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Sick mice?

waldo

waldo

Crazy Tarantula Lady
I recently bought a pair of young mice. The last 3-4 days I've noticed that the male has been kinda lethargic, sneezing and sounds kinda congested. Yesterday when I cleaned their cage I also noticed he has a wound on one of his testicles, when I checked again later the wound was reopened.
Hes eating and drinking normally but I don't know what I should do for him. I don't want to replace him as they are my daughters "pets".
Is there any kind of antibiotic I can give him to help clear up his respiratory problem? I though maybe the shavings were bothering him so I switched from aspen to pine. I should know in a day or two if that helped.
 
In my first attempt to breed mice I had a male in there that the females didn't like I guess :shrugs: so they chewed off his testicles :eek1:

culled him, froze him, and thawed him out the next time one of my snakes had to eat. I got a new male to do the deed.

It's unfortunate, I think the only way however to get it to stop, IF that is what is happening is to remove him from the females :shrugs:
 
Sounds like you have 2 males in the cage. Males will fight each other for dominance and the first place that they go for is the scrotum. Your best bet is to get either two females or a male and a female (you will get babies), or you can just seperate the mice and keep them in seperate cages.

As for antibiotics and all, you may try bacitracin or neosporin on the wound to help it heal, and for the sneezing, are you using cedar or pine for bedding? the aeromatics from these two bedding woods can cause RI's.
 
Mice are weird, but cute.
I had a male mouse that my friend was keeping for me because I couldn't keep it at my old house 'cause I still lived with my parents(by that you can tell I love all animals)..
Anyway..
She put my male mouse with another male mouse and a female..
I go over to her house..My mouse and the female are eating the other male mouse..
It was pretty sick..
A couple days later..I go over..and she says "don't look in the cage!"
I look..the female is eating my mouse, and he's already halfway eaten.
Pretty gross.
I told her to feed the female to her snake..But she said no, she wasn't gonna feed that crazy thing to her snake..
But anyway, yeah, the other mice might be chewing on him.
 
Switching from aspen TO pine may make it worse. Aspen is better for them, pine and cedar can cause respiratory problems.

You could try tetracycline or amoxicillin in the water, but you'll have to research the dosage as I don't know the mouse dosage.

I agree with the guess about 2 males together causing the injiry, or else a really aggressive female. With mice it's never a good idea to have 2 males together.
 
No, its not two males and I don't belive the wound is from a bite. Looks more like a cut from a piece of wood that has since been removed from the cage. The wound looks much better today, it has scabbed over nicely, I'm just going to leave it alone.
His respiritory problem seems better this AM too, he is on pine since yesterday. He had no problems until I put them on the aspen, weird I know.

I've kept and bred just about every type of rodent over the years and have never had a sick one before. If I had a adult snake I could just feed him off and replace him but my corns are both small.
 
I too have been having problems getting well mice from various pet shops. Be careful with that sneezing stuff, it can spread to all of the others. I brought home a male, 1 week later i hear sneezing coming from him, 5 days later all the mice are sneezing. They werent producing either so i culled them all out. Does anyone know what the tetracycline dose is if you put it in their water?

Thanks
 
I actually went ahead and separated him for awhile. I think he is still too young to breed so there really is no reason for him to be with the girls. I did go pick up 2 more females, hopefully out of three of them someone is pregnant.
 
I took a 250 mg tablet, broke it in half and added it to a 8oz water bottle. It will either cure or kill him.
 
Ok, guess I was wrong. I looked up the dosage for rats, and that was about right for tetracycline. Since mice drink less than rats, it will probably be the correct dosage. Here's the list for rats.

http://www.rmca.org/Articles/dchart.htm

Just be sure to completely cover the water bottle because light will neutralize the tetracycline.
 
The antibiotics are working. I went ahead and treated the whole colony(4) since they came from the same place. I haven't heard any sneezing this AM, how much longer should they get the meds?
 
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