# Hi there! Accidental mummy to 21 babies!



## AyJay658 (Jan 15, 2012)

Hi everyone! Well my story is a common one. We got two mice from the pet shop (actually a garden centre), got home and immediately could see one of them was a boy... We thought long and hard about it and then decided to take him back, keep the girl (and prospective babies) and get another girl to keep with her. Unfortunately in the tank at the pet shop there were two girls left. And I did not want to leave one by herself so we took both...we did realise this might mean huge numbers of babies! And so it did. Now I have 21 baby mice, three mothers plus my two girlies that I have had for a while now. I have a few questions about the colouring of the babies but will post that in a different place! Speak soon!


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## SarahC (Oct 3, 2008)

Good grief,welcome to mousing and FMB's.Hope you find all the help and support you need here.


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

Welcome to the forum, how old are the babies now?


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

You could think of yourself as having rescued the mothers and the babies. You have the chance to be the hero in this mess. Anything you need to know, ask away. That's what we are here for.


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## AyJay658 (Jan 15, 2012)

Thanks moustress! Do I get a cape? =P The oldest are a 12 days and the youngest are 10 =)


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## Kelley James (Jan 24, 2012)

Oh Gods, I've had some interesting problems. While I still thought I was hard-assed enough to raise stock to feed my snakes, I had to allow them to get to the 40 gram weight, because the snakes are 4 foot corn snakes, & I'd like to feed as few mice as possible. I hate rats, I don't know why, but my snakes could do with two 60 gram rats, perhaps even one 120 grammer, I don't know.

Well, each of my bucks has 3 does. The young are all being kept in a non sexually segregated tank, because I never thought that they'd be around long enough to breed, & at times I've had as many as 10 or 12 pregnant does at once. Fortunately it's a self limiting problem. IF I have a mother who has more than 10, I frequently have a dam I can put in to co-parent. That's harder to manipulate tho, than it is to simply take some babies & adopt them to another mother. That's more easily done if she already has pups/kits (however you look at them) of her own. I have dams that will happily take in anybody body else's babes, I have dams that will go steal other mother's babes, & I have some mothers that trade their babies around & have 3 ages babies from 2 other mothers, in their nests.

I have 3 dams that just had babies about 4-7 days apart, so there is a substantial difference in size. They can't decide whether to have 1 large communal nest, or to have 3 seperate nests. Sometimes I find all the babies in one nest, sometimes 2 & sometimes 3 nests, depending on the politics of the day. I wish they'd make up their minds. :lol:

What's breaking my heart is that I've had 2 deformed mice from absolutely non-related parents. One had hydrocephally. that was probably the cause of death of the sweetest little buck, naked Jifffy Rei (a 'jiffy' is the length of time it take a beam of light to move 1 centimeter). The type of deformities, from some of my research, is egg related in the females, & usually chemically borne, so I wouldn't feed them to a snake, especially an egg layer. IF somethign hurts the fairly insulated mammalian egg, I can't risk harming my snakes. This happens to dove-tail nicely with my plans, as I had decided that I didn't want to feed them to my snakes anyway! :mrgreen:

By the way, you're lucky. My mice have 13-15 babies each, though 10-12 is avarage. If there's an accidental back-toback pregnancy, 4-8 is to be expected regardless how many babes the dams would likely have, given a good rest between pregnancies.


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## Kelley James (Jan 24, 2012)

> naked Jiffy Rei


That should have read "Named Jiffy Rei"  I'n sure he'd have been surprised to see he'd lost his fur.


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