Mice keep cannibalizing litters!!

[Ba11er]

I would make sure there are hides or some way for the pregnant moms to be separated from the rest of the group if they so choose to be. Something as simple as a flat piece of cardboard they can hid under works but in my experience its worth buying a plastic or wood hide from a pet store, it will last much longer.

The cannibalism could be something that one did and the rest in the cage caught the sent of meat/food/death and picked up the bad habit. I just ran into this problem with my rats, my established breeders cannibalized an entire litter, i culled who i thought the culprit was but the next litter i only had one rat survive between two females in the cage. So i'm guessing they picked up the bad habit or i culled the wrong animal but i am retiring the entire cage now just to make sure and get a fresh start with new stock.

[cchardwick]

OK, so I have a suggestion for you. I just had the same thing happen with a colony of mice, one male and three females. They were all chewing away at the very first new babies. So I separated all but one female into separate cages and left one female with the male. Just a few days later (today) I found one of my females sitting on a whole bunch of baby mice under a hide! She was the same mouse that was chewing away on baby mice just a few days ago, I'm guessing it was the babies from another mouse. Apparently they need some alone time for their first litters, you may want to separate them when they are so fat they are gonna burst LOL. I have the females in separate 10 gallon critter cages, could probably use something as small as a 5 gallon critter cage for a single mouse giving birth. I got the idea from another guy on this site, don't cull your baby eaters so fast, apparently eating the first batch of babies is really common for mice. They just need to figure out what they are doing. Just separate them and see what happens. Worked for me!

[Freakzter]

I see you figured out the problem. although I don't think I could ever feed my mice 100% plain kibble, since they are getting fed to my ferrets which I just weaned off that accursed unnatural kibble diet. I think kibble is like McDonald's. ..sure you can survive off it solely and live to have lots of kids, but that doesn't mean your health is top notch. my mice mix is about 30% quality dog food.

i keep hearing about this cannibalism stage but I never had it happen in my first colonies first litter, it was a 1.3 and they all stayed together. they had a wheel and a hide and a food mix so they could "forage". also however, they were fancy mice.

they started to cannibalize towards the end of their career, I assume because they weren't producing enough milk anymore, due to age.

I have started a whole new setup about a month ago, and should be getting my first litters very soon here. this time they are a mix of offspring from my original colony, and feeder mice from various shops.

once again they all have mix food, and hides, but I was only able to fit a wheel in half the cages.

I really hope I don't have to go through a similar cannibalism stage since I'm using feeders instead of fancies, but I'll brace for it.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Freakzter not all mice cannibalize one another but if they do it is a matter of either food, stress, scarce water....that for general canning alism which often need to be solved with addressing the issues and often starting from scratch.

Now if they eat their youngs because they are old and no longer producing milk it's a bit different, animals will cull their young if they cannot provide for them, they will also clean up if their youngs die.

If your breeders are too old they should have been replaced already, back to back breeding really takes it's toll faster than rotation (female being pregnant while nursing affect the litter size, babies size etc).

In normal ratation style breeding you ideally want to retire your females after 5 litters.

Finally fancy or feeder it's just a paint job therefore all the same.

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