Sneezy mice

I'm really frustrated right now. We decided to start breeding mice. I was wanting to get some from someone locally that I knew would have healthy mice, but... well I can skip those details but the bottom line is we ended up deciding to get some from a pet store. I think it is safe to say I'll never buy a live animal from a pet store again.

We went out of our way to go to a store a little further away, because in the past when I've been there they seemed to have better conditions for their animals and they have lower prices. So we picked up 3.12 mice. Kind of a lot, but we wanted to sort of get a jump start plus I figured that would allow us to figure out which ones were the better breeders and not worry about feeding off any that weren't doing their job.

I did not notice any issues with the health of the mice while we were at the store, and I did examine each one. Shortly after we got home, I noticed one of the males was making a funny sound. I held him up closer to my ear and decided it sounded like some sort of respiratory problem. Sort of a rattling squeaking sound. I immediately separated him.

Later that evening, I noticed several of the females sneezing. Not constant sneezing, but more than seemed normal.

It is now a couple of days later. All of the mice are still acting at least reasonably normal, so I don't think they are seriously ill, but I also know sometimes animals will hide their illness and such tiny ones can go downhill fast. Most if not all of them are showing some signs of respiratory problems at least off & on. This morning the male that was the first one to appear sick seemed to be breathing almost totally clearly, and I started to celebrate a little bit. However, early this evening he sounds quite a bit worse again, although I think still better than the worst he has been.

I am not going to take 15 feeder mice to the vet. If they get to the point where they seem to be suffering, I'll CO2 them. But I'm hoping they may be able to get over whatever it is they have.

My question is what can I do to increase their chances of getting well again? It has to be inexpensive, as I think I'd have to treat all of them. Any ideas?

What kind of substrate do you have them on?

When I brought my original 1.3 rats home to get that colony started, they seemed to sneeze quite a bit...but they were fine. None of my mice have ever sneezed...but then they don't live long (and all the snakes say *NOM!*).

If it was me and I wanted to start a breeder colony I would feed all of them of clean up everything, and start all over again from scratch.

You might want to bring in a smaller group and make sure they are healthy and start breeding them, hold back healthy females and build your colony from your own healthy stock only supplementing males when in need of new blood every now and than.

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Originally Posted by cassandra

What kind of substrate do you have them on?

When I brought my original 1.3 rats home to get that colony started, they seemed to sneeze quite a bit...but they were fine. None of my mice have ever sneezed...but then they don't live long (and all the snakes say *NOM!*).

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At the pet store, they were on something similar to carefresh. They are on aspen now. I also added some shredded newspaper because I have read that they enjoy taking stuff like that for their nests. My intention is to keep them on Equine Fresh, but the closest place to me that sells it is a bit of a hike so I was waiting until I could combine it with another errand.

I thought it was normal for mice & rats to sneeze some, just like it is normal for people to sneeze on occasion. So I'm surprised you say your mice never sneeze. Should I take any sneezes as a sign of a problem? Regardless, I'm sure there is more than just the occasional sneeze going on here. At times, some of them are making some pretty unhealthy sounding noises breathing.

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Originally Posted by Deborah

If it was me and I wanted to start a breeder colony I would feed all of them of clean up everything, and start all over again from scratch.

You might want to bring in a smaller group and make sure they are healthy and start breeding them, hold back healthy females and build your colony from your own healthy stock only supplementing males when in need of new blood every now and than.

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I was afraid the answer was going to be "get rid of them and start over". Argh. Part of the problem is I'm not sure where I can get some mice and be confident they are healthy. As I mentioned in my first post, the pet store we went to is one that has seemed to have their animals in fairly good conditions, for a pet store at least.

Does anyone have any suggestions what to do if I decide to try to make it work with this batch of mice? It has only been 3 days; I'd kind of like to give them more of a chance. As I said, they are still acting healthy. Or would that just be incredibly stubborn and/or foolish?

It's just a myco flare-up. Cause by the stress from the car-ride and change in scenery. It will go away pretty quickly. If not, some antibiotics would be in order(Baytril or Tylan, works well on mycoplasma).

If they recover quickly, I would keep them. Means they have a nice, strong immune system and can take some stress. If they don't recover, then I would feed them off and get new mice. You want them to pass on the strong genes and immune systems, not the shoddy ones.

They may also be sneezing to get the crappy Carefresh out of their lungs. That stuff is awful. I use a mix of a TINY amount of equine fresh(tractor supply brand) and aspen. No problems here.

I'd keep the one sicker male seperated and just monitor the rest. I agree with Becky that it's very likely a simple myco flare-up. Here's some information on mycoplasmosis...

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/3819/myco.html

They were probably stressed and it allowed the flare-up to occur. Make sure they are kept very clean, make sure there isn't an ammonia buildup from their urine, they have lots of food and water and are not overcrowded. Remove and euthanize any that are getting obviously worse. They will either get better as their immune systems deal naturally with the myco or they won't. Your good care of them will help ensure they do well.

My experience isn't with mice but I've had myco flareups in new rats and I've yet to lose one to myco as long as it was properly managed.

Thanks Becky and Joanna. Those answers are at least slightly more encouraging. I guess I'll just wait & see a while longer.

Is it possible to get Baytril (or anything else that would be useful) without a prescription? Going to the vet will cost more than the mice did in the first place. I won't let them suffer, but I'm not prepared to spend a lot of $$ on these guys.

In the meantime, are there any particular foods I can offer them that might give a little boost to their immune system?

Also, I did a search on myco, and some pages suggest quite a few holistic remedies that might help. Anyone have any thoughts or experience on these? I think I might try echinacea, although most of what I found on using it to help fight myco was about using it with rats, not mice. Here is a link to one page:
http://www.rmca.org/Articles/herbal.htm

:mouse2:My mice sneeze too! but mine do it like its part of their little language. I too have just started a colony, one fancy boy and 3 fancy girls. Once I show my boyfriend that having mice in our house is a good thing I can get more. All my extras are going to be frozen or treats for the snakies at my old highschool. Yeah... any way all my mice sneeze... its weird cause you can here them nickering to each other. One of my females, Gaia, talks! when you hold her for a while she starts to talk its really cute. a sort of nicker squeak language. She is the coolest mouse besides my male Uranus they are both heart breakers. so i guess what your supposed to get out of this is that your mice seem pretty normal to me... but i guess thats cause mine sneeze too.... I hope they are alright! Well I guess we are in the same boat. I hope everything turns out ok... for the sake of our precious snakies:mouse2:

Well, I think the mice are recovering. If I just stand beside the cages, I usually don't hear anything at all, but as soon as I reach in to do anything, I guess they get a little excited and start sneezing again. If I pick them up to listen more closely, most of them sound like they are breathing clearly, but a couple still have that rattling squeaking thing going on. I think it is not as bad as before though. The one male is still the worst; he probably just has a weak system so I may feed him off rather than using him for breeding stock.

I decided to try giving them echinacea. A bottle of tincture was only $7 at GNC, and I decided that as long as I didn't overdose, it couldn't hurt and might help. Of course, now I have no way to know if it helped or if they would be improving by now anyway. :confuzd: I added it to their water, 5 drops per ounce, which was a mistake. I intended to base it on the amount mentioned in the article I linked above, but that is 2.2 drops per ounce, and somehow I confused myself. I will adjust it to the lower amount, but it does not seem to be affecting them negatively at the higher dose for the short time. Also, the article is talking about rats, and I know the dose needs to be smaller for mice, but I'm sure mice also drink less, so it should even out. I am watching closely to make sure they still drink about as much as they were before (in case they don't like the taste of it and might dehydrate themselves), but so far I can't detect a difference.

Echinecea is good. Just use it sparingly or they will develop a tolerance for it.

You can get Tylan at the feed store too as it works on Myco-related illnesses. It is bitter so you have to really dilute it in the water.

I wouldn't resort to that unless you have mice you really like. If they are still poorly after a few days to a week, then just feed them off. You don't want mice with bad immune systems making up your colony.

Thanks again Becky. Now that I've had time to think about it more, I'm not going to medicate these guys beyond giving them the echinacea for a week or so. I do know it can't be used constantly. If they have strong enough systems to get over it, great. If not... they aren't the genes I want for breeding.

Except for the one male, all of them are at least mostly if not all the way better. I'd much rather replace one male than start off with poor genes.

Sounds good :) It's always easier to find a nice healthy male than find multiple robust, healthy females, LoL.

I thought I'd post an update to this. Also some of the information I found on using echinacea, in case anyone else wants to try it in a similar situation.

I ended up eliminating the 1 really bad male, plus 4 questionable females from my colony due to the respiratory problems.

Unfortunately, shortly after I separated the really sick male, one of the other 2 apparently took this as a cue to eliminate the rest of his competition. He didn't actually kill it, but it was injured enough I decided it needed to be euthanized.

There is one more female that seems fine as far as the respiratory problems, but is not growing and in fact has lost weight since we got them, so I believe she has some other problem and I'm getting rid of her too. The rest seem to be doing fine. So I ended up with 1.7 out of the original 3.12. Could have been worse. Although I've definitely used up the "extras" I got to be able to not worry about eliminating ones that like eating babies or other such problems.

I have no way of knowing if the echinacea really helped, or if the ones that were a little sick and then got better would have done so anyway. But I definitely think for the small cost ($7 for a bottle of which I have only used a tiny bit), it was worth trying it. I think since I now have plenty of it, if/when I bring in new mice, I'll start them out on echinacea for the first week I have them to give them a boost when they might be stressed by moving to a new home.

I found one place that says that echinacea is "virtually non-toxic" to rats & mice, so there isn't any need to worry about overdosing them if you give them reasonable amounts. I ended up using 2.5 drops per ounce (the web page I posted earlier said 2.2, but after accidentally giving them 5 per ounce the first day with no apparent ill effects, then reading about the lack of concern of overdosing, I decided to go with 2.5 since it is easier to calculate). I'll post the link & also the text in case that page disappears.
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/alt/echinacea_od.htm

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OVERDOSE
No cases of overdosages in humans has been reported.

ANIMAL TOXICOLOGY
Single oral or intravenous doses of the expressed juice of Echinacea purpurea(EP) proved virtually non-toxic to rats and mice. After 4 weeks of oral administration in doses amounting to many times the human therapeutic dose laboratory tests and necropsy findings gave no evidence of any toxic effects in rats. Tests for mutagenicity carried out in microorganisms and mammalian cells in vitro and in mice all gave negative results. In an in vitro carcinogenicity study EP did not produce malignant transformation in hamster embryo.

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I also found several web pages that state that echinacea is not teratogenic in mice or rats. Teratogens are substances that can cause birth defects, so the fact that it is not is good news... we can safely use it in our breeder colonies, even on pregnant females.

Thanks again to everyone who posted to help me out with this!

Thanks for updating us Casey and the information supplied.

Sad to say but ending up with a healthy 1.7 out of a 3.12 from a pet store is actually pretty good odds for pet store rodents. Back when I was buying a lot of breeders out of pet stores it was sadly common to loose an unacceptable amount of them to illness, stroke, failure to thrive, etc. Once you are enough generations away from the pet store you'll find your home raised feeders & breeders to be far more stable healthwise.

Heck I remember talking to Becky on the phone, asking her a question about a rat and another rat literally fell over and died right in front of me. Not real signs it was critically ill other than some fluffed fur and that fact that the other rats from that recent purchase seemed to avoid it. Then bingo...flat out dead just like that.

Yep. Pet store rodents are awful. During my stint at Petsmart, I got to see where they come from(pet mills that don't do a thing for them), in what conditions(sickly, nervous, bitey), and how they're treated(stuck in the back 'QT' room for a week then dumped into the TINY display cages).... horrid!!

I once got a young silver dumbo and a silver hooded from my store because I really liked them and didn't want them mixing with the others, but that's when I discovered that they're bad right from the source, not the store. The dumbo never really did well and she died after only a month. The hooded was much better, stronger I suppose, and I got her a new friend and they stayed with me a while... but she wasn't much past a year old when she died from something heat related. Bottom line: Pet store rodents, Especially from Petco or Petsmart, should be avoided at all costs!

On another note, glad you still have the 1.7. :)