Five baby mice and a box of rat poisin.

[Rotsuoy]

As the title suggests, we killed momma mouse either yesterday or the day before.

I awoke to the most horrific sound of my mother sobbing her eyes out, and she was saying how she needed my help and taht her underwear drawer was full of babies. She had been complaining that someone had been chewing her underwear, and after raising mice, I should have took the signs of the wadded fluff, silk, and conforter filling as the sign that a momma had chosen her nest there. The babies are still alive, all five of them, though they have just gotten their peach fuzz, their eyes havn't opened, and their skin is very rinkled (probably a sign of dehydration or starvation). They are moving around alot though.

When I raised and bred my mice, I had a momma to take care of my babies, and if I was still doing, I might attempt to put them in with the other babies and see if my momma would take care of them. She did it when hers all died and the other mother didn't know how to take care of her own litter.

My mother is still sobbing violently, and dispite my rebelious youth, nothing tears me up more then to hear my mother cry. Couple that with the five squirming baby mice still trying to suckle from their dead mother, and you have a situation that I can't handle.

I can't take care of them because I don't know how. Is ther a way? I defenatly don't want to put them all in a sac and just throw them away as baddly as she is going on about them.

Any help? Please?!

Forgive all the misspellings and tying errors, please, this is not the time for me to worry about all that.

[Rotsuoy]

I know, I know, I know that this is not about squirrels, but this is the only place I thought I could come.
Has anyone tried to rehab rats?

I know it's odd that I want to save these things, but I don't want them to starve to death either. If I didn't have a heart, I would have killed them to keep them from suffering, but I do, and I can't.

This probably sounds rediculus, but I'm aking for help for not just the sake of the mice, or myself, but because my mother is not the kind of person to go all over board over some baby feild mice.

[4skwerlz]

You rehab them just like baby squirrels, only everything's a bit smaller. First, get them warm (heating pad under half the box, etc.), then rehydrate them with warm Pedialyte if necessary, then feed them Esbilac with a 1 cc. syringe.

[Rotsuoy]

I don't have any Esbilac, all I have left is that stupid Petlac, and you've all seen how far that took me.

I'm assuming they havn't eatten for about a day.

{added}
As darkly colored as they are, I'm assuming that they are two days old. Maybe less.

[Loopy Squirrel]

I have raised orphaned rat as well as squirrels. I have had a lot of people give me baby rats that they thought were squirrels. Wildlife is wildlife. I start them the same way I do w/ squirrels...offering pedialyte to rehydrate then to diluted esbilac and so forth. The biggest problem is getting a small enough nipple. Do you have catac nipples? I have used soaked monkey biscuits, small piece of a clean & rinsed kitchen sponge, or makeup eye shadow applicators ( thats what we use for baby bats). I have found that they suckle differently than squirrels which wrap their tongues around the nipple. Rats seem to hold their mouth wide open and swollow for dear life. You can see if they will take it drop by drop off the end of a syringe. You should be able to see a milk line in the belly once your are using formula but it is hard to see w/ the pedialyte. I feed them about every three to four hours and they need supplimental heat.

[TexanSquirrel]

Good luck with them!!!

[Rotsuoy]

I do not want to have to use that durn Petlac. I don't know how they will react to it.



"The risks of taking care of new born babies yourself are much higher than trying to foster them with another mouse mother. New born babies need mouse nourishment, something that is hard (if not impossible thus far) to recreate. The chance at a new born baby surviving is much smaller when a person takes care of them rather than if a mouse would. Even if you do everything in your power to take care of them, the chances of survival from a human foster are relatively small. The chances at survival form hand raising do go up significantly as the baby ages. For instance, babies that are 1-1/2 weeks old have a great chance at survival from human fostering." from www.funmouse.com

This is discouraging, but is this true?

[Rotsuoy]

So, if I keep them warm, feel them the home made Pedialyte, then got the esbilac in the morning, do you think they would be okay?

I'd hate to use the petlac, but I know that what ever it is that I feed them, has to be deluted really far down.

Well. . .
I'm going to attempt keeping them alive until they open their eyes. Everyone wish me luck.

No, I will keep them alive. I blieve it. I've raised mice before, I know what kinds of vitimans and suppliments they need.

[Delusional]

well good luck, if i were in your situation, i'd probably do the same thing
i've had to get rid of a couple mice in my house with a sticky trap , and EVERY time my mom tells me to just throw it away , while its squeaking and stuff
but its so hard , i always want to try to free them , but i didnt figure out how to reverse the sticky trap until AFTER i had already killed 3 mice , and there havent been any here since
:(

[Rotsuoy]

I'm probably so sad and so angry at the same time that it's hard to even express how I feel.

After my last post I went to check on them were I left them on the kitchen table and they wer gone, even the chewed panties they were nested in. After a moment's argument with my sobbing mother I got out of her that she had thrown them away in the dumpster outside. I found them in a walmart sack and brought them in, but they were freezing, and as I pulled them out one by one, the last one was just curled up in a ball and not moving.

I attempted the pedialyte to see if they would respond to it, and the first one (I picked up the one that was squirming the least) rolled its mouth around after I dabed a little on the corner of its mouth with the eyedropper. He seems to be the only one that likes it any.

These things are so tiny! I can't feed them! I don't have anything smaller then the eyedropper I first started Berri on, and that was just too big. The larger, more rambuncious of the four left was hard to get any into. When I'd rub a little on his bottom lip like I did the others he'd just squeek and squeek, and finally, when he squeeked really loudly I stopped all together, though there was a little bit still on his mouth. Letting him alone to see what he was on about he started to mouth the pedialyte on his mouth and he started to make this odd noise with strange body lauguage. I quickly wipped his mouth off and turned him on his belly, rubbing his back gently with my finger.
He fought for a long time before choking and curling up to lay still. Now there are three.

I wipped the butts of the remaining three and they pooped! They all actually pooped! I never though I could be so excited about feces. . .
It's mostly a dark mustardy color.

They won't stop squeeking. . . I'm calling in sick to work in the morning, because I know I won't be able to sleep.

[atlantasquirrelgirl]

I think that Naturesgift has done mice before. You might want to PM her.

[NaturesGift]

Hi Rotsuoy

Gammas is right about the

"1 part Esbilac, 1 part Multi-Milk powder with 2 parts water. Feed formula 8-10 feedings 1-1 1/2 hours apart including one feeding at night. "

My first ever litter of mice I lost every baby one by one:shakehead (that was before TSB) but last fall I Rehabed a baby deer mouse and he lived.
I followed the above recipe from Gammas but I found that a syringe with a filed down needle tip. *filed completely flat with no sharp edges left* worked really well for feeding him. He thrived and held onto the needle tip and nursed like a squirrel on a syringe.

I just recently raised some baby rats. but found an eyedropper was better for them.

Its really hard to successfully raise them but its not impossible.

Also you can get a clean cloth and twist it to form a soft nipple and dip it in the milk and let them nurse off of that as well. (I also used this on the baby rats)

with all feedings you have to go slow as to not aspirate.

[LynninIN]

The babies need to be warmed up first with the heating pad under 1/2 of a shoe size box with blankets or a rice buddy before you try to feed again. It shouldn't take too long to warm them up. Then try the clean cloth as described by NaturesGift.

[Rotsuoy]

Oh, don't worry about that. Warming them up was the first thing I did after bringing them back inside. However, I can't do anything but give them pedialyte. I hope they survive the night so that I can get them something, whether it be esbilac or soy milk, or even deluted kitten milk.

I'm down to two now, and I don't know why. . .

[Rotsuoy]

Today was a long, weird day.

The power had be going on and off all day so I had to light oil lamps for a bright enough light to take care of them and the tall, bright candle in my room. We also have a small storage compartment in our hot water heater that contains a decent amount of water for when he power goes off (seeing as, out here in the country it does that often). Belive it or not, my cousin had baby soy milk, and I took the mixture from a website for rats and deluted it a bit with warm water to see if they would take that for thier first feeding this morning. They seemed to like it, the two that were left, though the tiny things made quite a mess before I found something small enough to put into (or I should say 'upto') thier little mouths. I found a 0.9 mm mechanical pencil and pulled the tip off, cleaned it out repeatedly, and used it; this is how: I remeber my mother doing this trick with my little sister when she was a baby, holding her finger at one end of a straw while the other end was down in the fluids, to create a suction in the staw to lift some to the baby's mouth. Taking the little one (I wasn't sure, but I assumed he was male) that squirmed less (less mind you, so yes it was still difficult -.-) and managed to get him to suck and lap at the end of the tip of the plastic pencil tip. So there, I had figured out a sure fire way to get them to eat. Feeding them every hour was hecktic, and defenatly worse then the squirrel, but it was worth it to hear them squeek for food and to see them wiggle with happiness when they ate.

After each feeding, I'd get them to poop, wiping their bums with a warm q-tip and cleaning them after they did it, wich, oddly, I never once found gross, or repulsing. Dunno, maybe it's that womanly, motherly instinct. At about nine, I noticed that, in the little one's bum, I could see a dark line, wich I had assumed was dark colored poop stuck in his colon. I wasn't going to wait until next feeding to get it out of him so I kept gently touching his bum with the damp q-tip until it all came out. It was kinda hard and defenatly dark, but feeding them every hour (roughly; sometimes a little later if they didn't seem interested around the time) seemed to stop that, and I hadn't seen any more afterwards.
-and, oh my, did they fight when I tried to clean them. One took to kicking and the other took to squeeking like I was hurting it. :shakehead

The after a while, about tenish, the little one's right ear started to pop open; an hour later, the right one was folded all the way back out, strait, and the other started to open up. It was very nice to see! I was so excited.

I left the mice in their little basket nest at two, this afternoon, to go get some things done in town. I figured I'd be gone for a couple of hours if not three, so I sat everything up for my mother to tend to them while I was gone. Three hours- two or three feedings- by this time, they didn't really have to be picked up to feed, and she had watched me do it several times.

When I got back, it was about that time to feed them again, but I didn't know how she was feeding them while I was gone, so I wasn't too upset when they weren't squeeking. However, when I asked if they were alright, she claimed that they had just been checked on. I douple checked, naturally, and they were curled up, seemingly sound asleep. Now, normally, when they were asleep, I'd gently touch them with a clean finger and they would ripple under my finger stroke down their back, almost like a cat. I'm assuming she didn't do this, and when she thought that they were asleep, and not squeeking for food, that they didn't want any food and were asleep.
After touching them, the didn't move, and they were kinda stiff.

So, the story goes, that mice are tiny, mice are hard, but if you have the strength in your heart to put up with them dieing if they don't make it, then you will have one of the most charming experinces in your life. It was defenatly different from just watching a momma mouse raise the babies, but if I would have still had Momma (the mouse that did all my mouse birthing- and raising other mouses litters) then I know she would have taken good care of them, not matter how far apart they would have been in age from her own.


Dispite what people say about trying to give a, or many, mice babies to another mother, it is not that hard, and mice in captivity have been known to nest together and raise their litters together. Even unrelated mice! Though I don't know how it is in the wild. This, however, does not mean they won't kick them out, or worse, eat them, but it does mean, that if you have an older mouse that has had multiple litters that she will most likely take them in.
I've even had Momma raise two litters at once, (though this was a huge mistake and should be prevented at all cost) one nursing, and one weaning, and she did very well with them.

I know alot about mice, but this was the first time I did the nursing and cleaning. I enjoyed it, dispite the fact that my heart was broken in the end.

[4skwerlz]

:grouphug I'm so sorry. You tried your best.:grouphug

Rest in Peace little mousies.:Love_Icon

[Buddy'sMom]

I'm so sorry this had such a sad ending. RIP baby mice. :Love_Icon :Love_Icon :Love_Icon :Love_Icon :Love_Icon And RIP mama mousie. :Love_Icon

You did a very good job rescuing them, getting information to save them, inventing methods to feed them. Because of you, they had a chance to live, and they spent their last hours safe and warm, with full tummies -- and that was a generous gift. :bowdown

:grouphug :Love_Icon :grouphug