Hello, I'm not a breeder but I'm desperate to find out what's wrong with my mice and I have searched the web for an active forum and found this place so hopefully you guys can help me!
I have 5 females. We bought our first two and loved them and went out bought one more and then two more because they were so entertaining and easy to take care of. The last two we got were from a different pet store (I don't know if this will have anything to do with the problem) and are our most docile mice. Until we put them into the cage with the others.
Now our mice live in a very large cage built for an iguana that we mouse-proofed and made sure nothing dangerous was in there. My point is, this is a HUGE cage. Literally. There shouldn't be a fight over room or anything, it can house maybe a couple more and still have plenty of room for them to frolic.
So we have our three mice, one is a star athlete, one is a ball of energy, and the other is the homemaker. Two are very skittish around us and the third one is our "matriarch", she isn't afraid of anything. Two days later we bring the two docile, friendly ones home. We place them in the cage, having read that they will fight for hierarchy for a couple days. So we put up with squeaking and wet rumps until a week had gone by.
We went out the next day and bought a cage for our two friendly mice and put them in there together. Then over a period of three weeks one got REALLY fat. Not sure why, she wasn't fat until we put her in there and then we thought "maybe it's because of the small cage." So yesterday we cleaned out the big cage thoroughly. To get rid of the original mouse scent and to put them all in there in a "fresh" cage. Sure enough, it went well. They chased each other of course and tried to figure out who was boss.
About a half an hour ago... we found blood all over the cage. Just little splatters. Some along the walls like a tail smeared it there and sure enough, one of the docile mice has a wound on her tail and wound down at the corner of her eye closest to the mouth. We're concerned and not sure what to do seeing as we're first timers at this.
Should we let this go and see how it goes for a few more days? Or should we take the two friendly ones out and put them back in the small cage? We did read up on a website that said to use a spray bottle to condition them to not fight and we have been but seeing as it's just the first day for us, there are no results yet.
Please help us! We love our mice too much to let this kind of fighting happen!
I have 5 females. We bought our first two and loved them and went out bought one more and then two more because they were so entertaining and easy to take care of. The last two we got were from a different pet store (I don't know if this will have anything to do with the problem) and are our most docile mice. Until we put them into the cage with the others.
Now our mice live in a very large cage built for an iguana that we mouse-proofed and made sure nothing dangerous was in there. My point is, this is a HUGE cage. Literally. There shouldn't be a fight over room or anything, it can house maybe a couple more and still have plenty of room for them to frolic.
So we have our three mice, one is a star athlete, one is a ball of energy, and the other is the homemaker. Two are very skittish around us and the third one is our "matriarch", she isn't afraid of anything. Two days later we bring the two docile, friendly ones home. We place them in the cage, having read that they will fight for hierarchy for a couple days. So we put up with squeaking and wet rumps until a week had gone by.
We went out the next day and bought a cage for our two friendly mice and put them in there together. Then over a period of three weeks one got REALLY fat. Not sure why, she wasn't fat until we put her in there and then we thought "maybe it's because of the small cage." So yesterday we cleaned out the big cage thoroughly. To get rid of the original mouse scent and to put them all in there in a "fresh" cage. Sure enough, it went well. They chased each other of course and tried to figure out who was boss.
About a half an hour ago... we found blood all over the cage. Just little splatters. Some along the walls like a tail smeared it there and sure enough, one of the docile mice has a wound on her tail and wound down at the corner of her eye closest to the mouth. We're concerned and not sure what to do seeing as we're first timers at this.
Should we let this go and see how it goes for a few more days? Or should we take the two friendly ones out and put them back in the small cage? We did read up on a website that said to use a spray bottle to condition them to not fight and we have been but seeing as it's just the first day for us, there are no results yet.
Please help us! We love our mice too much to let this kind of fighting happen!