Mystery of the disappearing pinkies?

[Gooseman]

Well, as the title states there's a mystery in my house. I have my mommy mouse and her litter in a critter keeper that is absolutely escape proof for anything bigger than a catepillar, and somehow my litter count of 9, 7 day old pinkies dropped to 5 today and there isn't a single sign of them. I mean, I've experienced momma's culling their young, but what kind of magic trick did my momma mouse pull? I pulled out all the bedding and spread it out and there isn't the slightest hint of a drop of blood, let alone any other physical signs of being removed from this realm. Unless these pinkies can climb a sheer 1 ft plastic wall and then climb through a non-existent hole, i don't know where they went...

anyone else experiece something along these lines?

[xdeus]

Pssst... the mother ate them.

[Gooseman]

Each pinky is like 1/6 her body size... If she ate 4 she'd be HUGE right? She looks normal...

they're not really pinkies anymore.. almost to fuzzy stage... I may be wrong but I don't think she could pack them away and keep it from me...

[xdeus]

That's one of the reasons why I stopped breeding mice, but I recently had a rat do that as well. She started off with a number of pinkies, but eventually she ate all but three. I found out too late that she was stressed with another female rat in the cage.

I could be wrong and 4 large pinkies does seem like a lot for a mouse, but that's the only thing I can think of unless David Copperfield was recently a guest at your house.

[Gooseman]

It upsets me b/c I had a genetic anomaly in that litter too. Both the parents had red eyes, one was champagne colored the other silk orange, and this one lil guy had black eyes and solid black skin pigment/fuzz coming up. And there was no confusion of who the mother of this bugger as my other gal hasn't had her litter yet... boo. The best i could tell the lil guy was healthy, and champagne doesnt have a history of culling any young.

[frankykeno]

Oh they can eat a lot and not appear to have done so. I had a female eat all 11 of her fuzzy offspring for no darn reason I can figure out! She just looked slightly chubby afterwards. Mice are awful about doing this it seems. She made a good feeder herself and I'll just buy mice for now. Rats are much, much easier!

[Gooseman]

i have come to the conclusion that i'm gonna stop breeding these little buggers and move on to rats. from what i hear they have all the personnality and less of the "ripping out of the hair".