# Large litters



## Kayleigh (Mar 20, 2011)

Hey
I have been breeding pet mice for the first time. 4 females bred by a male so that they can birth in pairs. Its purely as a experiment to see how many markings I can put on a coat type. 
Shade my sattin fuzzy has had 9 pups with a tri colour
Daisy has had 9 too with a tri colour two days later and are in a biggish tank with one nest spot. They share nursing in there and dont mind me taking a good look at the babies. I think I will keep these two as a pair from now on and just add different males. They are so bonded its quite nice to watch them. Nothing has died so far so im thinking thats a good group.

This is the bit I need help with. Elessa [white rex] has had 13 pups!!!! Thats loads and she did not seem that big at all. All are healthy though and all have milk dots in tummys that I can see. Snow is with her ready to drop too and pups are nursing off her too. Is 13 to many? I am worried about culling at this stage because I dont really want to destroy anything if it might grow up healthy and happy. I am hoping snow has a small litter so they can share but snow is huge! Such a massive mouse right now so I suspect a litter roughly the same size. Snow is a fuzzy and you can see into her tum... im surprised she can move at all. She may look bigger than she is because she lacks fur. 
Should I wait and see or should I pop a couple of pups in with the other groups... or cull anyway.

In my mind I want to keep them all and see how it goes.They are small right now and have a good start. Then markings and colours will come in which will help me best decide what to do before they get bigger and start sucking the life out of mummy mouse. What is the maximum you can have on a mouse? If 9 is to much per mouse I need to start thinking what to do with my first litters too. Just dont want to kill anything unless I really have to. Not against culling at all I just have homes waiting for mousies. Although..... im going to need to find more with these litter sizes being as huge as this lol

Is there a way of telling coat type early on? My first litters carry texel, fuzzy and satin. All whiskers seem normal to me and the markings are to die for! Thee are 3 self mice in there. 2 white and im not sure what the other two are... they seem peach in colour.


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## SarahC (Oct 3, 2008)

the markings will be through at 4 days,whiskers will give an indication of fur type.Fuzzies/texel generally have curly ish ones.I think their are far to many for them to grow into fit adults and you will see those that can't compete start to fall behind.I would use either the markings/coat type to select or preferably gender,I'd cull all the males or all but one or two if there was something you wanted to keep and keep the does.6 per mother would be a reasonable amount of youngsters to keep.


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## Kayleigh (Mar 20, 2011)

Ok I shall see the markings and look at sexes in a few days. Hopefully mummy mouse will find that better.


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