# Nutmeg's First Litter (Himalayan Splashed)



## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

My first litter ever! This was from Nutmeg, an F1 English-American Himalayan Splashed, and her brother Cappuccino.

They were born on November 1, 2013, which is the first day of the new year on the Celtic calender, so they should be very lucky babies!

In my current project, I'm not aiming for any particular colors or markings. Just running a little experiment to see how type and size are inherited, because I like having hard data. I'll be weighing and measuring these babies every four weeks or so, and keeping the biggest doe and any Siamese.

Their fuzz is just starting to come in, so it's still hard to tell what colors they'll turn out to be, but so far it looks like I have at least one obvious Splashed, one who might be both Splashed and Banded, one possible Siamese, and...no idea yet about the last one, but she looks uniformly pale so far.

Warning: I haven't learned how to compress photos and make them smaller yet, so I'm just posting the links to Photobucket, which means the pics show up as really big here.

First is Anise: the darkest of the bunch, with a lot of obvious Splashed markings. You can see Nutmeg nuzzling her in the picture. She's getting really adventurous and wandering away from the nest.



Next is Clove: possibly Splashed and Banded, but not totally sure yet.



Next is Lavender: the fuzziest of the bunch so far. Is it just me, or is she showing points already?



And last but not least, Sugar: the smallest and palest of the group. No idea if she's a PEW or a Himalayan yet, but she's not showing any obvious pigment anywhere.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Small litter any current photos?


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

I'll see if I can load up some pics of the two I kept from this litter (Anise and Lavender). I always try to keep the litters down to about four does only; though I'm still learning how to accurately sex pinkies, so this first litter ended up with two girls and two boys. The two boys, Sugar and Clove, went to my friend Elf.

Sadly, Clove eventually became snake food after ripping a chunk out of his brother's back. Sugar has since healed nicely, and grew to be so big he gets regularly mistaken for a small rat! Even though his color and markings aren't that great (he's a chocolate-point siamese splashed), his type and size are so great that he's being loaned out as a stud to help another breeder.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Wow thats cute bad Clove! Love the spice names! Some more pictures would be great! My first litter was 4! I don't cull tho


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Why don't you cull?

I cull because it's healthier for the mom and babies, and also because I've witnessed what happens if the breeder doesn't handle the culling. It's rather nightmare-inducing, so I'd rather do the culling humanely myself than let the moms eat the babies or leave them to starve.

It's one of those aspects of taking care of animals that might seem really terrible, but it's part of how nature works and you just kind of have to learn to accept it and not build up negative feelings about it.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

I don't breed for show and my litters have so far been a average of 6.6 so not many babies


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Sounds like you've been pretty lucky so far. 6 is pretty much the absolute maximum I would let my mice raise. Anything more than that would put too much stress on the mother and the babies would all end up really small.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Yeah I do agree my mice can be small but thats ok they are pets after all. I have had these litters 
4.9.8.6.6


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Yeah, the litters with 9 and 8 babies, I probably would've culled a few. Mostly bucks (they're harder to find homes for). The litter I have right now is 9, but it's a combination of two different litters (one culled to four babies, the other culled to five) so there's two mothers feeding them all. Even then, I can see how stressed out the mothers are getting, especially with how big the babies are (they've got about another week until they're weaned).


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Yeah I usually will from now on have 2 mums if I need to foster or they can nurse together (I will try nurse together for first time in my next two litters)


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

You still have to be careful with the size of the litter. This group of nine I have right now? They started as a group of 21. Some of the smaller ones were already starting to starve by the time I started culling them back down to a reasonable level.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Yeah mums have 10 nipples so anything more than 8 would be hard but I don't think its needed for me to kill to 4 or 5 I would cull to 6


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

4-6 is usually the norm, and it also depends on the mother in question. Some can handle larger litters, and some can't. Just because they have ten nipples doesn't mean they can handle ten babies. They have large litters out in the wild only because they expect most of them to die anyway, so having up to ten babies lets them make sure that at least one or two will survive. In captivity, they don't have to worry about that, but they don't know it so they keep having babies they can't handle.

You want to keep careful track of the babies, to see if any mysteriously vanish, or don't have good milk bellies (meaning their siblings are pushing them away from the milk), or are missing toes or tail tips. If you see any of that, then start culling ASAP because those are all signs that the mother isn't handling the larger litter well.


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Yeah definitely! No way they could handle 10 what I meant by that was there is no way anything more than 10 is manageable almost ever! Yeah I would never let my mouse have 9 again


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