Sneezy mice

[kc261]

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!*).

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.

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.

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?