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My baby meecers

Cattsy

Cattsy

New member
Soooo

No real questions in this one.

I have two litters of mice (my first mousey litters in probably 20 years LOL) they were both born within 12 hours of each other on the same day.

One litter has six babies and the other has ten.

One thing I've noticed, the smaller litter is growing and developing WAY faster than the other. I wouldn't think that four babies would make that much difference, but the difference is HUGE. The smaller litter already has skin pigments, and whiskers coming in.

These pics were taken today, from the same perspective at the same angle, just cropped and resized and the difference is significant!

Is this typical?

Litter2_0714.jpg


Litter1_0714.jpg


Both of these colonies were unrelated, but one of my males died so the girls are on the chopping block. I'm gonna use babies from these litters to start new colonies.

I've also found it super interesting how the does that don't have babies act as "baby sitters" I find them in the nests almost more than the actual moms! I need to cull one of the adults as it's feeding day for my king but I'm kinda loathe to pull the "mommy helpers" :(

Yeah yeah I know shouldn't ever get attached to dinner!

Anyway thanks for looking :) I kinda think they're cute and wanted to share.

Trina
 
Smaller litters will develop faster than a larger litter. More milk to go around, I suspect. Also, you don't really need to get rid of your females because the males died. I've never had any issue putting in a new male.
 
Not to mention there is more room in the womb for them to grow. Its like a women having twns vs one baby. The twins are usually smaller.
 
Raptor said:
Smaller litters will develop faster than a larger litter. More milk to go around, I suspect. Also, you don't really need to get rid of your females because the males died. I've never had any issue putting in a new male.
Click to expand...

these particular girls have killed two males already :( I might try one more time but it's hard to find good sized males here.
 
when you put the new male in are you completely cleaning everything out? Washing it down and everything. They might think of the new male as encoraching on the old males territory.
 
Yup wash everything out really well. Well the first male I put in there they definitely killed. The second was kinda sickly to begin with and they beat him up pretty bad so he ended up snake food lol. My other colony didn't have any trouble with a new male but these two girls are kinda nasty. Just glad that one of those boys managed to get the deed done with at least one of them before he kicked the bucket LOL
 
Weird. Might be right to start a new colony then if they keep beating up on and killing the males.
 
One is older anyway she was a retired breeder from someone else that was given to me. Was hoping to get one litter out of her but I don't think it's gonna happen. I might keep the younger female and see if she'll adapt to a different colony.

Gotta grow these babies up first! lol
 
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