removing pinkies

[KG Reptiles]

Hi, I'm new to breeding mice and was wondering when you remove pinkies what is the best way to remove them? Do you use gloves so they don't pick up the scent and kill the rest? Also, I currently house 1 male and 5 females when they have litters do you just leave all of the adults in their with the pinkies or remove the females before they have them? I heard if you remove adults from the group and then return them they might kill the one that is being introduced just wondering if this is true? Finally, I was just wondering about cleaning do you not clean while they have all their babies in there or remove the adults and the babies separate? Sorry for the long post I just want to do things right. I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks

[satomi325]

Hi, I'm new to breeding mice and was wondering when you remove pinkies what is the best way to remove them? Do you use gloves so they don't pick up the scent and kill the rest? Also, I currently house 1 male and 5 females when they have litters do you just leave all of the adults in their with the pinkies or remove the females before they have them? I heard if you remove adults from the group and then return them they might kill the one that is being introduced just wondering if this is true? Finally, I was just wondering about cleaning do you not clean while they have all their babies in there or remove the adults and the babies separate? Sorry for the long post I just want to do things right. I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks

1. You can pick them up with your bare hands.
2. You can leave all of the adults together. But the male will immediately breed with the female who has given birth. And she will birth another litter as the current one weans.
3. Moving adults and having them kill the newly added one is mainly an ASF thing. But can happen to strange males being introduced into a colony of females with pups. They're just being protective.
4. When I clean, I just move everyone as normal. Sometimes the pups get placed in a separate holding bin. I haven't had issues yet. My cleaning schedule is the same as normal. But if a litter is less than 24 hrs old, I leave them be. The first hours after birth is crucial for the mother and pups to bond.

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[Weapon-x]

+1 for what Nikki said
1)I typically use gloves - but that's more of a I don't want to touch the used mouse bedding with my bare hands thing. So by the time I pickup and move the pinkies the gloves have a lot of "mouse scent" on them.

2) I also move the male out after he's done his part and the females are noticiably gravid. My mouse lab boxes are pretty small so it's usually just 3 females. I've noticed that if the mice feel overcrowded they will self cull so just keep an eye on how crowded they are in your bins.

3) Reintroducing mice fighting- I've noticed this a bit when I attempt to feed my bps and return a rejected mouse back to the bin. Sometimes they get into fights. It's odd- sometimes they do sometimes they don't. I try to keep colonies together. All the mice from the same bin go into bins together when I'm moving them around. Except for breeding of course.

And every few months I'll buy a new male to introduce new blood to gentic pool. Probably overkill but before doing that in the past I noticed a few mice with tumors. Which resulted in elminating that entire colony rather than chance feeding them to my snakes.

[Coleslaw007]

Well... I was going to say about what Nikki and Weapon-x already did but I guess they've got it about covered.

[MrLang]

Rat question but I'll piggy back here.

I have to clean my rat tubs tonight. The babies are 10-14 days old. I put my hand in the other day and one of the moms lunged at me and bit me pretty bad. I jerked my hand back and she was latched on so hard it ended up flinging her out of the tub, then I had to chase her around the room to get her back.

Any tips on avoiding this aggression? I wasn't even close to the babies... is this pretty normal or should I consider her less tame and not worry about my other females?

[satomi325]

Rat question but I'll piggy back here.

I have to clean my rat tubs tonight. The babies are 10-14 days old. I put my hand in the other day and one of the moms lunged at me and bit me pretty bad. I jerked my hand back and she was latched on so hard it ended up flinging her out of the tub, then I had to chase her around the room to get her back.

Any tips on avoiding this aggression? I wasn't even close to the babies... is this pretty normal or should I consider her less tame and not worry about my other females?

Its different for all females. Its an individual thing. Most of mine are good about me messing with their tub or babies.

But some girls get overly maternal (which isn't their fault) and get very protective when they have litters and/or only when they have pups present. When the pups are old enough to walk, that instinct to bite/protect starts going down gradually.

If your girl was tame before, she probably is still tame. Its just the presence of her litter that's putting her on edge.

You can't really avoid the aggression since its instinctual. Just be aware.

But I have noticed that the girls I have personally raised and handled from weaned age don't mind me messing with their babies. I guess they are familiar with me and just know I won't hurt them or their babies.
I've only been bitten twice and those were by tame older girls that I got second hand.


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[Kaorte]

I usually just remove the parents when ever I need to mess with the babies. I have ASFs and the parents are very protective. If I just need to grab a pink or two I use tongs to get the parents out of the way and quickly do my thing.

[JohnNJ]

Rat question but I'll piggy back here.

I have to clean my rat tubs tonight. The babies are 10-14 days old. I put my hand in the other day and one of the moms lunged at me and bit me pretty bad. I jerked my hand back and she was latched on so hard it ended up flinging her out of the tub, then I had to chase her around the room to get her back.

Any tips on avoiding this aggression? I wasn't even close to the babies... is this pretty normal or should I consider her less tame and not worry about my other females?

My approach is to cull any rat that shows aggression toward me (only happened twice). I also feed off all the babies so that none can make it into my breeding program. I also eliminate rats that fight with other rats, chew through tubs, keep trying to escape, etc. This was the advice I received when I first started breeding and I stick to it. If you do this early on you will end up with really nice rats that don't cause problems.

[MarkS]

Rat question but I'll piggy back here.

I have to clean my rat tubs tonight. The babies are 10-14 days old. I put my hand in the other day and one of the moms lunged at me and bit me pretty bad. I jerked my hand back and she was latched on so hard it ended up flinging her out of the tub, then I had to chase her around the room to get her back.

Any tips on avoiding this aggression? I wasn't even close to the babies... is this pretty normal or should I consider her less tame and not worry about my other females?

Feed it off along with all of the babies. I believe that aggression in rats is an inherited trait and I culled every single rat that ever showed even the slightest sign of aggression (even rats that mearly charged me without biting). As a result, I've never been bitten by any rat despite having raised many thousands of them.

[Jonas@Balls2TheWall]

Rat question but I'll piggy back here.

I have to clean my rat tubs tonight. The babies are 10-14 days old. I put my hand in the other day and one of the moms lunged at me and bit me pretty bad. I jerked my hand back and she was latched on so hard it ended up flinging her out of the tub, then I had to chase her around the room to get her back.

Any tips on avoiding this aggression? I wasn't even close to the babies... is this pretty normal or should I consider her less tame and not worry about my other females?

Sometimes a female will get startled and react instinctively, there is a difference between an aggressive rat and a rat that bites you that one day. We tend to cull anything that exhibits a very strong an consistent unwanted behavior. For example; the last rat we culled was way too athletic, fast and nervous. The first incident she leaped right out of a large holding bin in one stride, by the time we were able to catch her she had chewed up one of the water lines. We let that incident slide but next cleaning day she did the same thing, that time we weren't as lenient. My point is, make sure that you are culling for a noted behavior and not a one time thing, especially if she is a good mother with many clutches left in her. Just my 2 cents.