[geordiesmice]

When you get a runt in the litter and he or she is so tiny and much smaller than the others in the litter, what do you do?leave it with the mother initially till it gets bigger, hand rear it .I have a female in a litter of six who is so tiny any advice please on how to rear her.I am about to move them from Mum thanks

 

[Jack Garcia]

Most serious breeders cull (euthanize) their runts.

 

[WNTMousery]

Culling is usually the most humane for runts with failure-to-thrive. You'd never want to breed from those animals.

 

[Rhasputin]

If she is much smaller, she'll probably end up dying anyways. I personally would cull.

 

[jessilynn]

I agree, in this case, culling is the nicest thing to do.

 

[Rhasputin]

It's unfortunate. If you want some information about it, you can PM one of us, and we can help you.

It's never a fun thing to do, but in the home-setting, sometimes you have to play the roll of 'Mother-Nature'. :|

 

[sushidragons]

I personally don't like to cull unless there is something wrong with an animal. Depending on the situation I will foster out a runt or leave it to chance and let it stay with the litter. Failure to thrive babies generally don't make it, but sometimes the little guys are just slow starters. I keep a close eye on the situation, but I have had many runts survive just fine. I have two right now from different litters that just finished weaning and are now sharing a small tank in my reptile room by my computer so I can follow their progress. They are teeny tiny and very delicate, but they are little fighters to have made it so far. I adopt out runts as pets only (with contract stating they will not be bred) or I will keep them in some cases. I get attached to the ones that I really spend time with.

 

[Rhasputin]

I personally don't like to cull unless there is something wrong with an animal.

Generally if it's a runt, then that means there is something wrong with it. :|

 

[Wight Isle Stud]

You say you are about to move them from mum, so must be weaning age. I agree with the above posts, you are in the position of being mother nature and you are doing no favours to survival of the species by not culling. However, I have to say that occasionally it is necessary to be able to rear a runt. The Britsh Satin was one such case, had it not been for the skill of the gentleman that originally acquired the mouse we would not have our Satins today. It was touch and go with this mouse as to weather it survived or not. This is what I would do, Firstly take out its siblings and leave it with its mother, raise the temperature so it doesnt have to use so much of its precious reserves to produce heat tokeep itself alive, and get down the supermarket for some human baby "forst milk ", and research all the posts on here for the experience of others.

 

[sushidragons]

I personally don't like to cull unless there is something wrong with an animal.

Generally if it's a runt, then that means there is something wrong with it. :|

Not necessarily so. There is occasion when the smallest of the litter is genetically inferior, but there are more reasons to believe that the smallest is simple the smallest. Only time will tell and I think it's important to save "inferior" animals long enough to determine if it was a one-time occurrence or a problem in the line. "Runts" come about for many reasons but I don't believe there is any reason to immediately cull a smaller pup just because it did not grow as large as its litter mates in utero. Big babies are not necessarily any more fit in the long term and I think that the runt gets the short end of the stick.

But I am not a big fan of culling in general. So many people in the breeding communities feel that their reputation will falter if they raise up the weaker animals. If the same pairing produces weak babies, then maybe that particular set of breeders should be retired. What I see happen much more often is breeders will continue to pair up valuable animals knowing that a percentage of the offspring will be deformed or damaged in some way upon birth/hatching. Then they cull these lesser animals as if they never existed and sell the "healthy" offspring to other keepers and breeders which ultimately perpetuates hereditary diseases among other things. I see nothing wrong with acknowledging that issues arise and taking responsibility for them, not hiding the fact that you are breeding animals with hereditary issues.

Culling should be a last resort, not the first thing you do when are displeased with an animal's appearance. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Wight Isle Stud]

for a healthy discussion, by raising an unhealthy animal you are doing exactly what you oppose in your above post. Its nothing to do with appearance, its to do with health.

 

[sushidragons]

I guess my point was that a runt is not necessarily unhealthy. Babies are born smaller for more reasons than just "something is wrong with it". People do cull on appearance based assumptions. In this case they see a smaller than average pink and assume it is unhealthy. Perhaps I lack experience with fancy mice as my training and experience is from a laboratory setting with "lab" mice and rats.

 

[minibears]

really you have to make your own judgement, do your best at whatever it is you do and don't lose any sleep over it

 

[WNTMousery]

Sushi, there are more reasons behind culling, as well. When you remove some babies you leave more milk for other babies and you lessen the load for momma mouse. Of course you would choose to remove the smaller, skinny-looking babies before you'd remove the robust chubby ones, yes?

You say you keep the runts around to sell as pets, but most of us fanciers who breed for exhibition do not sell pets at all, or very rarely, so keeping runts in litters would detract resources from the show quality siblings. We breed to improve the species in regards to health, temperament AND appearance which all have to be equally exceptional to do well on the show bench.

For those breeders who are breeding to simply produce more pets, keeping the runts around might be beneficial, I suppose.

 

[moustress]

Both sides of this argument have merit. I almost never cull babies, unless I can see they are so malformed or ill that there is no way they could have a reasonable quality of life. If you are breeding for the joy of seeing meeces grow up and thrive, there is no reason you should have to cull.

As far as breeding a runt goes, I also see both sides. It's not always true that a runt produces runty babies, and even if it did, if you are breeding a new or rare type of animal, you may wish to breed every chance you get to produce more viable offspring.
The examples given are good ones. Satin meeces are so pretty, and I struggled for several years to get a viable satin line going. Buying your mousies at a pet store is a compromise, like getting a pig in a poke, but that's what we have to do sometimes.

There have been claims that the satins in the UK come from a different source than in the US; it is interesting to see it mentioned in this context, as I have also been told that British satins never suffered from 'satin syndrome'. What is more likely is that the US and the UK each did similar experiments resulting in similar outcomes. The subject of exposure to radiation was very hot in the forties and fifties, and I'm sure the US and Britain did independent tests and compared results. They have been close allies for a long time. Many of the varieties we have now came from those experiments.

It's neither a good thing or a bad thing; it just is a reality we need to be aware of and deal with. Do what you want, it's your runt. Five years ago I had a long haired marked champagne boy who got sexed wrong because of small size and and furriness, and got several litters started before I got him back out of his 'harem'. His offspring were lovely and large, and had wonderful dispositions, and I never really regretted my mistake. That line is still represented in a couple of my current lines.

 

[Stina]

What I see happen much more often is breeders will continue to pair up valuable animals knowing that a percentage of the offspring will be deformed or damaged in some way upon birth/hatching. Then they cull these lesser animals as if they never existed and sell the "healthy" offspring to other keepers and breeders which ultimately perpetuates hereditary diseases among other things.

I don't know who does that......but I don't know anyone who does (at least in the mouse world...and most of the reptile people I've known wouldn't do that either.....but then I've mostly only know people who are reputable). We breed to IMPROVE the health of our animals...not to hide/perpetuate genetic problems.

By culling smaller and weaker offspring you are removing animals from the gene pool that are most likely to be genetically inferior (It may not be a guarantee that they are inferior...but you cannot argue that they aren't more likely to be)...thus improving the robustness and health of the line overall when you only keep the most robust for future breeding. Culling the smaller offspring you allow all of the mother's resources to go to the more robust offspring and reduce the strain on the mother.

The only reason I ever wouldn't cull particularly runty/weak/etc would be if I was trying to establish a new gene or keep a line going and had no other choice.

 

[moustress]

Sometimes the genetic problems are harbingers of new features or varieties. Breeding is a two edged sword.

 

[minibears]

with my manx it always seems to be the smaller bubs who have the least tail, they don't usually stay the smallest, i try to encourage my mice to start on solids as soon as they can find it, most of my 'runts' catch up after weaning, and at about 6 weeks old you'd never pick it. thankyou for caring for the little guys, runts are people too

 

[moustress]

It sounds like you have the problem well in hand.

 

[WNTMousery]

No one was trying to deny that it would be ok to breed a less than robust animal when absolutely necessary to perpetuate a specific rare gene or mutation. Of course if that is all that is left of a certain gene, you would breed it, however, if you had the choice, you'd choose a more robust mouse.

This discussion and question was based on a normal litter of 6 where no rare gene needed to be saved.

Apples aren't oranges, you know.