# Hugely aggressive doe.



## Psy (Nov 19, 2016)

Hello all,

A week ago I started my breeding efforts, and right off the bat I had some problems. I researched it across the site and I may have interpreted behavior incorrectly to dire ends. As only a fool would ignore his mistakes I want to get it right next time.

I picked up 4 females and a male, a lovely male and a smattering of various females. Within a few hours of introduction everything seemed fine with the lot save for 1 of the females. She seemed to be dominating the male. She would sniff and what appeared to be aggressively cleaning the male, and he would submit. After 1 night I decided to break up the group a bit having found a fresh wound near his groin, and split her and another female for her to have some company. He seemed to heal just fine and continued to be his usual affectionate self, even hopping onto my hand to be taken out of the tank, exploring while out, and nuzzling up with the remaining 2 does while in the tank.

Well last night when I got home from work my wife looked sad and tells me, "I think Genghis is dead". I go in there and sure enough he's departed. I will be picking up a new buck as 2 are pregnant and I don't want to halt my efforts, but learn from any mistakes I might have made with him. He was such a sweet little guy, is this my fault?

It also seems relevant that she is significantly larger than the rest by about 15-20% mass (not pregnant i don't believe, just all around larger), and her behavior appears to be almost like male dominance behavior (actually entertained the notion of a hermaphrodite, or the mouse equivalent of a testosterone imbalance).


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

Its not your fault. Small wounds are pretty common and you said he was healing up fine and from what you said he was in with the other two does and not her for a while?

I would say it was likely some other illness or just one of those unexplained things so please don't blame yourself.

Small wounds on the groin are very common, your female sounds dominant but not really that much more aggressive than I have encountered in my mice at times. I have found it can help to have just the dominant female into a cage with the male that has the males scent in these cases since then she doesn't have a group of females to be dominant over.

I don't really see you did anything wrong but a few general tips if it helps for the next attempt.

* Don't put the buck in the does cage, either put the does into the bucks cage or put them on completely neutral ground, because does can get aggressive with males. 
* Generally 4 females can be a little too much at a time for one male and doing in two sets of two would probably have better results in terms of ones getting pregnant. 
* Some personalities just don't match and there's not a lot you can do, sometimes females can be too aggressive even with other females , other times they'll be sweet with certain mice and really aggressive with others.

Good luck with your breeding efforts. I am sorry you had to go through this so near to the start


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## Psy (Nov 19, 2016)

Thank you so much for the quick response. I will be taking all your suggestions to heart. It doesn't make me feel much better, that will just take time.


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