frame and no excess baggage.

But for it to be anything worth jumping about, you would need lots of unrelated mice, and a year or so of selective breeding.

I can see the benifits of having a larger mouse, with fussy snakes yet they can be fed smaller prey or weened onto rats, which IMHO are better nutritionally than mice, or mammites.

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i understand that it will take a while and as i said i know i will need alot of unrelated mice and but what i was unsure of was that
is it an acutal fact that mice are less nutritional than mice and if so is it not only bacause of there smaller size and less muscle mass

also i didnt realy conside gm as an option

another ponit if the mouse is only nutritionly inferier to the rat because of its size, then enlargeing the mouse would be much easyer than shrinking the rat

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test i cant find iton the fourm bi t

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Fair enough, and good on you if you pull it off, but i think it is a lot of wasted effort when you can move on to small ratsjust as easily.

Mice tend to be skinny things, or fat things, i dont think i have ever seen a mouse with huge mucsle mass.

It may be worth ooking into lab mice, given the larger clutch size the process will be faster, and the females are genrally x% bigger than normals since they are bred to have lots of babies.

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you can increase the nutritional value of your mice that you are feeding by loading the insides. Just cut open the stomach and add a rat fluff or two and wahey suddenly youve got a gutloaded mouse with the nutritional benefits of a rat.

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