Female mice fighting.....WTF??

[nickykci]

ok, i'm really confused here, everywhere i look on the internet, it sais that Females wont fight, YET mine do!!
i introduced a new female to a breeding pair... everything was ok for the 1st couple of days, the male did his job, then the older female had a litter...and the younger female seems to be attacking the new mother... i seperated them for the time being, but i'd like to add her back to the colony, and might add one more later on also...

i am really confused here, any help would help lol and also if anyone can clue me in on how to "sex" young mice...i'm having problems doing that, and i want to learn befor the babies start breeding themselfs lol

[vanderkm]

Mice can be very aggressive and are very sensitive to changes in their social group - both sexes will fight and newcomers to a group will take a while to work things out - it they ever do. Mixing them when there are babies due just adds to the stress.

Best situation is to set up a colony and let them become stable rather than trying to add new females on an intermittant basis. The new female will usually fight with the resident girls and fights can be quite severe. Replacement females can be daughters of the original girls and they will learn parenting from their mothers. You can keep rotating a colony for quite a while like that. There are potential problems with inbreeding (daughters back to their father or brothers) but these are minimal with well bred stock because they are already highly inbred and all detrimental genes have been cleared up already.

In terms of sexing babies, they can be easily done at about 10-14 days - the females have nipples readily visible. We used to cull all the females as fuzzies (for feeders) when we wanted to keep a colony small. Once they get to 4 weeks of age, the scrotum is usually quite visible in males but by that age the females can be bred.

best of luck with them.

mary v.

[pythonmdk]

Mice recognize scent mainly, I have had very good success by cleaning the cage out very good, and in the mean time, puting vanilla extract on the vents of the mice, their butts, and then spraying a very diluted solution on the rest of them, this way when you put them in the cage they all smell the same, therefor they think they are all related. I would recomend doing this after your female raisies her babies though, I don't like putting things on babies until at least they have open eyes. I have used this on mice, rats(males inculded), gerbles, and dwarf hamsters, all with very good turnout. Good luck.
~John

[pythonmdk]

Mice recognize scent mainly, I have had very good success by cleaning the cage out very good, and in the mean time, puting vanilla extract on the vents of the mice, their butts, and then spraying a very diluted solution on the rest of them, this way when you put them in the cage they all smell the same, therefor they think they are all related. I would recomend doing this after your female raisies her babies though, I don't like putting things on babies until at least they have open eyes. I have used this on mice, rats(males inculded), gerbils, and dwarf hamsters, all with very good turnout. Good luck.
~John