# How much smell will two bucks and 5 does produce?



## shadowmouse

My son's been begging for us to get mice again, so I gave in. He got me pretty excited too! LOL. So we found a couple breeders and we're getting some mice at the end of this month. We're planning to get 2 bucks and 5 does. Eventually we will probably have a few litters. However, most of the time it will just be the 7 mice. My husband is concerned about the smell. What can you guys tell me? Will 7 mice really generate that much smell? Last time we had mice we had 6 does. You could smell them, but it just smelled like bedding most of the time.

I've read two suggestions for cutting down the buck smell...

1. Vanilla drops in the water

2. Sweet PDZ sprinkled below the bedding

Would either of these help?

I already bought a big bale of aspen. I read later that pelleted straw is better for odor, but that will have to wait until I use up what I already bought.


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## Fantasia Mousery

All I can tell you is that everyone has a different sensitivity to smell, so there's no way you can know beforehand.
I hardly smell my mice, and I have around 60. In my livingroom. My boyfriend neither. None of our friends comment on it, and when asked it "isn't too bad". But my mom thinks it smells absolutely terrible.


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## shadowmouse

Yeah, I grew up with a kitty box in my room and cleaning horse stalls, so I think I won't notice. My husband, though, is very dramatic about smells. I just want to safe guard myself by trying to keep the buck smell minimal. Do you know if either the vanilla or the Sweet PDZ are okay for mice? I am planning to just "see how it goes", but want have some things I can do if hubby mentions the smell.


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## YourSoJelly

I WONDERFUL trick for smell is wood stove pellets (1/2-1 inch) on the bottom of the enclosure with your choice of bedding on top. I use it for my guinea pigs when they have to be in quarantine due to illness or a new piggy and in their kitchen area! It is a GODSEND! You can BARELY smell ANYTHING with it. I'm not sure how it will work with mice, especially bucks, but good luck! I also HIGHLY suggest air purifiers in the room where the mice will be.


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## shadowmouse

Great. I am assuming you only use the type without accelerant... Is it pretty obvious?


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## Onyx

As mentioned above, some people are really sensitive to smells and some aren't, so it is always difficult to judge how bad it's going to be and how effective preventative and cures will be.

My mother swears that soda crystals (a bag can be bought for £1 here) put into a paint rolling tray and put into a room will clear most smells, even wet and muddy dog smell.

You could try air purifiers. You can get them in small, cheap varieties or hi-tec expensive electrical things.

You could try oil burners - a few drops of essential oils into some water with a candle underneath. This is effective for any housey smells and isn't full of chemicals like household air sprays BUT whatever you can smell, the mousies can smell too. So make it a weak dilution and not a strong smelling one to start with. Something like Lavender and Vanilla should be perfectly fine.

Air ventilation in the room is the most effective in my opinion but needs to be balanced and is no good if the tubs/boxes you use aren't well ventilated either. The problem is you don't want a draft constantly in the tubs, certainly if for whatever reason there isn't a lot of bedding or a thick nest being used. Summer months aren't too bad obviously because the temp of the air is higher and no real risk to the mice but in the colder months it can be a pain. But I believe, for my mice at least, they benefited from 10 minutes a day of fresh air through the flat and the flat benefited from it, too


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## shadowmouse

Well, I'm really concerned about summer months here. Just this last week (and it's toward the end of summer) it's been up near 100 degrees (I believe that is about 37 Celsius). My son's room has three big windows and it's facing east, so it gets a lot of sun. We just tinted all his windows and installed insulated curtains, but it's still a touch warm down there in the mornings. We have central cooling, so it's probably somewhere in the low to mid 80's. I'm just worried the warm will make it stink a bit more. The rest of the day it's 78 like the rest of our house. Obviously, I can't open windows during the summer either, though, because of our extreme heat.


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## Onyx

Ah right, I am with you now. I hadn't realised you were in the US. Yes I have seen that the temps there get to and are currently particularly high.

Naturally, you are right in that the heat will probably make things smell stronger, if there is something there to smell. It seems like you are doing all you can to keep the temps down, if you are making your own housing for them using tubs, maybe increase the size of the ventilation/meshed areas so things can't build up inside the tubs. Otherwise just keep everything as clean and fresh as possible 

The bucks will smell more as you know, maybe get the bucks after having the does for a month or two, so that your hubby can be introduced to the smell over time? Just a thought x


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## shadowmouse

My mice are coming down all at once from a breeder. We'll just have to see how it goes.


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## PPVallhunds

its so dependent on the mice themselves, but the more mice the more they will smell on the whole.
when i first got my fox show mice i found the bucks stank compaired to my siamese pet bucks.

extra cleaning and not using things that will soak the pee in will help so no widden houses ect


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## shadowmouse

I was just going to post that the more typy mice seem to stink more! I keep checking my big black/tan doe to see if she might be a buck. She just stinks so bad. I didn't know that about the wooden things. I am going to change out tanks this afternoon, so I will remove all the popsicle stick houses and tp tubes. Maybe that will help the smell.


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## ThatCertainGlow

Sweet PDZ should only be a problem if they concentrate on eating it, (unlikely), or you add it to the compost (might not be an issue). I use it, and can tell the difference, dramatically, in any bin holding more than one mouse. Vanilla is debatable, but I know of at least one breeder who says she didn't have any trouble from it, and for her it helped a lot. For me, the statements of vanilla scented urine from other people, made it seem like I'd probably not benefit from it, enough to try. I could be quite wrong.

Oh, one thing I have noticed, if your bucks will tolerate a bigger bin, then that, plus always moving whatever they have been sleeping in (hay, paper nest, whatever), along with the least messy TP rolls/etc (this highly depends on the tidiness of your buck), will reduce most of the musk down to a low level.

They tend to spray less, over time, with the familiar non-plastic things being given back. I can not abide the smell of the pee on used plastic/wood things, so those are out for me. Saucers/etc have to get cleaned often, anyhow, or plastic soaks up the odor, in a non-removable way, over time. The plastic the bins I'm using are made from doesn't seem to do this, but I'm not going to test it too much.

New mice are also more likely to smell more. Like nervous peeing/pooping/food change? I don't know. lol


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## Kayota

Fantasia Mousery said:


> All I can tell you is that everyone has a different sensitivity to smell, so there's no way you can know beforehand.
> I hardly smell my mice, and I have around 60. In my livingroom. My boyfriend neither. None of our friends comment on it, and when asked it "isn't too bad". But my mom thinks it smells absolutely terrible.


Pretty much my parents... I barely notice it generally but my parents act like it's horrible. It did bother me when I had them in my kitchen but I moved some stuff off a set of shelves and made it my mouse rack.


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## shadowmouse

UPDATE: We've had them since the fall and we just switched the bin style cages from tanks. I went with the bins that have a ton of floor space, but aren't real tall (prob 8 inch tall). We love them. Seems to make them feel very secure. With all the floor/bedding the smell seems to kept down. I also switched my young does to a hamster cage with nice small bar spacing and they love that. No odor at all from them. I'm now just using regular baking soda sprinkled on the bottom with pelleted wood bedding and then a bit of aspen on top for nesting. Our buck has his own little bachelor pad by himself and the pregnant does have their own nursery bins. I must say I do like the plastic bins. Making them is a bit nerve racking though. They can crack if you are too hasty or clumsy (who me? never!).


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## Miceandmore64

I have never broke one ha ha!


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## shadowmouse

I didn't completely ruin them, just pushed too hard and there's a tiny hairline fracture around the hole.


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## moustress

Sadly, I realized (shortly after moving my mousery from the upstairs to the basement) that with less mousewares such as wheels, tubes, etc., the smell was much less. I figure that plastic does not absorb odors or soil, so the stinky stuff accumulates. I suppose one could remedy that by removing and washing all that stuff everyday, but I have a lot of tanks, so that is a lot of work.

I think that wood based bedding works best for odors in general, as long as it's not pine or cedar.


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## shadowmouse

I don't have wheels right now. Just water tips poke through. They just get tp rolls, which they live to shred.


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## moustress

Yeah, eggcartons, TP and paper towel rolls, the occasional small box...


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## shadowmouse

The wheels were just soo noisy! And the mice are my son and I's project, so being in his room the noise was too much. I know I could get the saucers, but those things are pricey!


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## moustress

Plastic wheels make a lot less noise; but with twenty of 'em thats still a lot of freakin' noise. Metal wheels make sounds that set my teeth on edge.


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## shadowmouse

Oh I know! So annoying!! Even when I oiled them.


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## Seafolly

Removing the wheels reduced the smell for mine. Or if it's a buck (aka living alone) I wash the thing daily. Generally I try to keep toys disposable aka cardboard tubes and boxes that can be replaced, and yes, giving one or two back. I haven't tried baking soda under wood pellets but will give that a shot. I currently have two bucks and five does.  But I also have five female babies which will start to add to that soon.


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## jturner

I have one buck that is extremely smelly. I've had success in reducing odor dramatically by using Marshall's Goodbye Odor in his drinking water, cleaning the cage every other day and wiping down everything with Nature's Miracle Cage Wipes and using aspen shavings for bedding. I used to use alfalfa pellets, but these were too dusty. I like the Crittertrails wire cages for ventilation. Make sure the spaces between the wires are escape proof for mice and wipe down the wires when you clean. I keep an air purifier in the room. My husband complained a lot about the smell when I first got the mouse. Now he agrees there is no odor. The routine only takes a few minutes and is worth it.
jturner


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## BlackSelf

You could try pulverizing oatmeal on your blender until they are dust, then mix the oatmeal with the bedding and presto!


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## andypandy29us

I currently have 93 mice living in my living room and they do smell a little but you get used to it ... I use air freshners in the room and the back 2 nature bedding Ive started to use really helps control the smell


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## BlackSelf

Woa lots and lost of mice!


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## shadowmouse

Yeah, 93 mice! Wow. I have look up that bedding. Back 2 Nature?


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## Miceandmore64

I have 5 mice right now! Oh im such a disappoinent. The most I have had at a time was 22 but still cool.


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## andypandy29us

yes back to nature .... I get it from petsupermarket.co.uk they deliver free


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## Miceandmore64

I actually have 4 now ha ha


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