STinky STINKY mice

I use pine. All my mice, rats and ASF are doin great!...and they hardly ever smell.

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Originally Posted by GA_Ball_Pythons

I use wood pellets and it works great with mice.

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Me too; great choice :) I hate the smell of mice kept on pine shavings. With the pellets, it really minimizes the odor.

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Originally Posted by AshleyB

i use yesterdays news.. it seems to work very well. i dont have to change their cage out but maybe once a week and it isnt over whelming at all

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LOL! when you said this I though you were talking about normal newspaper... you know, yesterdays news... yesterdays news paper... Didn't know you were talking about the pellets sold a the pet store called "yesterdays news"!!!

Neither Petsmart or Petco had the wood pellets so i picked up the yesterdays news pellets instead. I will keep a look out for the wood pellets... we don't exactly have many horse supply places around here!!!!

Mike

Everybody seems to use some kind of shredded wood as bedding, hasn't anyone tried peat? Don't know about America but here it's sold in garden stores in about 17 gallon bags for about 5€. I've used it for as long as I've bred mice and have never suffered from any bad odors. I change the beddings about once a week.

If I miss a cleaning day and it gets closer to 2 weeks without cleaning it'll start smelling a little though. Peat seems to absorb huge amounts of urine and feces without getting stinky, so the only problem is to remember to clean the tubs, because there's no smell to tell you it's getting dirty.

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Originally Posted by RogueStar

Everybody seems to use some kind of shredded wood as bedding, hasn't anyone tried peat? Don't know about America but here it's sold in garden stores in about 17 gallon bags for about 5€. I've used it for as long as I've bred mice and have never suffered from any bad odors. I change the beddings about once a week.

If I miss a cleaning day and it gets closer to 2 weeks without cleaning it'll start smelling a little though. Peat seems to absorb huge amounts of urine and feces without getting stinky, so the only problem is to remember to clean the tubs, because there's no smell to tell you it's getting dirty.

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Like Peat Moss? The stuff we use for frog and amphibians substrate to retain moisture? If so, won't the mice get their feet caught in it?

Nope, it's worked for me perfectly. I'll post a pic in a minute...

Here's a pic of one of my mouse-factories:
The little devils have spread their food all over the floor space again... :rolleyes:
http://www.freewebs.com/roguestar/im...eatBedding.jpg

And another of the bedding itself:
http://www.freewebs.com/roguestar/img/peatBedding.jpg

using wood pellets in one tank, yesturdays news in another. They both are starting to stink! changed substrate 4 days ago. Maybe I just need to change the substrate every 4 days??? How often do you change your substrate?

I clean the mousetanks every 1-2 weeks. After two weeks they'll start smelling a little but I like to keep them clean even though they don't smell much. So usually a week apart.

I read an article once that said that mice smell so strong to us because they give off so many different scents, we can't really tell the difference between different individuals but they can. They actually use scent to communicate with each other and they have one of the keenest senses of smell in the animal world. Over half of the mass of a mouses head is taken up by their olfactory organs. Mice are also highly territorial and will mark their territory with their own signature scent. Kinda like mouse graffiti I guess, but instead of spraying with paint cans they use something else to spray with.... :D

A lot of people will notice that mouse cages actually smell worse the next day after cleaning. You get that pungent 'new mouse smell' because after cleaning the mouse can't smell itself anymore and thinks it's in a different territory and so it gets very busy remarking all of its new turf.

I no longer wash my mouse tubs anymore. Every week I dump out the old soiled litter and scrap the bottom and sides with a plastic putty knife and then replace the bedding with fresh stuff, but I haven't washed any of the tubs in well over a year, maybe two years. It actually smells better. I think it makes the mice feel more comfortable since the cage always smells familiar to them and they don't have as much of a need to retouch all of their markers.

Mark