Joined
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5 Posts
Hi all, I am new to this forum
Not to mice though.
At christmas I had a minor disaster - in the same night, all of my females and one of my males escaped. Eeek.
Of my 17 girls, I have/had 6 definitely pregnant and 2 I am watching.
Two have now given birth, but one of them is cannibalising badly - so far I have had 20 pups born, from 2 litters, and only 5/6 remain that I know of - last time I checked properly the third girl was giving birth so I have not counted since.
I'm assuming it's stress, but I do wonder if something else is making things worse. Although I wouldn't call them tame, my girls are used to being handled after the daily weigh-ins to work out how many litters were on the way. I have had mice give birth who were in no way, shape or form tame (the mothers of these mothers if that makes sense, they were pregnant/nursing when I took them on from the RSPCA), and they didn't eat a single one of their 16 babies. I have also in the past deliberately bred 9 litters - and only lost 2 babies. So this seems very extreme to me.
The mother that I believe is doing the killing has what my vet believes is a blocked teat - she has a big lump under one teat and the vet could see a plug blocking it. This turned up two days before birth so the vet wasn't keen on aspirating it or giving her antibiotics in case it jeaopardised the birth/babies through stress.
Could the lump be a contributing factor? I can remove that mouse from the group with some non-pregnant friends for company, with Aoife giving birth today and so few pups milk won't be a problem. I'm just trying to work out why it's so bad.
At christmas I had a minor disaster - in the same night, all of my females and one of my males escaped. Eeek.
Of my 17 girls, I have/had 6 definitely pregnant and 2 I am watching.
Two have now given birth, but one of them is cannibalising badly - so far I have had 20 pups born, from 2 litters, and only 5/6 remain that I know of - last time I checked properly the third girl was giving birth so I have not counted since.
I'm assuming it's stress, but I do wonder if something else is making things worse. Although I wouldn't call them tame, my girls are used to being handled after the daily weigh-ins to work out how many litters were on the way. I have had mice give birth who were in no way, shape or form tame (the mothers of these mothers if that makes sense, they were pregnant/nursing when I took them on from the RSPCA), and they didn't eat a single one of their 16 babies. I have also in the past deliberately bred 9 litters - and only lost 2 babies. So this seems very extreme to me.
The mother that I believe is doing the killing has what my vet believes is a blocked teat - she has a big lump under one teat and the vet could see a plug blocking it. This turned up two days before birth so the vet wasn't keen on aspirating it or giving her antibiotics in case it jeaopardised the birth/babies through stress.
Could the lump be a contributing factor? I can remove that mouse from the group with some non-pregnant friends for company, with Aoife giving birth today and so few pups milk won't be a problem. I'm just trying to work out why it's so bad.