# Overgrown teeth, very skinny mouse - Sunday!



## AyJay658 (Jan 15, 2012)

Hi there,

My boyfriends sister has some mice and one of them has been losing weight recently. She didnt notice because she is long haired and she doesnt hold them much. She looked fine at a glance apart from her hair was standing up a bit. Yesterday when I got back from holiday I picked her up and it was obvious she was ill. Her waist is about 1cm in diameter and her hips are about 2.5 - 3cm...I ran off the possible reasons in my head and only realized today I hadnt checked her teeth. (She wasnt eating at all and I am kicking myself for not realizing yesterday!!). Her bottom teeth are curled completely backwards and I am not sure if she can use her tongue or not but I have seen her cleaning a bit. It is a sunday so the emergency vet is our only source of veterinary help and its very expensive so if it can be held off till tomorrow that would be ideal. My question is what can she be given in liquid or paste form that she could eat to help her through the night.. I have KMR, Soy milk, butter, cream cheese, regular milk, a tiny paintbrush, a kitten feeder bottle and a 1ml syringe.

Any ideas? Obviously I cant cut them myself as I havent learnt how to and dont have the equipment. Would love some insight as it would be so frustrating to lose her now that I know whats wrong and its easily fixable! If she can make it through the night she will be going to the vets first thing tomorrow morning to have her teeth trimmed. The other mice are all fine and plump (and overweight!). They recently had their food changed (2 - 4 weeks ago) so I was wondering if it wasn't hard enough to grind down her teeth. She has always had a stick in the cage to gnaw on.

Thanks for any help!


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## Kallan (Aug 16, 2009)

I'd cut the teeth - get some pictures of what they should look like and try to trim them to that size. I can trim hamster teeth with cat claw clippers but I think even they would be too big for a mouse - try blunt ended nail scissors of some sort.

Try bread soaked in milk, or malt paste - my mice seem to appreciate both of these.

I do wonder why the teeth have overgrown at this point in her lfie though.


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## AyJay658 (Jan 15, 2012)

Thanks very much. I am not really confident cutting her teeth myself until I have been shown how to do it, also it would be very tricky with her awake for me. I will try the bread. Thanks very much. I have no idea. They aren't my mice but I will tell the owner to put some more chewing things in with them. Maybe flavoured to encourage her to gnaw. They have a wooden house so they aren't really lacking in things to chew. Its a mystery to me. She is going to the vets at 10am tomorrow.


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## AyJay658 (Jan 15, 2012)

After checking her teeth again I can see I was mistaken. They are not curling backwards over her tongue but there is a large gap between the bottom two teeth and they are longer than they should be and do not come near to touching the front ones as they are too far back to touch.


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## morning-star (Apr 9, 2011)

sorry - I think you'll find the mouse is sick and it has nothing to do with the teeth - sounds like organs are failing or it could be coccidiosis, but a vet will give you a better diagnosis, though I'll be surprised if she lasts more than 24-48 hours if she's that skinny.

The bottom teeth are often longer/sit behind the top ones and often when you try to open their mouth it can appear the gap between the two bottom teeth widens a little (I'm just going off what I see when having to syringe feed treatments)


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