Pics of our new mouse colony we just started

The local pet store in our town doesn't really have much to choose from in regard to mice. So Jan and I made the 30 minute trip to the nearest Petco and bought 1 male and 5 females to start our own colony. Enjoy the pics.

This is Stud. We picked a brown male so we could pick him out of the crowd at a glance.
http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t...ecolony008.jpg

The next two pics are of stud's first victim. She looks like she is going to explode!
http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t...ecolony021.jpg
http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t...ecolony016.jpg

And the last pic is of the four females who don't appear to be bred yet.
http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t...ecolony013.jpg

SHe is going to explode. lol. I tried breeding mice a few years back and it never took off. Had one male to 4 females and never got anything for a few months so I just started to feed them off. lol. Grats on that gravid female hehe.

It appears that the others maybe pregnant just early pregos!! I have 3 heavy pregnant females right now and can't wait either!! I have 1 colored male too to be able to tell him from the females!! LOL
Good Luck!! Melissa

Oh goodness she is huge! I love it when they get like that!

In the pic of the other females, the one that is looking down by your wrists looks preggo to me. You can see her sides bulging a little bit.

Sad news from the mice colony...
My super prego momma died during the night. Absolutely no idea why. She was fine when I fed them last night, but when I went to check on her today I found her dead. She was carrying our first litter. Bummer!

Tell me if this sound stupid...
I had separated her from the others (1M-4F) and had her in an enclosure of her own because I didn't know if the other mice would bother her, with her being so close to delivery. So I separated her and she was alone. Could this have had anything to do with it? It's the only thing we can think of.

Not sure if that could have killed her or not, I guess it's possible that lifting her may have caused the babies to shift inside her and made it impossible to deliver. I don't move my females at all and leave the whole colony together for their entire lives but I've still lost some pregnant ones from time to time. I think giving birth, especially for a first time mother is just tough on them.

I also like to use a brown male and white females for my mouse colonies. It makes it easy to find the male right away. All of my males are het albino so I always get a nice even 50/50 split of brown and white on all of my litters.