Dead Mouse

[Jay_Bunny]

We went to do mousy upkeep today (cleaning the cages a bit, making a new little hut for the adults, change water, ect) and when we went to open the cage containing the two white mice (still too young to breed) we found one of them dead. She was not dead yesterday. We found her on her back, partly buried in the bedding. She was semi-soft so she could not have been dead for too long. We are wondering what she could have died from. There was another mouse in with her and we are uncertain as to which mouse it was. One mouse came from a petstore to be used as food and we kept it as a future breeder. The other we bought from Petco as a buddy for that one. Since they looked identical and were the same size, we don't know which one died.

Any comments, advice, suggestions, ideas?

[mxrider42]

I have gotten rats and mice from local pet stores that have died a few days later. The ones at Petco seem to be more for pets so they are usually the ones in better shape. Local pet store just buy anything to sell off as feeders.
I got rats from one source and had 5 die in 5 days. So I never went back to that place.
I am not sure why they died.
I can't take the smell of dead rats and mice, so my girlfriend has made some money off of me. She will get them up if I pay her!

[Sunny1]

I had a similar incident one time. I bought 3 feeder mice from a petstore and put them in my mouse tank. It was probably early afternoon when I got them, took them straight home, set them up in a clean tank, gave them food and water. By the next morning all 3 were dead. So I have never bought feeders from there again. And it wasn't like they were all sickly looking when I got them either. Don't know why they died, but they must have had some sort of health issue that wasn't visible from the surface.

Like Trey said, my guess would be that it was the feeder that died...they just aren't as well taken care of sometimes like mice that are sold to be pets.

[Flagg]

Unfortunately it's fairly common to have pet shop mice die off with no explanation. I've had it happen many times.

I have had the best results getting mice from a feeder breeder at the local reptile show.