Mice

[TripleMoonsExotic]

I'm having the worst time of breeding mice. My rats are great, never a problem...but mice on the other hand...I could break all of their damn necks!!

This is the 3rd time I've tried a colony of mice. Every other time, they ate there babies within the 1st week of birth. This time though, I had 16 adorable fuzzies (they'd open there eyes in the next few days)! I noticed though, that they were eatting new babies (three mothers were takeing care of this first litter - for some reason there litters were eaten, yet they still took care of the 1st babies). I'm down to 2 babies now. I don't expect them to live though.

Any help out there on this???

[gary]

Try and make the groups smaller e.g. 2 females to a male. I have done this with great success.

Regards
Gary :santa:

[TripleMoonsExotic]

no can do. i don't have enough space to set up 10 cages of 1.2

all are dead now too...

[Darin]

Has each colony been new mice? I know my first time mothers have not taken well to their first litters. I've just left them together and not lost another since, with any of my colonies.

[gary]

You should try setting up a rack system, it takes up very little space and works like a charm. I was fortunate to get racks that they use in the laboratories. I recently had a female give 17 pinks.

Regards
Gary :santa:

[Krenna]

New colonies frequently have part or the entire litter of newborns eaten or killed by one of more adult mouse. Several reasons may account for this. Occasionally, new mothers will kill part or all of her first litter, but not subsequent litters.

Observing, moving, and touching the enclosure; "helping" makes females nervous which often lead to killing offspring.

Lack of food, water, space and being frightened may contribute to loss of pinkies.

Having a male in the enclosure that is not the father of the pinks will usually lessen the chance of a litter surviving. Sometimes a mouse will seem to be cannibalistic, killing every baby hatched in several litters. This rouge mouse will have to be removed.

Older females that show no signs of ever having nursed are generally the culprit and need to be removed.

I would find which mouse is doing the eating and change somethings around, good luck to you.

[TripleMoonsExotic]

I have 4 female black mice, and one of them was witnessed eatting a pink. I don't know which one it was though.

In a 20g long I housed 2.6 (now 1.6 because I fed the one male to a snake because I thought that might be why I was having these issues - it didn't help) on aspen bedding. They are fed a variety of things including Authority dog food (no red dye - all natural), hamster/gerbil seed and the occasional veggies. They also have access to a large water bottle. I don't bother the mice at all except to feed, water and clean.

Of course each colony has been new mice. The others pissed me off and I fed them to my snakes! This paticular colony has 4 sisters that were raised together.