Evil mice, or doing the right thing?

[J.J.]

Ok, that is the question I have been trying to answer, but I cant! Ok, I just recently noticed that my mice had more mice. Well, we had 2 females in a cage and 1 male. I fed the male to my snake a lil while before that. The male was a dark colour and there was one female with the same colour, and the babies are that colour, so i am guessing she is the mother????? Anyways , both females seemed to be taking good care of the babies, so I decided to just keep them both in the cage with the babies. Well I heard a large screeching noise in the cage and I look over and saw blood everywhere. The other female ( not the mother) had seriously bitten one of the babies. So i took her out and fed her to my snake! LMAO! anyways. so then I just took the other mom out and cleaned up the blood WITHOUT touch the babies and i was wearing rubber gloves and and cleaned out the blood and i left the baby that was bitten in the cage cuz she seemed to be doing ok. I put the mom back in , la dee da dee da. And then i went to check up on the babies and i noticed that there was only two i could see and only one was moving. So i again put on the rubber gloves and took out the mom and look under the little plastic house they were under. Then one that was bitten early was buried under the bedding, so I am guessing it died of suffication or internal injuries. And I noticed that the reason only one mouse was moving is because the other had been eaten into the gut. So it was kind of eaten alive. Well so I threw away the dead mice and put the evil mom back in the cage. They seem to be doing ok now. but why the hell did those mice kill the babies??? Was is because they knew they were sick so they thought they should kill them now and maybe get a good meal?OR WHAT?!?!??! I dunno, but PLEASE TELL ME WHY THEY DID THIS! Thank you!

[Zoe]

Hey!
Don't worry, that is very common with mice.
There are a number of reasons babies may be eaten
- there is a lack of food or water
- it is the mother's first litter - females will often eat their first litter
- they are stressed... if you are poking around the cage a lot and making them run around and stress out, they may eat their babies
- a jealous other female. If females aren't brought up together or if one is just jealous, they may eat the babies of other females. These mice should be removed and fed to a snake.

In your case, it was probably stress from messing around in the cage or because it was the mother's first litter. It happened to my first litter too. I seperated the female i thought was causing the problem and put her alone with a male and she had a nice litter of 13 babies (mind you I always leave the females with only 6 babies... they grow faster and I need to spend less on mouse food, and I really don't need 10-15 babies on each female).

If you are going to try breeding, don't give up because of this. I suggest you go buy a sub adult trio (or 1.3, whatever you want) and let them grow up together. Also, this is just what I did, I have all albino females, and a normal male. That way all my babies are brown and I can tell them apart from the females... it makes my life a lot simpler!

Zoe

[Quervo]

Evil ... eeeeeeeeviiill ... oh, sorry.

So i took her out and fed her to my snake!

Sheesh .. J.J. .. remind me never to tick you off. lol

I think Zoe's comment is probably the right one. First litters are often a problem. We actually had a dog do that once on her first litter .. she ate all her pups ( we were way off on her due date and were both at work, came home to the lovely scene). Give those mice a good talking to and try again.

[Tim_Cranwill]

Oh man, a dog did that? I'd find it really hard to look at that dog the same way. It bugs me enough when mice do it and I almost expect them to do it. Gross....

[V.aw]

thats messed up, i can see using a rodent used completely for a feeder but any rodent thats raised by people and actually aquires trust him a human, is very morbid to be feeding that same animal to anything. that animal believe it or does trust you!! they look at you as a food source like your snake does!!


i dont see how people feed live baby mice to animals, theyre completely defenseless, i know thats the point but thats really twisted. iam frozen all the way just because of that. rodents are actually very intellegent animals. oh well il shut up now.

[Linds]

I'd have to agree with Quervo and Zoe. It was msot likely because it was their first litter. Another thing I would like to ad is that wearing gloves isn't necessary (unless you want to keep yourself clean). You can handle the babies with your bare hands, its an old wives tale that if you get your scent on them their parents will devour them.

Originally posted by Quervo
We actually had a dog do that once on her first litter .. she ate all her pups ( we were way off on her due date and were both at work, came home to the lovely scene)

Originally posted by V.aw
i dont see how people feed live baby mice to animals, theyre completely defenseless, i know thats the point but thats really twisted. iam frozen all the way just because of that. rodents are actually very intellegent animals. oh well il shut up now.

It's the cycle of life, it's nothing personal... and people need to realize that it's not anything morbid or wrong. It's simulating the same thing that has been happening in nature since the beginning of time. Animals need to eat, some refuse to eat prekilled/f-t, and in nature they all eat live. Intelligence is irrelevant to it all, just because you are smart does not mean you don't make a good meal for something higher in the food chain. Rodents are not apex predators. Somebody has to raise the feeders for the captive animals, nothing twisted about it :zi:

[escm]

Originally posted by V.aw
thats messed up, i can see using a rodent used completely for a feeder but any rodent thats raised by people and actually aquires trust him a human, is very morbid to be feeding that same animal to anything. that animal believe it or does trust you!! they look at you as a food source like your snake does!!


i dont see how people feed live baby mice to animals, theyre completely defenseless, i know thats the point but thats really twisted. iam frozen all the way just because of that. rodents are actually very intellegent animals. oh well il shut up now.

whats the difference between a snake nailing a baby or some dude in a lab whakin' it. (i mean i know they dont constrict and eat the mice in the labs...) still it dies in the end either way. i guess im just wondering whats the alternative? feed my snake carrots? i mean frozen or live its still gunna end up in my snake and it was still alive at some point in its life...

[J.J.]

Ha Ha Quervo, ya you best not be tickin me off! Naw, im just kiddin! Well, thanx alot Zoe, that really really helps me out!! Phew! Well, thanx you to all yal! Thats really gross that your dog ate its babies Quervo! EEWWWIE! Also, V. aw, It's all part of the great circle of life.<<< From my favorite movie, The Lion King. Only the greatest childrens animated movie EVER!
LOL! Well thanx again people!

[J.J.]

By the way linds. Yeah, I know how like my gramma would always tell me. "DONT TOUCH THE BIRDS NEST OR IT WILL COME BACK AND SMELL YOUR SCENT AND IT WILL ABANDON (sp.) ITS BABIES!" Then i found out at Homosassa State park in FLA. that birds cant smell....................lol

[V.aw]

that isnt the circle of life
in the wild a mouse can run away, or dig a burrow large enough to escape a snake, and in some cases a mother mouse would kill the snake going for the pinks. think about that.


As for the lab testing stuff, i ve never said to agree with that either, thats a whole other story.. But feeding a pet to a pet is sick.


Is it a circle of life to feed your pet dog to your burmese? no..


if you raise em as feeders, fine.. But why raise live rodents as feeders anyways, when you can get humainly killed rodents. And dont say it saves money because breeding 1000's of rodents stinks, takes alot of time and is probably more expensive.

[V.aw]

the way "JJ" posted these animals were not meant for feeders, they were pets.. Unless ive read this wrong.


my whole point is what ever happened to the emotional attachment to a pet?

(kind of like, would you feed your defenseless corn snake to a kingsnake because its higher on the food chain??)

[J.J.]

well, I was not emotionally attached to those stupid mice anyways. They were origanlly feeder mice, but one happened to have babies, thas all. Then one killed the baby, and since she was going to be snake food in the first place, i fed the damn thing to my snake who was hungry. And in the wild, a mouse CAN get away, but snakes are so fast, it probably wont. one reason why people breed and feed live is because MANY snakes will absolutely refuse to eat dead mice, it just doesnt seem the same as live to them. My ball python is like that, and I am sure many people have "picky" eating snakes. If you dont like that we feed animals to our snakes, then why are you here?? I dont mean to sound like a wicked witch, but this is what we do, we raise snakes. After a while of having snakes, feeding them mice isnt hard to do. And here, feeding mice to snakes IS NOT a bad thing, its like a kinda been there done that thing, its also like a who cares thing. I mean, come on. All living things have to eat sometime. What are we supposed to do, spend hundreds of dollars on snakes then never ever feed them and watch them starve until they die then go buy more and do it all over again??????? That's a HUMONGOUS waste of time and lots of money! THEY HAVE TO EAT! I guess all I have to say is, Get used to it!!!!!!!!

[V.aw]

iam not going to argue with you, you completely missed my point.


I too feed mice to my reptiles, humainly killed frozen mice.

[ReneeB]

humanely? How humane? suffocating them with CO2? or breaking their necks? or just throwing them in the freezer so they freeze to death? you can NOT humanely kill something.. murder is murder.. killing is killing.. some ways just appeal to someone more than others

[J.J.]

I totally agree with Renee. Pre-Killed mice arent "gently" killed or whatever! My goodness! How is that even possible? They do terrible things to kill mice to make frozen pre-killed mice. In fact I think that pre-killed mice are harmed more than Live fed mice! Also, you have reptiles?? Wow, that surprises me! I thought you were just on this site to complain about how we kill our mice and feed our snakes. No offense or anything......
Humainly Killed......that's actually quite funny.