Sick mice colony, worried about snakes

[hungba]

I had recently made a post about my mice breeding colonies slowly dying off from unexplained reasons. I had made a post about it on the breeding mice section.

The mice continued to die, one or two dying a day. It only affected two of the cages the others had no deaths.

For the most part, the mice were suddenly found dead, and I did not see then get sick or anything like that and deteriorate, I would just find dead mice. So I decided to clean and disinfect all the cages and change substrates, food water, etc. to get rid of whatever was going on in there, complete clean and disinfect, for all the mice tubs and tools. After doing that yesterday, today I checked and no one died, but there was one mouse that was all messed up, it had its head sideways and was turning around in circles!

Now, during the time when this started happening (and it happened really fast over the last week or so), some snakes had eaten mice from this stock. At that time, only one baby mouse died, and I didn't think much of it. It happens sometimes. But during that feeding, I gave 3 snakes mice, not sure if it was from those cages or not. I am a little worried.

I also kept the mice in the same room as the snakes for weeks.

I looked up "mice, head sideways" on google and I found that one cause could be Chronic Murine Pneumonia caused by Mycoplasma pulmonis infection in the mice. I don't know if this is the reason because I did not see the other mice before they died and also do not notice the other symptoms "sniffling, sneezing, squinting, red-brown tears, rough haircoat, and labored and audible respiration" in the mice.

I looked up various snake forums and it seems as most snake keepers say that mycoplasma pulmonis is exist in all mice and rats anyway in their respiratory systems, that when they are stressed, this bacteria then infects them by overload, and that snakes do not get sick from eating it. This seems to make sense as I switched the mice from a smaller box to a larger box to try to stop the mother eating babies (stress from enviroment change). In fact, pretty much all responses say that they feed the infected mice to their snakes anyways. From my understanding that this bacteria can be carried in mice and rats without showing symptoms anyway, so if you buy feeder mice and feed them they may actually have it even with no symptoms (i.e., you cannot know), but that reptiles are not affected by it.

I only feed the mice to those three snakes because they are live mouse eaters only. The rest are on F/T rats.

The snakes do not show any abnormality or symptoms of problems at all.

Does anyone know about this or can help me? Are my snakes going to be alright? (Note, I do not know that it is mycoplasma pulmonis or Chronic Murine Pneumonia, it is just the only thing I found that causes mice to have their heads go sideways.)

[Homegrownscales]

Unless they were dying from poison I doubt you will have issues with the snakes.


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[hungba]

Well I don't see how they can get poison, I mean I kept them for weeks now and I haven't added anything new other than brand named prepackaged substrate, and packaged rodent feed and water. If there was poison in the water I would think I myself would be quite sick as well.

I never use any pesticides or anything like that in my house at all and haven't for years.

What else could be potentially poisonous?

If I were to assume it is a disease, then the snakes should be fine?

[I-KandyReptiles]

Well I don't see how they can get poison, I mean I kept them for weeks now and I haven't added anything new other than brand named prepackaged substrate, and packaged rodent feed and water. If there was poison in the water I would think I myself would be quite sick as well.

I never use any pesticides or anything like that in my house at all and haven't for years.

What else could be potentially poisonous?

If I were to assume it is a disease, then the snakes should be fine?

I think she meant rat poison was poisonous and is a reason not to feed escaped/wild mice.

Let's say your mouse got out of its cage and ate some poison before you found it. If you fed that mouse, it would kill your snake.

If these mice are sick from myco, I wouldn't be worried too much about feeding them off.

[Sama]

I have had a few rats and a mouse with the head sideways thing. In the mouse it was caused by an ear infection and eventually he got better and went back to normal. The rats all had a seizure which left them with their head twisted, and one girl an extreme craving for meat? Anyway, so far in the cases I mentioned the rodents did not die, well except when I culled them. But those are a few other reasons they might have their head twisted, though not sure how helpful it is because this sounds quickly fatal.

A lady I know lost all but one of her mice and this is how she described it, they all died within 3 days. She never was able to find out what happened however, so not very helpful other then to know whatever it was was very contagious and killed quickly.

"One by one they came down wth some sort of horrible unidentifiable malady that put them into a severe torpor, then convulsions and death within hours of the original symptoms."

Sorry I'm not more helpful, good luck though!