# did some rearranging, hope I made the right call.



## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

I have 5 tanks with breeding mice in them at the moment and ran into a bit of trouble today. Four of the enclosures are glass aquariums with screen tops but one is a wire cage build for rodents. The wire cage was holding a single female with her litter of fuzzies but today I saw her crawl right out of the cage and start walking around on the table. When I approached she ran back into the cage and to her nest. I would not care so much about this if it were not for the cats who would happily snatch her up if given the chance.

Out of the glass tanks, 1 had a first time mother with 13 pinkies, another had a first time mother with 6 fuzzies, and another had two mothers with a litter of 6 fuzzies and 8 pinkies. The tank with no young has a female in it known to kill the young of any other litter so I was torn as to what to do. I decided to take the mother and fuzzies from the wire cage and put them into the only other tank that just had fuzzies and added in the fuzzies from the mixed tank as well. I then took 5 of the pinkies from the pinky-only tank and put them into the formerly mixed tank figuring that two nursing mothers could handle a few extra pinkies, especially considering I had just removed all the fuzzies.

I replaced the substrate of any tank that had additions prior to changing anything to reduce the risk of infanticide and have been watching everything closely for the past hour without any evidence of aggression. Hopefully the rearrangements will be OK. I had thought about doing this a few days ago but did not want to mix pinkies since I have no way of identifying which pinkies came from which does at this time but learning that one of my nursing does can escape her tank caused me to reconsider. I put a male and female into the wire cage (my two largest mice) and hope they will not be able to escape.

It was probably for the best to set the tanks up so there were no mixed-age nests but I'll know if it was the right call by morning. Given the escape of the nursing mother in the wire cage, would any of you have handled this differently?


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## onionpencil (Jan 6, 2013)

i think you did the best you could under the circumstances, hope it works out. good luck.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Everything looked OK this morning. I just hope I remember which fuzzies carry the pink-eyed gene.


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## tinyhartmouseries (Dec 30, 2010)

I see you are in America, if you act fast, Petco's have their "$1 a gallon" tank sale.


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