My mouse just gave birth.

[Crystal6]

This is the place to celebrate right? (No they aren't feeder animals. >_>)

Story time! So an acquaintance of mine bought a male mouse she named "Bananas." She tamed him and kept him in her room but didn't expect the smell carried by most male mice. I overheard her wondering how to bath a mouse and I immediately told her I had shampoo for such a thing (She was going to use dish soap so I figured my guinea pig shampoo HAD to be better then that.) and asked her why she might need it. She said she bought a male mouse and that it smelled terrible. She was saying how she was thinking of releasing it if she couldn't get the smell off. I didn't want it to die so I offered to take it off her hands.

What I didn't expect was his friendly disposition. Every day when I went downstairs he would run to the top of his house and stand on his hind legs sniffing for me. When I put my hand in he immediately runs over to it instead of shying away and even lets me pick him up. I have had many mice in my life but this one still amazed me. Half the time when I give him a cheerio he doesn't even eat it immediately because he's excited to see me.



Strange as this sounds I felt a need to repay him for the way he brightened my day so I bought/gave him a mate. Of course I had to separate them right before she gave birth and I obviously can't let them be with each other again unless I'm prepared to care for 20 newborns but hey! Now I have baby mice.



My last mouse to have babies only gave birth to six, but this one had ten! (The mate's name is Butterscotch. She's the yellow mouse hawking over the babies even though there are no mice or predators in the cage.)

[bshmerlie]

I think they're adorable. Thanks for posting the pictures.

[pixiefrogman]

Very cute!
P.S. my pyxie got hungry reading this post.

[Ebony]

So cute. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

[Kurt]

Cool your White's will get to eat!!!

[Crystal6]

Cool your White's will get to eat!!!

XD And clog his arteries with something so unhealthy? Never!

Also You're WelcomeX2

[zeppsmomma]

Very cute. What are you going to do with all the little mouse babies?

[Crystal6]

Very cute. What are you going to do with all the little mouse babies?

Well, I still have a lot of mouse cages from my 8th grade science fair project. (Seems like eons ago.) I'll probably end up keeping all of them unless I find someone else who wants to raise mice. (And who I can trust with the task. Living in the middle of no where has these disadvantages...)

I have debated giving the original owner of Bananas a female. A female wouldn't smell as bad as the father but on the other hand... the kind of person who would release a mouse like that just because they didn't do the research in the first place is probably not the kind of person I would want raising them...

I can't wait for them to get fur. Soon I will have to think of names for (hopefully) ten mice.

[AlbinoFroggy]

aawww, they are really cute congrats. How long did it take for them to breed? Im currently trying to breed my mice, ive had them for three month now and nothing has happened.

[Crystal6]

aawww, they are really cute congrats. How long did it take for them to breed? Im currently trying to breed my mice, ive had them for three month now and nothing has happened.

Only 22 days for these ones. Last ones I had took 21 days.

How old are the mice? Are you sure of their gender? (Usually it's very easy. The moment you place the male and female together they try to mate. Make sure the territory is neutral first though or they may fight and kill each other. That happened to my previous mouse Cream. I washed the male's cage but I guess it still smelled enough like him for him to become territorial.)

The reason I ask for age is because after a certain age it becomes dangerous to breed the female. (I hear males still produce er... everything they need to to mate... even when they are older.)

Information I used when breeding was found on http://www.thefunmouse.com/info/index.cfm

[Crystal6]

Pictures updated for the sake of... showing how the babies are doing and showing what they look like 4ish days later.



I can see I'll probably have some that take after their father.

[cricketfrog30]

how are they now?

[Crystal6]

how are they now?

Furry and adorable.



Them at 27 days. Today is the 28 day (also known as the day I am to separate them by gender.)

Don't ask me how I got 6 gray mice from 1 yellow and 1 black. The genetics section in the mouse faq I was following confused me as did the people at mouse forum. (While asking is encouraged over there they do not take kindly to people making mistakes. O_O)