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two dead females -- throats ripped out

rosecat

rosecat

New member
i'm relatively new to the breeding mice thing. this morning i looked in at one of 2 my colonies and discovered 2 of the 3 females were dead. both had their throats pretty much ripped out.

the colony with the mice in question is from petco. there was 3 females, 1 male. one of the dead females was pregnant, the other was the scrawnist of the mice. The remaining living are a preg female and the male.

any suggestions as to why this happened? my bf thinks the 2 were fighting, but since both were dead a 3rd mouse had to have had a hand in it.

~rosecat
 
They weren't necessarily killed by the mice. It's normal for mice and rats to eat the corpses of their dead to eliminate the body which could attract predators. They may have died of sickness. If they're from Petco, they probabluy did. I've bought a lot of mice from Petco and a lot of them would just die for no apparent reason.
 
the male/female that are alive were previously together (for about 24 hrs) and then moved into the 2 dead females cage, 2 dead females had been together about 3 weeks.

I could easily believe that the cream colored female died from some other sickness, she hadn't been looking too great for a while. However the other one seemed to be doing pretty well to me.
 
It's difficult to say what may have happened...the male and female that were together may have killed the other two, it happens quite often with adults that are introduced seperately.

It does sound like the other little one was ill though...

Another possibility, you haven't mentioned just how pregnant the other female was, she may have been old, I had a rat that was old and had a heart attack induced by going into labour, so that is also a possibility...
 
well i think it was pretty young, because its not super noticeably pregnant (unlike my other female in the other colony whose HUGE!).

also i'm leaning towards sickness now because the male is dead, no marks, just dead. The remaining female looks okay... i guess they just have some odd illness or something. I def won't be getting anymore petco mice.
 
If you get new ones, feed off the last one even if it still seems healthy. Disinfect everything before you try with all new mice.
 
well i have another colony ... would it be worth it to just get rid of the remaining petco female? my friend has a royal python that only eats live ... im not crrently set up to euthanize mice (i will be shortly)
 
Ifthe others died of some unknown sickness, you don't want to pass it to your other mice, so if it were me I'd get rid of it.
 
i just called my friend and they want the mouse and will be over shortly to pick it up :D so hopefully things will be okay with the other mice
 
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