Friday, February 5, 2010

How to care for baby mice with no mother?

Yesterday I found a nest of baby mice, the mother was dead so I took them home. From what i can tell they are about a week old with their eyes open and they are fully covered in fur. Any help on how to raise them until they are old enough to go out into the wild?


I would like to know what i should feed them etc.


Any useful tips to keep them alive will really help.


Thank you.How to care for baby mice with no mother?
With orphaned pet rodents, you'd usually try to find a local breeder who has a nursing mother, but since these are wild, I doubt any breeder would be willing to take them in and potentially introduce disease or parasites to their own animals.





Your best bet is to find a pet store that sells live ';pinky'; or ';hopper'; mice/rats as food for reptiles. Those stores usually breed their own mice/rats. See if they are willing to sell one of their mother mice/rats, ideally one which has a litter close in age to the mice you found. Buy the mother mouse/rat and a couple of her babies-- not her whole litter, since she will be nursing all of the wild babies as well. Introduce the wild babies to the foster mother, and hope for the best. You may want to try a rat mother instead of a mouse mother; rats are supposed to be more accepting of offspring that are not their own.





This is the technique I use for fostering orphaned gerbil pups-- I'm not sure if it would make the introduction easier with mice/rats or if it's not needed:


- First, put the foster mother in a container by herself for a moment.


- Hold the foster mother, and carefully rub the orphaned babies on her belly (gerbils have a scent gland here-- I'm not sure about mice/rats).


- Place the orphaned babies in with the foster mother's babies, and let them greet each other. After a few minutes, they should curl up in a big pile together.


- Then put the foster mother in with all the babies. She should accept the orphans as her own.





If you are unable to find a foster mother, it's also possible to hand-rear the babies. However, it's a lot of work, and isn't always successful. Here is a good article on raising orphaned mice and rats: http://www.afrma.org/rminfo8.htmHow to care for baby mice with no mother?
Well I have took care of baby mice but they seem to die over night.


But i will search how to take care of baby mice.I'll answer soon.


I found out how to take care of them make sure you have a cage or something to put them in.Put like pine or cedar shavings in it.Make sure they have somewhere to hide.Feed them rat food, mouse food,or cheese but no meats,egg,milk, or chocolate.And of course make sure they have water.If they are dirty get a rag and damp one little part of the rag and wipe them off easy.When you hold them make sure you don't squeeze them and first few times make sure you put them on the floor somewhere where they will not get out then start holding them.
At petco they have in the rodent section a powdered goat milk for baby hamsters and small animals. it comes with a syringe and everything. Thats your best bet.

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