Hi,
My female mouse mated with my male mouse and has looked pregnant for a while. She has always been a small mouse (I don't know why) but she does look bigger than normal so I'm pretty sure she's pregnant.
Today I checked on her and she looks smaller than yesterday. I'm scared to lift up their nesting box because I think she may have already had the babies. I've read that if you disturb them, the mother can eat her pinkies so I don't want to check. Also I'm pretty sure it hasn't been 21 days yet (usually when the mice give birth after breeding). I've also read that you can handle the babies after 5 days after birth so maybe I should check them then. What do you think I should do? :?
Comments
You didn`t say if your male and female were together due to mis-sexing or if you wanted them to breed? First thing to do though is find out if there are any pinkies and if you hear or see any, I would leave them alone for a few days yet and just make sure mum has plenty of food and fresh water. I think it`s about a week before safe handling or checking is done, but as I said earlier, I don`t breed mice. So hopefully someone with more information on this can advise.
If you do have babies, you need to mark on a calendar which day/date they were born as any male babies will need sexing and separating out at four to five weeks of age or you will have more babies on the way, which would be bred back to their mother, so not the best idea.
There is also a chance the mother has killed and eaten them as this can happen if she`s too young or isn`t a good mother. Just nature though. x