Sasheena
06-06-2005, 11:33 PM
Well I thought I might ramble on a bit about my mice, about darwinism, and a few other topics. :)
Let's roll back the clock to the first year I started raising mice. Late summer, AC failure, and 3/4ths of my mice died along with nearly all of the males. I cried buckets. (they all had names!)
Early spring the following year, I switched feed, AND there was a heat wave, AC worked but was overworked and not keeping up, half my mice died.
Late summer same year, the MAIN AC died, and Wumph! a third of the mice are dead.
Roll forward again to the next spring, heat started up again, AC working fine, but still, 1/4th of the mice die within a week of the temperatures really going up.
End of the summer, AC cord (new AC) chewed through by the rats.... about 15% of the mice killed in the heat. (The RATS were fine)
Now here we are at the beginning of a new summer. Power failure, and my NEW AC is so clever... it needs to be turned back on manually after the power goes out. Of course I don't know this (silly me) and after a day and a half, the smell is pretty powerful.... I go in and about 5% of the mice are dead.
See a strange pattern developing? Or several?
1. Raising mice in Arizona is the pits during the summer, 1 little AC failure, and you have problems!
2. The number of casualties I've had has decreased dramatically every year.
This second point is really the point of this post.... I have some thoughts about "survival of the fittest"...
When I began my colonies, I had some lab mice, and a LOT of fancies. Very little tolerance to the heat. After the first die-off, all the mice remaining were the most hardy mice... the ones who could tolerate heat the best. Over a number of different die-offs the only mice that go on to reproduce in my colonies are the ones that have the strongest resistance to the heat. Also, in the last year and a half we've lived where I've been unable to keep the wild house mice from infiltrating my tame colonies. (They chew their way INTO my mouse cages, they run on several mouse wheels i have set up for them, they have litters in the middle of the mouse house floor!) I estimate that approximately 20% of my mice are hybrids with the wild mice. This makes them slightly smaller, a lot more athletic, and I'm sure that with the influx of wild Arizona mouse genes comes a high level of tolerance to the heat.
Some of the drawbacks to the heat... the mice still don't produce much when it's so hot. I noticed a different trend while cleaning and clearing up the mess from today's tragedy.... as before, the highest number of casualties were among my pregnant females about to pop. But instead of ALL of them dying, I think that I had about 25% of the very pregnant end up having MISCARRIAGES and LIVE through the experience. I found a number of "aborted" litters. I found that interesting that several of the mice were able to cope with the heat in this way.
Of course I have to hope that I have no more AC incidents, but it seems that ACs are just NOT the most reliable thing here in AZ.
Anyway, I thought I would share some observations.
Let's roll back the clock to the first year I started raising mice. Late summer, AC failure, and 3/4ths of my mice died along with nearly all of the males. I cried buckets. (they all had names!)
Early spring the following year, I switched feed, AND there was a heat wave, AC worked but was overworked and not keeping up, half my mice died.
Late summer same year, the MAIN AC died, and Wumph! a third of the mice are dead.
Roll forward again to the next spring, heat started up again, AC working fine, but still, 1/4th of the mice die within a week of the temperatures really going up.
End of the summer, AC cord (new AC) chewed through by the rats.... about 15% of the mice killed in the heat. (The RATS were fine)
Now here we are at the beginning of a new summer. Power failure, and my NEW AC is so clever... it needs to be turned back on manually after the power goes out. Of course I don't know this (silly me) and after a day and a half, the smell is pretty powerful.... I go in and about 5% of the mice are dead.
See a strange pattern developing? Or several?
1. Raising mice in Arizona is the pits during the summer, 1 little AC failure, and you have problems!
2. The number of casualties I've had has decreased dramatically every year.
This second point is really the point of this post.... I have some thoughts about "survival of the fittest"...
When I began my colonies, I had some lab mice, and a LOT of fancies. Very little tolerance to the heat. After the first die-off, all the mice remaining were the most hardy mice... the ones who could tolerate heat the best. Over a number of different die-offs the only mice that go on to reproduce in my colonies are the ones that have the strongest resistance to the heat. Also, in the last year and a half we've lived where I've been unable to keep the wild house mice from infiltrating my tame colonies. (They chew their way INTO my mouse cages, they run on several mouse wheels i have set up for them, they have litters in the middle of the mouse house floor!) I estimate that approximately 20% of my mice are hybrids with the wild mice. This makes them slightly smaller, a lot more athletic, and I'm sure that with the influx of wild Arizona mouse genes comes a high level of tolerance to the heat.
Some of the drawbacks to the heat... the mice still don't produce much when it's so hot. I noticed a different trend while cleaning and clearing up the mess from today's tragedy.... as before, the highest number of casualties were among my pregnant females about to pop. But instead of ALL of them dying, I think that I had about 25% of the very pregnant end up having MISCARRIAGES and LIVE through the experience. I found a number of "aborted" litters. I found that interesting that several of the mice were able to cope with the heat in this way.
Of course I have to hope that I have no more AC incidents, but it seems that ACs are just NOT the most reliable thing here in AZ.
Anyway, I thought I would share some observations.