Mish's Mice

[mishimouse]

Here are some pictures of my 8 mice - these pictures were taken from March - around now, so they aren't very recent.

Astrid, my female mismarked dutch black satin:


Ella, my female fawn satin self frizzy, at little less than one week old:


Ella again at around two weeks old:


Dobby, my male golden agouti satin self:


Katia, my female blue satin self:


Louise, my female chocolate satin self:


Tiki, my male longhaired satin black self:


I don't have any good pictures of Zen ATM, but I'll be taking some over the course of the week. Let me know what you think! I'm sorry if they take a bit of time to load,

[jeannie]

These are all very pretty cute little guys. Nice collection of cuties!

[Die Fledermaus]

Thanks for the photos. Mine WILL be up within hours. Seriously! ;D

Looks like your Katia is having a stretch. It is seriously cute to see them stretching and yawning.

What I have to do later, sometime, is catch one with the camera clinging upside down like a monkey to one of my fingers. They are so nimble at that.

[mishimouse]

Thanks DF and Jeannie. Katia is one of my favorite little mice, DF - thought she was pregnant in the beginning but wasn't... although I wouldn't have mind a few more mice running around the abodes! ;D

Zen and Ella are brother and sister, and Tiki is their father. Their mother, Victoria, died very recently - she looked like Ella. Dobby was also born here, but I had rescued his mother - Noel, who is no longer with us. She had a litter of 14 babies but was a weak mother and most of her young didn't make it in the long run. She also developed a prolapsed uterus, and despite desperate attempts (she had been to the vet multiple times for it) she died.

[Die Fledermaus]

Squeaking said:

. . .She had a litter of 14 babies but was a weak mother and most of her young didn't make it in the long run. She also developed a prolapsed uterus, and despite desperate attempts (she had been to the vet multiple times for it) she died.

Sorry. Nice job though. I was going to ask the size of litters, but you told me! Wow. I thought it was more like gerbils. Well, they are small and social, so even 14 could survive in a twenty gallon tank.

Ever have trouble sexing them? It took me a long time to get the hang of it with dwarfs.

(I have to get off the forum and post those photos of mine! )

[mishimouse]

I've been able to sex newborn babies. They're not anything like hamsters when it comes to breeding, really - I've handled Dobby, Ella, and Zen ever since the day they were born. 14 is a huge amount of babies for one litter, the size of a litter is usually about the same as a hamsters. I've only bred on purpose once, Dobby came from a rescue litter. In Tiki and Victoria's litter there were only 6 babies - 2 found homes and the other two were runts and didn't make it.

I've never had a problem with sexing adult mice - if you ever think you have a female when it's really a male, you'll get to enjoy that lovely smell on the ride home.

[Die Fledermaus]

Ohhh. The smell!.

With one dwarf it took me five tries with a Q-Tip to find his teeny tiny parts.

Syrian hamsters can have litters of even more than 12. Rainy's (see memorial thread) Jan. 2003 litter was 12. Eight are still here, the rest passing away naturally. With new moms there will be fewer babies as they often eat many of them. I am sure Makeeda did that with hers (Zeb is the dad - he escaped!) as only the all-white Blanche, and the jet-black Stanley (photos posted already) were left from that litter.

[mishimouse]

I'll post a picture of Farah soon, I almost forgot I had her as she vanished from the tank mysteriously but did not die - obviously an escapee.

I'm still waiting for yours, DF! LOL

[mishimouse]

I just cleaned out their cages, so here you can see some pictures of what the interior of their tanks look like. They love it when I cover the aspen bedding with bits of timothy hay, they roll in it and everything.

First up, the boys tank (not very filled, and a bit Christmasy!) - notice Zen and Tiki, Dobby is in the igloo:


Next, the girls - you can see all of them if you look through everything, took me a couple of minutes to notice a couple of them!


As you can see, a few of their toys still need to be cleaned off!

[jeannie]

I see 4 in the second picture - did I find them all?

[mishimouse]

Jeannie - Yes, you spotted them all. It took me a few minutes to find Katia (in the chube) and Ella (by the orange and red house).

If you notice in the picture of Astrid, her ears are not as full as the others. I had an odd disease go through my mice after introducing a few new mice into the group. Astrid and Katia were the only two new mice that survived. Astrid's ears were chewed 1/4 of the way off by her cagemates. Brooklyn and Felicity, both past mice, also had their ears chewed off except all the way. Quite a sad sight, but Astrid is one of the most healthy mice I've ever owned.

I just have to upload the picture I took of Zen today and I'll post it in just a bit.

[jeannie]

Poor little Astrid - at least she survived the disease though!

I have a dwarf hamster who has swiss cheese ears because she was so badly picked on by the rest of the tank at the pet store.

[Die Fledermaus]

Jeannie said:

I have a dwarf hamster who has swiss cheese ears because she was so badly picked on by the rest of the tank at the pet store.

I sometimes wonder if dwarfs would be happy and safest living alone. I have heard too many stories of fights even in normal home environments.