Do you have to separate male mice from the baby mice when they are born [for fear of the male mice eating the babies]?
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ANSWERS: 5
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Not necessarily. This is all dependent on each separate animal. There are certain female mice that eat their first litter, and with consecutive litters are perfect mothers. And again on the other end of the spectrum females that never do anything but eat all their young. However, it has been seen in the pet shop I work in that the males often mainly kill the male young. So basically, until you see how a certain rodent acts towards any certain litter, there is no way to tell.
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The males are not anymore likely to eat the young then the mothers. Mice are more likely to eat their young then rats and changes amount of daylight/dark hours per day, noise, smell, etc. can cause them to eat their young. The main reason to separate the male from the female is as not to have another litter too soon. Mice can become impregnanted in as quick as 10 hours after giving birth. I separated mine a few days before for this reason, but at 10 days to 2 weeks I let the babies in with the father for visits and he took care of them just like their mother. Just dont forget they arent weened at this age and cannot be away from mom for more then a hour or so to be safest.
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We had a cage full of mice and two of them had babies (they were for the snake) the mother ate everyone of them by herself. The mother is more than likely too, depends though sometimes they don't her 2nd litter she didn't mess with them.
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EchoTheWolf when a mouse has 2 babies its not enough for the mouse to produce enough milk so the babies would have just died so the mice eat them.
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Actually you have to watch out for other female eating a mother mouse's babies too. Separate the mother-to-be a few days before the expected event to be safe, and don't bother her too much, it will scare her, and she will do the job herself.
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EchoTheWolf
what do you think mice do in the wild -.-
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Ok, mice eat their young if they are sick or have something wrong and honestly if your mice have baby's let nature take its course the animals know what to do let what happens happen now. just wait about a week (still feed the adult mice of course) then check on them and then its most likely the litter that is there is nice and healthy. Mice will eat their young if you are starving the adult mice.
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