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Just a bit of a rant...

Velvet

Velvet

Totally corn crazy!!!!
Hi Guys,

Just want to verbalise some frustrations regarding mice! lol :argue:

I am officially at my wits end with regards to my mouse breeding efforts! I have kept rodents for years but the mice always seem to let me down! They just seem to die at a drop of a hat for no apparent reason, they breed poorly and I just can't take it anymore!

On the other hand, I have Multimammary mice who are THRIVING!!! They are doing so so well!

I have two colonies of MMs and two colonies of mice and I have actually just decided to axe the one colony of mice and start a new MM colony! :dancer:

Oh PS: my mice have clean bedding, good temps, excellent quality feed, fresh water etc etc...
 
Do you think it's the temperature? Mice breed better and thrive at cooler temps, whereas your multis would be better adapted to your temps?
 
Could be..I keep that room as cool as possible with the door open etc.

I am not putting in an aircon for bloody mice when we don't even have one ourselves! lol

I think I will just stick to the mms, they don't smell, they don't eat each other, they don't eat their young, they aren't INCREDIBLY prone to disease as the mice seem to be...They have bigger litters and are better mothers... lol
 
Avarage room temp is about 28-30 degrees celcius here at the moment...Possibly a bit cooler.
 
If your mice have an excellent diet, they won't eat their young unless there is something really wrong with them. Mice eat their young to replace calcium and protien lost during pregnancy. They are intelligent in that they eat the weakest ones first, but they'll never kill and eat their young if they don't have to. They will eat a corpse to dispose of it, but they won't kill and eat unless they're really lacking something.

I'm surprised your mice aren't breeding. Mine average 15 pinks per litter. Are you sure you only have one male? Sometimes a dominant male will force a smaller one into submission. That would definitely explain a lack of offspring!

Just giving suggestions. :)
 
My mice are prolific, they produce 15-25 per litter every 4ish weeks. they go down to temps of around 10 degrees overnight and currently don't get above 15-20 degrees during the day (Celsius). Where i live we haven't got above freezing for over two weeks!!
 
hiddenhollowherp said:
If your mice have an excellent diet, they won't eat their young unless there is something really wrong with them. Mice eat their young to replace calcium and protien lost during pregnancy. They are intelligent in that they eat the weakest ones first, but they'll never kill and eat their young if they don't have to. They will eat a corpse to dispose of it, but they won't kill and eat unless they're really lacking something.

I'm surprised your mice aren't breeding. Mine average 15 pinks per litter. Are you sure you only have one male? Sometimes a dominant male will force a smaller one into submission. That would definitely explain a lack of offspring!

Just giving suggestions. :)
Click to expand...

As usual I disagree with almost everything you say about mice.
Mice eat their young for a variety of reasons. Probably the most common is because they are new moms, they start to clean their babies and don't know when to stop. They also naturally cull their litters to a size they are capable of handling, so sometimes a mom just eats some of the pinkies because she has too many, or is in overcrowded cage. They often eat the weaker babies and runts. They can even simply acquire a taste for blood. A poor diet is one cause but not the only one.
Males will coexist in bachelor tanks, but if there are females around usually fight or even kill one another. The exception being a male that has been raised in the same tank will sometimes be tolerated by the dominant one. And it's kind of hard to miss it when a grown mouse is male so I doubt Velvet missing the obvious :rolleyes:
(Wasn't it you that had the post asking how to tell the males from females a week or so ago? LOL)
 
Yeah. That was me. Which is why I can understand how one could miss it. My males, when they're fighting for dominance, often bite eachother in the testacles. I don't know what the significance of it is, but when they're really young, it might stunt genital growth. :shrugs:
 
That's why I cull the males early.. To me a it's little kinder than leaving them in there to get picked on and bitten. One male per group, any others get culled, fed or used to start a new colony.
 
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