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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2015 20:35:26 GMT -5
Happy little ferrets with full tummies:) Nice video.
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Post by Desiree on Oct 3, 2015 17:52:40 GMT -5
The mouse, Merida, is getting culled tonight. She had 10 day old babes, they were doing fine, active, moving around and I went in this morning and found a half eaten baby and the rest were gone. I've never liked this mouse anyway so I'm not sad to see her go but I am upset that I cannot seem to keep a mouse litter. I'm so frustrated. I have had 8 ASf's litters born and 4 rat litters. I have lost only one baby per litter. I have 15 babies from a first time rat mom doing very well and the babies are almost a week old. I just don't understand what to do. Should I not mess with the babies till when? Most of the advice was wait till they had hair. These guys were days away from opening their eyes. I waited five days and handled them daily and then one day mom snaps. :pullhair: On the other hand, I have my first clutch of eggs incubating. I have 18 total. I am hoping they hatch before I leave for California. I also made a huge upgrade to my female breeder rats cage. It's massive! And I only have three very young girls in there now.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 6:42:55 GMT -5
As I remember correctly, pet mice breeder wait until the babies leaving the nest by their own. At this point, nothing should (...) happen.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 7:20:31 GMT -5
I would hold of touching or cleaning out mice until the babies are at week old. Don't go into the nest box at all at this stage and only skip out the poop/pee corner breifly. Add a little bit of bedding to replace what you've taken but steer clear of nest area. When mouse pups are nearer 14 days they will be wandering around out of the nest and you can do better clean out and start handling. Still always leave at least half the nest material and a handful or two of the old substrate so the clean cage smells similar to that of old one. Smell is very important to mice and can make them stressed if cage is totally cleaned and sterile each bedding change Hope these tips help. You may have bad luck to with the stock mice your being supplied with. Some mice are more nervous than other
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Post by msav on Oct 4, 2015 9:59:24 GMT -5
I had the same problem with my mice. I tried moving their nest to clean out the cage. Next time I looked in the cage they had eaten all the pinkies.
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Post by Desiree on Oct 4, 2015 10:13:42 GMT -5
msav These were not pinkies, these were babes that could climb and move. They were fuzzies. @kimba and @ninjagoth If I were to wait two weeks before handling babies, I would have one to two weeks max before weaning to get them used to humans, while these are feeders I also need to be able to move, clean and handle my animals. Mice are already so touchy, I cannot imagine waiting two weeks before I can handle them. Socialization has to start early on. I refuse to have mean or anxious mice. I also hadn't changed bedding at all and always put her nest back. She was fine for 5 days so I do not at all think it was me handling them. If mom was going to caninalize she would have done it the first day I messed with pups not on the 5th day. I always made sure my hands were clean and didn't smell like anything before handling them. I also sourced some information. While taking special precautions, you may hold the babies when they are 3 *full* days old. 3 days after birth is often mistaken for 2 days. However, the day they are born is NOT one full day it is a partial day, thus should not be counted as a full day. Babies are 3 days old when they are 72 hours old, not 48 hours and some change. Holding the babies too young, or not taking the proper precautions, can result in the mother killing or abandoning the litter. Additionally, giving her time to bond with her babies after birth is one of the most beneficial things you can do for their health and well-being. A better bonded mother that doesn't have disturbances in the first 3 days has a better chance of being a better over-all caregiver to her babies. -- www.thefunmouse.com/info/breeding2.cfmBesides this information, I am also on a few breeding groups. In a general consensus it was a fluke. A possibility was milk running dry from a genetic disorder, there was something wrong will all the pups, again from a genetic disorder, or mom was just a bad mom.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 10:44:27 GMT -5
I kept pet mice for several years, 40 of them at most... In my pet mice forum the given advice was to leave them alone as long as possible and as said before only clean around the nest.
My experience is, that it is a character thing... Most of the mice are curious and will get used to humans quickly with no forced interactions at all. Some, just a few, will always hates humans... They shouldn't be bred at all.
I only had a few, who bit me or were in fear when handled. Non of them were handled as babies. But that's just my experience, I couldn't speak for everyone.
When the mum is used to you and is handled easily, it shouldn't make a difference if you handle the babies in an early stage or not. When the little ones are out of the nest, they will copy the behaviour of their mom quickly.
Anyway, accidents will happen without we'll understand why...
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Post by bitbyter on Oct 4, 2015 11:35:31 GMT -5
yeah, I found mice really hit and miss. Even the same female. One litter would survive to culling, the next litter she'd eat half, next litter eat one or two. For me, mice just had to many downsides and I ended up culling them all.
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Post by msav on Oct 4, 2015 12:20:44 GMT -5
I know with the ASF they say if they have a protein deficiency that the mothers will eat their babies. I am not sure if mice are the same.
The short time I was raising mice I only had one time where the babies were eaten, (when I cleaned the cage).
after that subsequent litters were fine.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 12:39:24 GMT -5
Yeah mice are pesky sometimes. I've been lucky with my pet mice I used to breed. First one was a pet shop mouse who was over six weeks old -males & females were stupidly kept together. 1.5 weeks later I had a heavily pregnant female. She became hand tame very quickly thankfully and she had 14 pups and kept them all. She even brought a pup to me and placed it in my hand when it was a few days old she then groomed then took the pup back to the nest. She was a lovely exceptional mouse in her mothering skills & temperament. I currently work in a lab area breeding Standard and Genetically Altered lab mice. We don't clean breeder cages for the first 7 days to allow bonding then clean them out after this. Apart from cleaning out the mice are only handled for earclipping at 10-14 days(for the GA ones) to get samples to check if they carry the desired genetic trait. And the standard ones we only handle for cleaning or weekly health checks until weaned then they are moved into same sex groups. We don't really have time to do much other than regular direct handling once a week during cleaning out and health checking. Twice a day we pull the cages out of the racks to check for births, food & water levels and that the mice are healthy etc. This is done through the sides or top of the cage. Some strains of lab mice are better mothers than others but overall considering the amount of mice I have littering down daily the overall litter loss numbers are surprisingly low. Some of this is maintaining breeding colonies (often inbred strains) with strict controls on unproductive breeders, those having consistent small litters and limiting number of litters they have. If a litter will be lost its more likely to be first one. If female loses a second she is culled as may not be good mother or have sufficient milk. It may sound harsh but it means even some of our more sensitive GA strains are mostly pretty good breeders & mothers. Lab strains have been bred to be very docile -I think that helps too. I often feel that if the mother is well handled and docile then pups should be too overall. But I think the original stock the foundation mice come from is very important if you want good breeders. Due to my job I can't keep rodents at home but if I could I'd love to start feeder colonies of mice & ASFs. I'd probs find a breeder of mice who could give me offspring from their friendliest most productive breeder mice to start off with. Maybe one day
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Post by Desiree on Oct 4, 2015 14:38:23 GMT -5
@ninjagoth my mom also manages a facility on breeding mice as well for a lab. Small world really. I used the side and bottom look through method for the first couple of days. If she has cannibalized after the first time I messed with the babes, I would have totally been at fault but the fact that she waited so long makes me wonder that something went wrong. I would love to get my hands on some lab strains but obviously that's a hard thing to do. I keep joking with my mom to just bring some home to me. LOL @kimba this mouse was definitely a nervous nelly and not a good mouse. No matter how much I handled her she was also a biter and jumper but I was hoping to actually keep one of her daughters which is why I wanted to socialize early on. If I can handle and socialize the babies then my future breeders will be better off as well. Either way she was culled last night. msav my mice are on kent rodent feed with a wild bird seed mix weekly and all moms get a hard boiled egg. bitbyter I have five more moms to test at the moment and see if I can get a good line out of any of them. I'm leaving the male in with my new three females this time around. If they cannibalize I will have another litter up and running with three weeks.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 15:14:53 GMT -5
With some more time, you will find a nice and calm breeding line.
Try mealworms, alive or dried... They're a great source of protein and a good treat for taming...
I had a mice, Peppy, lovely silver female, that craved my attention and enjoyed sitting on my shoulder and cleaned her self. I never forced this behaviour. She may had potential to be a great mother, but I was working as foster home and breeding was against my "codex". On the other side, Pitty, a tiny tricolour female, was always a biter and never trusted me. Bad butt for life...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2015 18:58:15 GMT -5
Hehehe small world - yeah very unusual to have a litter develop so old then they're gone. Sounds more like as you say not the best of momma mousies. I wish you all the best with your future breeding programmes xx
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Post by Corvidophile on Oct 9, 2015 7:57:48 GMT -5
Yeah, it sounds like you've got a bad start with her as a progenitor, there wasn't anything that should've gone wrong at such an old age. You need to be able to handle babies at three or four days of age in a docile line with no repercussions. When starting out with an unsociable pet store mouse, the allowance for bad behavior is that she can run, but NO biting, that aggression is going to carry heavily down your line and resurge frequently even if you're on top of socializing them.
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Post by msav on Oct 9, 2015 9:20:08 GMT -5
How are your ASF's doing. Mine are ramping up. Seems like this time of year is breading season for them, As I have 6 batches of pinkies just this week. Last year around by December I had over 500 offspring.
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