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How bad do they really smell?

Z

zwyatt

FutureTransitionalFossil
For all you mouse keepers/breeders, I was wondering how bad they really smell? Is it an issue of what type of set-up you have and how often you clean it?
I've heard some people say they just couldn't handle the smell. On the other hand, obviously quite a few people on this forum have mice and seem to survive. Is it a matter of having a separate room for them or just living with the smell?
I've toyed with the idea of raising my own feeders for the fun and frustration of it. If I'm in an apartment, with limited mouse placement options, and the smell isn't "manageable" then it's probably not something I want to get into.
:)
 
i have some and i just use wood shavings for them , i clean the cage about once a week and the smell isn't too bad unless you put the head right over the cage. They are in my bedroom so it isn't too bad.
I think that the smell is related too how crowded and how often you change the cage mostly.
 
The smell isn't bad, even in close quarters, if you have a manageable number of them and are diligent with cleaning.

I keep 3 to 4 in a 10 gallon aquarium on aspen, which gives me a little over a week before I start to smell the cage when I walk by. If you put your head in the cage prior to that, yes, you can smell them, but standing right next to the cage you can't for a good week. If I clean it weekly they rarely stink. Now, when I tried pine they'd blow you away at 10 paces within 2 days. Pine did nothing for me.

Another important point is that they love to urine soak the furniture. I clean the wheel and bowl weekly (some good hot water and a little dish soap, quick and easy). The wheels I have are solid plastic, so if I don't clean them weekly they really stink. Little buggers love to gum up the wheel. Same goes for the wire ones. Clean the cage but not the wheel and it'll still stink. I find the plastic ones easier to clean than the wire ones. :D

I threw out the wood tunnels...you couldn't keep them clean. I just use paper towel tubes and throw those out with cleanings.

Always have at least one extra holding tank, you'd be surprised how often you need it...growing some up for a new colony, splitting a couple off the group, etc. It's also handy come cleaning day when you can have a clean tank always ready to move the mice into.

I enjoy the mice, cute little buggers. :santa:
 
Thanks for the helpful replies!
Sounds like I might just have to give this mice thing a try once I get into my new apartment come this next fall.
 
When I kept mice a while back I used aspen and sprinked baking soda on the bottom of the cage before adding new substrate then every 2 days or so sprinkle a tiny amount on the bedding and mix it up. The smell is almost un noticable. I am going to try that again with my new mice but I will try to clean it out every 4 days at least. The smell is greater the more you have in a smaller area.
 
marky-b said:
It's worse with male mice. Heck, it's worse with any male animal ;b
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lol I would say that's mostly true, though I have known some women that can keep up with the boys :grin01:
 
I think a lot of the smell has to do with the substrate that is used. When I tried to use aspen it was awful and I had to change it weekly. But then I tried CareFresh and its not too bad now, and I can change them every two weeks. But I also have a bottom layer of timothy hay underneath the CareFresh that helps with odor. The hay helps with odor, they nibble on it, and use it for nests too. As far as cage furniture goes, keep it simple. Toilet rolls and plastic hides that can be put in the dishwasher are great. Wheels are great for them, but hard to clean. I bought one for a buck at a thrift store, and then had to oil it with PAM (vegetable oil spray).
 
It seem like it goes Pine < Aspen < Care Fresh with Timothty hay. now how win CAre FReash with Timothy hay vs. Aspen with baking soda???? :sidestep:
 
Do the mice themselves stink? No, not particularly. The mouse urine is what smells and especially the males urine.

It also depends on how many mice you plan on keeping. The more mice you add directly correlates to the strength of the odor.

As far as bedding goes. I don't think it has anything to do with making them smell worse but alternately, how well the bedding masks the odor.

Again back to numbers and depending on how many you keep. It would not be cost efficient for me to buy expensive bedding to house 30 colonies on. I might as well buy f/t in that case and cut out all the extra work.

Q
 
Quigs said:
It would not be cost efficient for me to buy expensive bedding to house 30 colonies on. I might as well buy f/t in that case and cut out all the extra work.

Q
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That's a good point and something I hadn't thought about. For now, I would just start with one colony of 1.3 or something similar so the cost of bedding shouldn't hamper me too much.


Thanks to everyone for the good bedding suggestions and opinions. I'm getting more excited about giving this a try. I'm gonna have to keep it bottled up though since I can't start for another 7 months!
 
Gee Zach, you were just here last week, if you'd have asked I could have ushered you to the garage to see the mice/rats. =P

To people who aren't used to animal odors, they're more than likely going to find it offensive. To me, I grew up on a farm and was used to a chicken house that'd asphyxiate some people during the heat of the summer and I never noticed.

With weekly cage cleanings, you should be okay. Like Hurley, pine did nothing for me besides them making it stink more. I think the smell of the pine made them over-compensate and just pee even more than normal. Not to mention, I cannot find a pine bedding that isn't extremely dusty. It just exacerbates their already sensitive respiratory systems.

I've had great luck with the same aspen I use for my snakes (Kaytee brand or Sani-chips). The snakes get a complete change out every 3-4 months depending on how much they've pooed, so its not that often. I buy the aspen mainly for the rodents anyway. I just get the big cart-sized bags at Petsmart and a couple tides me over for about 4 months, I'd say.

I keep the mice in the garage, due to the fact I can make as big of a mess as I want to on the floor. It does have windows open in the summer and a heater in the winter. When the humidity is low, I can manage nearly 2 weeks before I notice the smell. During the heat and humidity of summer, its weekly or twice weekly. My tubs for my mice are 36" x 18" x 6" Sterilite tubs, so they hold quite a bit of bedding and around 1.6-7 mice. When I had mice in the house, it'd be weekly changings.

Unlike Hurley, I had the wire wheels. I despised the chewing of the plastic ones, and they always fell over. Every couple of weeks I'd pop water bottles, wheels, food bowls and wood houses into the dishwasher with lots of detergent using the "sanitize function", it heats it up to 180*. But now that they're in a rack type of environment, they get paper towel and toilet paper tubes with each cage cleaning. They like to chew the remnant paper off and chew the tubes up for nests and everything is tossed with weekly cleanings.

My main complaint about mice in aquariums is the fact that they love to sit on top of the water bottles and pee all down the sides. Disgusting creatures. I think I was happier of the fact of outside-the-cage water bottles with the rack than anything. So if you can find some way to keep them off the top of the bottle, more power to you. I'd even thought of buying one of those hard plastic bottles made for birds, they have an eyelet at the top of the bottle that you can hang, and thought about hanging it from the wire lid with a piece of piano wire.

Every cage cleaning is fresh aspen 1-2" deep, a healthy handful of timothy hay and a handful of shredded newspaper and a paper towel roll or 2 TP rolls. If you want to try the vanilla trick, get the artificial vanilla, its cheaper and seems to lessen the intensity of the smell as well.

I'd say, give a 1.3 a try...and if you find it too offensive, snake food. =)
 
Taceas said:
Gee Zach, you were just here last week, if you'd have asked I could have ushered you to the garage to see the mice/rats. =P
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If I had had any idea last week that I would be seriously considering this I might have asked. I've considered it off and on just in passing a few times in the past, but always thought the smell would be horrendous. Then I got to thinking that maybe if I did it right the smell wouldn't be so bad.
Like I said before, I've got over half a year before I'll be undertaking this project. I'd rather wait until I get settled in a new apartment without roommates, and with a much more liberal pet policy before I give this a try.
 
A word of caution....I used to keep female mice a while back and then decided to breed them for a Biology genetics project. With 2 animals per cage, smellyness was not really a problem with regular cage cleaning until you decide to keep a male. Male mouse urine STINKS period! Even after a few hours of cleaning the cage and changing the bedding, it starts to smell. I had to give it up as I developed migranes due to the smell. So now I breed hamsters instead. Rats are far less smelly but may be too large for your snake to eat. Just visit a pet store that sells mice and take a whiff over the male mice's cage. If you can handle that, then best of luck with your breeding. My response is not meant to discourage anyone from breeding their own mice, but just to warn about the smell of male mice urine.
 
I have a few males. But mine don't smell that bad. I freshen and spot clean my cages every other day and clean it out every week. the Smells don't get to bad. My big problem is one of my males like Urinating on the edge of the food bowl. So when I clean out the cage I wash everything I can. But thats what I do.
 
Personally the only problem I've had with a stinky male mouse was Dads pets. They were kept in a wire cage and liked to climb the bars, and pee all over said bars. After 2 days the cage would smell soooo bad. We ended up having to wash the bars with soapy water every day. That was 1 male mouse (he had one, it did this. After it died he got another, it did the same thing LOL). My aquarium housed males never smell really bad. I always clean the tanks fully every week, dish soap and water.
 
I have tried breeding several times and I always give up because of the stench. Years ago, I used to breed mice for a raptor rehab center I volunteer at. I dont know how I put up with the smell. Recently I tried again (for the second time in 3 months), got 2 females, 1 male. Had them in a 10g in my bedroom with aspen bedding. In less than 12 hours, the smell was unbearable. It ended up leaching into my closet and all my clothes smelled gross (by the end of the week), I had to run them all through the wash. I did everything I could have. I spot cleaned, I did a complete cleaning once a week, put their wire wheel and hide in the wash to sanitize, nothing helped. I have 7 rats in the same bedroom and they barely smell at all. I do live in a 1 bedroom apartment though, and I would smell it the second I walked in the door. I think it all has to with individual preference and how sensitive you are to their smell.
 
My meeese do smell, but since I keep them in the bathroom and keep the door closed to keep out the dog, I only notice it a couple of times a day. Besides, I make the bathroom stink sometimes too :(. I have 5 in a 10 gallon aquarium with a wire lid, 2 inches of aspen with a bit of carefresh mixed in. After a week they DEFINETLY need cleaning, although the guinea pigs I used to raise were worse (then again, those were on pine, which does not keep down odor). If you just kept a few, cleaned them weekly, and put them where you aren't going to walk by constantly, you'll be fine.
My female has a knack for delivering on cleaning day, and I don't want to disturb her yet so I added a little baking soda in. They do sell odor reducers, the one I have says youcan even use it ON the animals-does seem to help a bit. I have to say, mine smell a lot less than the feeder ones (mine are black and white ones) even at the same densities.
 
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