• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Need advise on moma mouse????

Buzzard

Buzzard

two corny
Okay I am set up pretty good and Saturday my first mouse gave birth to 6. I then seperated her to an isolation pen(mostly because I found a half eaten one YUK!!!) and havent had any issues. Now yesterday I had another mouse give birth to 5. And I have noticed she is'nt taking care of them at all. And 2 died by the time I got home from work. So I took the 3 remaining and put them with the 1st momma. She started caring for them like they were her own. Is this normal??? And/Or should I have seperated the 2nd momma like the first? Any help would be awesome.....
 
I don't seperate my mice. The females tend to take turns caring for the litters. I have 1 male to 4 females in each breeding colony and I just leave them together when they are birthing. It isn't uncommon for a first time momma mouse to cannabalize some of her young. Hope that helps. Here is a link I sometimes go to when I need some info...that is if Wade..the resident mouse expert isn't around.
http://www.thefunmouse.com/index.cfm
 
The females in all my cages are young. Would it be better to put some aged females(ones that already had litters) in with newer females.
 
Seriously the best way to have good mommy mice is to let them make the newby mistakes, the more you mess with them the more likely they are to eat the litter. I would just leave the colony together (male and a few females) let them eat a few pinks if they do that because many inexperienced moms do eat the first litter and they will stop doing it after they have practise having babies. Don't seperate or rearrange them. The groups that are familiar with each other will work together to raise the babies.
As far as putting a different female with them, No. they will fight the newcomer. It's a lot easier to put a new male in (if you take the old male out) than a female. But a mom nursing babies will usually accept strange pinkies - the way I do it is to take the pinks I want to introduce and some pinks from the mom I want to give them to, mix them in my hand and give the pile back to the mom.
 
I never seperate my mums either if you have more than one mum then they will all look after each others babies then and if you keep the male in they are good dads as well, they also seem like quite small litters, but you do often get the first litter eaten if they are new mums and quite young.
 
Most of the mice I have are on the younger side. I think these 1st two moms are 1st litters. I do have a group of a little older mice(maybe a month older). I have two in that group that look like pumkins. I am expecting them to pop any day.
 
Also it is a good idea to leave a few pinkies with the mom even if you need some for your snakes. With every litter I try to take all but four or five. The smaller size of the litter means the ones I leave grow faster. The mom still has her babies (and i don't think they know how to count) and the ones that are left in there quickly grow and can later be fed to bigger snakes or used to start other colonies. I don't know how traumatic it is for a mouse to have a litter and I take ALL of them but I try never to do that.
 
yes I second that I never take all the pinkies away from the mum I also leave about 4 or 5 as then the ones remaining grow to a nice size and you dont get any runts. Its also better for the mum to leave some.
 
When you remove an entire litter, your mouse's milk will dry up and she will become very irritable. If she gives birth to a litter while nursing another, you can remove either litter as long as she still has nursing mouslings. I find that giving her something "big 'n juicy" to eat will curb her desires to cannibalize her young. I'd highly recommend chicken or turkey babyfood. Even catfood helps sometimes. Don't use dogfood though, I've heard bad things. 99% of the time, mice pool their babies and feed them in shifts. Dad will sleep with them to keep them warm as well. As the older litters grow, they soon begin to take care of their younger siblings on occasion. You should seperate them by gender at some point or the males will fight and breed with their sisters and mothers. Dad might go after his daughters as well. Mice know no bloodlines. ;)

As mothers grow, they become more motherly.. Kind of like when a human mother gives birth for the first time (although I hope she doesn't eat her babies).

I hope things improve with your litters. I'm surprised how small they are, lol. Atleast they aren't having 20 per litter! :)

Adam
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top