Infertility In Does: At What Age Does It Occur?
A lot of people are interested in finding out at what age does are infertile as they would like to put an infertile doe in with a buck to keep him company. This article is written from my own experiences and observations to try and help answer this question.
First of all, I would like to address other estimates that may exist. These are mostly based on laboratory mice or those mice used to breed pinkies for snake food. These mice are fed inferior food (and often have a lot of competition for it) and are bred back to back with no rest period. They are also often bred unselectively and may be smaller, weaker mice (they have been in my experience). Any animal bred too often and not fed the best food will produce weak young and probably shorten their breeding life as their body can no longer cope. Snake food breeders often recommend to remove does 9-10 months old from the breeding programme as they begin to produce smaller litters - NOT because they become infertile as people seem to think. It is simply that snake food breeders want maximum yield.
Snake food breeders want the maximum yield of pinkies per litter
In my personal experience I have known a doe aged 17 months get pregnant and have a normal sized litter, indicating that she may still have had a decent reproductive life ahead of her if she had been allowed further contact with bucks. I also had another doe who I tried to breed from 4 months old who seemed infertile. After a while she moved into the bucks' cage to live there as she was being quite dominant with the other does. Aged 13 months she finally and unexpectedly got pregnant and gave birth to a litter of 5 does. This was her first litter and she was a lot older than she should have been to give birth for the first time but all went well and she was a good mum.
From these experiences I would never recommend that a doe under 2 years was likely to be infertile. Even a doe who may seem to be infertile (as per the example above) may get pregnant at an age when it could be dangerous for her to have a first litter. If you're going to put a male and female together you must be prepared or not mind if they do produce babies (in which case you will need 2 cages as dad will have to be separated before birth).
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