MOUSEKATEERS MOUSERY

OUR EXPERIENCE WITH HALF WILD LITTERS

During June 2009 I noticed our cat was catching some young wild mice who appeared to be rex!  I didn’t think anything of it until cleaning some of the boys tubs I startled a wild mouse in Devil’s tub.  She escaped and took off.  Devil was our champion black self, longcoat rex boy.

THE FIRST LITTER

At the end of July I noticed Devil had made a nest for himself at the front of his tub.  This was unusual as he had a perfectly good house to sleep in.  Upon investigation his house was boarded up with tissue and wood shavings, my heart sank.  I lifted the lid of the house and the little wild agouti rex mouse leapt out of the tub and ran into the laundry.  In the house were seven, one week old babies.  I estimated they were born on 17 July, 2009.

I took them out and placed them in a humane trap in the laundry, hoping that mumma mouse would come back to them.  The next morning there she was in the trap feeding them.

I worked out that she was Devil’s daughter, so this new generation were a father to daughter breeding, there were 6 bucks and 1 doe, five were rex, two were standard coats, five were agouti, two were black.  Devil as the father was the only possibility.

During the next 4 weeks we handled them sparingly.  Mum was very flightly, but over time as we handled the only doe she became tame enough to sit on our hands without taking off.  We thought we might keep her as she was a beautiful longcoat agouti rex and would add hybrid vigour to our breeding.

At 4 weeks of age we released all the boys into the wild, we realised that Mumma mouse was pregnant again so she had to stay to rear her upcoming new litter in relative safety.   We put her daughter in with a litter that were roughly the same age, hoping that they would accept her and she would integrate into our colony.  Unfortunately, this was not to be, the other older mice harassed her and would not accept her, sadly, we found her dead the next morning, although there were no marks on her.

THE SECOND LITTER

On 15 August, 2009 Devil’s Daughter produced a litter of ten pups, oddly there appeared to be four light coloured pups.  As they grew we realised they were all ticked and after discussion with other breeders realised that Devil was not the father of this litter. 

In the first week after birthing the first litter she had moved into Papilio’s tub.   Papilio is our ticked boy who lives next to Devil, he has sisters the same colour as some of the pups in this new litter.  She mated with Papilio, and he is the sire of the second litter.  There were six does and 4 bucks, three of the does were bone and one buck was blue chinchilla rex.  We decided to rehome the does with other breeders as it was not fair to release them into the wild because the light colouring disadvantaged their survival.  The blue chinchilla boy also went to a breeder.

This second litter was wilder than the first and we didn’t have much luck in taming them.  The best they would do would be to tolerate us putting our hand near them as they ran on their wheel or sniffing our fingers with eyes closed when we presented food.

At four weeks of age we separated them and moved them into a tub with some domesticated babies the same age, this time we removed the domestic mum, but left the very obese, sedate nanny to help them integrate.  This worked well.  As they neared five weeks of age we released the boys and their mum, Devil’s Daughter into the wild.  She was finally free again.

After initially sexing the litter at a week old, we found sexing them at four weeks to be very difficult.  One bone agouti doe I wasn’t 100% sure of and decided to pop her in with the boys to be on the safe side.  I’d rather have one unplanned litter than possibly another eight!

THE THIRD LITTER

Of course I eventually worked out that she was a girl – too late!  She was mated by the young domestic boy, a champagne self longcoat.  Our third wild litter was born on 12 October, 2009.  We left her in the young colony to birth as we felt this would be beneficial for her and her young, and we were interested in the dynamics of such a mixed group.  Six light coloured pups were born but after a few days we were down to three, we put this down to natural attrition because all mice in the colony were very attentive of the newborns.  Thankfully these three were does and have turned out to be black eyed whites, one standard coat, two rex.

 

 

WHERE DID THEY GO?

At the time of writing the third litter is only one month old, the bone agouti mother and one of her daughters will be rehomed with another breeder who also has her two agouti sisters from the second litter.

Two standard girls from the second litter went to another breeder where they are still quite wild but she is having limited success with the bone agouti coming onto her hand and running up her arm.  Her agouti sister is still very wild, both mice startle easily.  We found that the rex coated offspring seemed to be calmer and not as wild as their standard coated siblings.

Another bone agouti girl is living with two of her aunts at a nearby breeder.

The blue chinchilla rex  boy went with the champagne buck to yet another breeder.  She successfully tamed the chinchilla boy, named him Wild Bill, and found him to be a lovely mouse and very affectionate, carrying good weight.   Unfortunately he was found dead in his cage surrounded by his cage mates at 7 weeks of age.  There were no unusual circumstances and he did not appear to be bullied.

 

 

 

Whilst we wouldn’t courage these type of litters we do have a responsibility to the animals to do the best that we can.