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How quickly do mice mate after giving birth?

Amanda E

Amanda E

Snake Addict!
I'd like to remove from one of my colonies some females that just had babies last night. I want to ensure that they are pregnant before I move them though as I want them to keep breeding (they will be put with an immature male and I don't know how soon he would be able to breed the females).

How long do I need to leave the females with the current male? If I leave them with the male until tomorrow that will be enough time to fertilize them, right?
 
Ya, I have always noticed that too. I always feel sorry for the female because the male is "attacking" her the same day she has her babies. Boy, that was the LAST thing I wanted to do after having my son....
 
From what I understand...

Female mice are 'in heat' again 6 hours after they give birth and then they don't ovulate for 2 weeks...
 
I have witnessed in some of my mice colonies, mating literally minutes after delivering litters.
 
Amanda E said:
I'd like to remove from one of my colonies some females that just had babies last night. I want to ensure that they are pregnant before I move them though as I want them to keep breeding (they will be put with an immature male and I don't know how soon he would be able to breed the females).

How long do I need to leave the females with the current male? If I leave them with the male until tomorrow that will be enough time to fertilize them, right?
Click to expand...

The thing about what you are talking about doing is the new male may killl the babies. They seem to know that they didn't father them and kill those that aren't theirs.
 
DAND said:
The thing about what you are talking about doing is the new male may killl the babies. They seem to know that they didn't father them and kill those that aren't theirs.
Click to expand...
I was going to say the same thing! I've seen it happen numerous times. You might be better off putting a weanling male and weanling females together to start a new colony.
 
What I do is grow up new male/females that are already in the colony so as not to disturb their families. I have had males kill babies (also females killing males) when I would introduce new stock to a colony.
 
Thanks for the warning, but the new male I'm using is actually a younger brother of these 3 females and will have grown up with them, so hopefully there wont be any problems.
 
I've only ever had one instance of a young (but breeding male) to kill the babies, and he didn't last past the 3rd pink I saw him tear apart. ;) Which was weird, because all of the babies were his.

Usually when the males are young and immature the hormones haven't quite reached their maximum level yet, so they do pretty good around babies. And males that have been exposed to pregnant females or babies before, usually just ignore the babies and just lay on top of them for the warmth, no matter if they're theirs or not.

I would monitor his behaviour with the babies before leaving them for any length of time however, just to make sure. They usually kill the kits within 10 minutes of introduction.


Did you all read that article on cannibalization in rodents? Pretty interesting read.
 
Taceas said:
Did you all read that article on cannibalization in rodents? Pretty interesting read.
Click to expand...
Do you have a link? The 1.3 mice I purchased in Oct '04 are down to 1.1 but finally have a litter of 8 (born 1/30) they haven't eaten. PCs been down trying to figure out stable wireless hookup so haven't been current with site. Thanks.
:cheers:
 
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