hairless?

I found this little mouse in the feeder ben and got him ,can anyone tell me if its a hairless mouse? I mean he does have alot of peach fuzz! I named him Skinner!

Only time will tell.

Just from my experiences.....I would say no, usually hairless are with out hair from the beginning...however there are some rodents that have some hair on some parts and are hairless elsewhere......When we used to have hairless rats I saw that alot in the litters, you would have several completely hairless and then some that kind of resembled grimlins....tufts of hair in random places......cute mouse though either way.

I've had hairless mice. They develop their coats normally until around 5 weeks of age, then the hair starts to fall out. The baldness pattern tends to start right around their eyes, so they look like they have naked goggles. It progresses from there until they have no hair. Some will regrow a sparse coat as they mature, then lose the hair again. You mouse does not look like it has the typical hairless balding, but it does have a funny baldish spot of the top of its head? Otherwise, I would say that it looks like a fuzzy mouse (not a baby mouse, but the fuzzy gene, that is nearly hairless.) Fuzzy mice do not develop normal coats as they grow, they look like the naked one in the bunch when the mice are fuzzy's/hoppers/weanlings. But with fuzzy mice, most do eventually develop a sparse, soft coat at maturity, very few stay "almost bald." They look very much like your mouse, kind of shiny when the hair is short, but they can also be seen in longhair. With the longhair gene, the hair is still sparse and thin, its just longer. If your mouse loses all of its hair, then you may have a true hairless that just has atypical balding pattern, but if its coat stays sparse/thin and soft then you may have the fuzzy gene there. Since you bought it from a feeder bin, there is no way to be sure that it wasn't just a runt that could not get enough nutrition to develop properly. It's a cute mouse either way .

At work we breed Nude (hairless) mice as well as many other breeds. They do have some hair as stated before only when they come from lines that have genes for both Nude and normal hair, such as Nude x het Nude breeding or het Nude x het Nude.

A Nude x Nude breeding does not usually have good results with offsping as many tend to die at a very young age because they at no point have hair to keep them warm, and sadly the female Nude mice are very poor mothers. They have the tendency to not nurse their young, so it is recommended to have a normal haired milk mother if you do produce Nude offspring.

That said... I would say the little one is actually displaying a form of skin disease known as Alopecia. It can be caused by many factors from allergies, parasites, chemicals, rash, and illness. It's when hair starts to fall out or not grow in completely due to some form of skin irritation. It's usually associated with an external factor, the most common two are mites and a buildup of urea or ammonia from dirty bedding. I would highly suggest segregating the mouse with a new clean form of bedding. Carefresh makes a bedding that is natural, not recycled, and free of chemicals. It is best to rule out allergies and dirty bedding before moving to parasite control. That would be necessary if you truly feel like keeping this one that is, but I would not suggest feeding it to any reptiles until you know for sure what has caused the skin irritation.

Good luck!

As far as it having a rash I dont think so,it was with alot of other mice all of which had perfect coats,also it was kept in a clean enviroment,it dont ever scratch itself and it just has fuzzy hair that is all even over its body,it eats and behaves normally,if it were some type of skin problem I would think that it would have patches of hair missing He has a even amount of hair all over his body and dont act as if his fur is bothering him in anyway.I will keep you updated as he matures!