# Causes of chattering in mice?



## Perluna (Oct 1, 2013)

I got my 9 month old mouse, James, about 4 weeks ago now. He was originally living with his girlfriend Lily who now has babies, so he can no longer live with her. Ever since we got him, he chattered a lot (his previous owner had to give him and Lily up as she couldn't take them with her as she was moving). All of my mice squeak or make noises now and again as I would expect them to, but James does it nearly all of the time. I wasn't overly worried until yesterday, when he appeared to be walking slightly hunched and making more chattering noises than usual. I recently lost my little girl mouse due to similar symptoms, although she never chattered once. Is it normal for James to be making this noise - is he just doing normal mouse noises?

Every time we take our mice and rats over to our local vets for respiratory problems, they simply prescribe us Baytril and send us away, which has never helped any of our mice. I'm in the south east, and I believe the closest exotics specialist is in Maidstone, which is impossible for us to get to - as well as the stress involved in transporting a tiny creature all the way over there.

Does anyone have any suggestions?


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## pro-petz (Nov 14, 2012)

Respiratory infection is main cause of chattering whether it is a current infection or due to scarring from one/ Antibiotics would clear any infection but needs to be caught early for reduced scarring which is difficult as infection would have been masked for some time before the symptoms were audible to you.

The use of a stethoscope each time the cage is clean and listening for the slightest rattle sound may aid in preventing scarring if antibiotics can be administered before the actual audible chattering. Requires very good hearing on the part of the person using the stethoscope to be able to detect from what is out of the ordinary for each individual mouse.


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