Ooo..too bad my local library is so backwoodsish they probably don't have that video.
I just have to sit here and think about who has the time to go through and remove the male from the colonies after he's done his job. And where all of those male mice go, cause they can't go together in a "bachelor pad". Especially from someone who has a "ledger" of records for their mice. =P
Maybe I'm just lazy, but I don't count per month how many per colony...if they produce, great...if not, snake food. Simplistic view for me that works.
Doing all of that separating and reintroducing sounds like a whole hell of a lot of mediation and conflict avoidance to me.
Not to mention, mice are social oriented creatures. They like to cuddle and preen each other. I've had solitary males get extremely aggressive to the point they'd rather bite a female than mate with her.
I'm with JM, I've got a somewhat limited mouse raising experience...4 years or so. But *generally* my male mice are no problem with babies, its the females who've done more damage.
I've only had a couple of instances of male cannibalization of babies. One was a week after a new male had been introduced and a female gave birth to babies that obviously weren't his. He never did it again. Another was a younger male I was raising up with his colony to separate out to create a new colony, and after the second litter he'd been around he just snapped and killed every baby. Never ate them, just bit the head and left them.
For me, the shuffling around of group members just causes way more headaches than they could ever cause by eating a few babies. I'd rather lose a couple pinks than a prized male by being castrated by the females.
From my experience, most of the cannibalization of live pinks is by the newer mothers eating the placenta, following up the umbilical cord and not stopping. Other than that, most generally cannibalization I've seen is of stillborn offspring. That's where it really helps to have at least one older female in a new colony, she helps with the birthing and reduces that chance of cannibalization by doing whats supposed to be done.
I've even separated out extremely stressed females into a quiet box for the birthing for a few hours, and the stress of the move and everything never caused them to eat their babies. I think some mice are just more prone to it than others. :shrugs:
Every once in a great while I'll have the mentally deranged female snacking on another female's newborns, but that's rare and doesn't last past when I witness it. Instant snake meal, gut loaded and all.
Rats on the other hand are far more forgiving. Something I've always found ironic. Rats can be ruthless critters, but more often than not, I've not had much of a problem with new member introduction than just the standard "pecking order initiation". After a few hours, they're all cuddled up together.
