r/PetMice

I want to start this rant off by saying I am not against feeder mice morally. I've owned reptiles, and am not insufferable to the point I apply human morals to animals a part of the food-chain.

Nonetheless, I think some of these reptile breeders have drifted off the point of no return in the way they treat their mice. I recently got two new fancy mice from a reptile expo, and it took me nearly 15 minutes to find a single mouse that wasn't exhibiting signs of a URI, barbering, extreme stress, or eye infection. What irks me is not only were these mice in horrid conditions, but also that the people were marketing some mice with certain coat-types as 'fancy'. This well-known in my area company was claiming to be breeding show-types. I hate to spoil it, but they were not. I didn't go into a reptile expo expecting to find any type of mouse besides the standard short-coat black, white, or brown coated feeders, but I unfortunately glanced at the three ten gallon tanks they had set up and saw my two little girls following one another around, clearly bonded to the nines.

TW

To paint a picture of the abomination I was looking at, there were three ten gallon aquariums lined up side by side as the company's front row display. This part doesn't seem to crazy without context, but I was at a reptile expo, and you'd think a reptile breeder would show off leucistic ball pythons crammed into deli containers like the rest of the booths before displaying a bunch of stressed out mice front and center. Anyway, I walked up to the table and noticed that in two tanks were strictly feeder-types, and in one other there were both feeders and fancies. I stupidly sent my attention to the tank with fancies within, mostly because all of my girls' coats are the common black, brown, and blondish and I appreciate an uncommon pattern. Once the dead-eyed woman manning the table took off the lid of the tank for me, I immediately watched a male mouse target and vigorously chase another male until I intervened. That's right, apparently a stressed animal being injured by another stressed animal isn't cause for intervention until a customer looks at you crazy for it. The owner took out the aggressor, by the tail(shocker), and placed him in another, I'm sure just as filthy, tank I could not see below the table. The victim male mouse was already injured with multiple cuts and scabs along his ruffled white fur, and he hid in a corner for the rest of my time at the table. The tanks had an inch of soiled aspen, and plastic water bottles that had very clearly become porous with extensive time used, as I could tell by eyesight alone that there was some sort of biological film(algae?) on the sides of the bottles. There were about 15-30 mice per tank, every gender and age mixed together as if intact males don't actively target and often kill younger mice and other intact males.

I wasn't initially going to get any mice from this table, considering that I was only at the expo for taxidermy, and the fact that I have four girls at home who are set up just the way I want them to be. If you can tell where this is going, I caved and purchased two non-pregnant female mice from the table. I payed a 5$ uncharge each for the two seemingly healthy girls because they were technically fancies. How is it even allowed to call a mouse a fancy mouse if you aren't a breeder tracking the genetics of your mice? I'm not complaining about paying an uncharge, just about the audacity. Anyway, I asked a million questions with a straight face about health and potential pregnancy in my two new girls, because if you're marketing some of these mice as pets, ill bother you about them as if they're intended to be such.

The two lady mice are now in quarantine, and the worst of their condition is that one of them has early-stages conjunctivitis in one eye that I'm treating with a generic-brand antibiotic. Surprisingly, they're very social and required literally only one day of bonding to climb up on my hand.

To end this rant, I would like to say that every reptile breeder I've known in my adult life has been passionate about the care of their reptiles. You'd think that the very mice they're feeding these reptiles, which they care so much for, would be shown the same passion as an extension of a reptile's life cycle. It's not like I'm even the most sympathetic person in the world, sometimes animals get eaten and that's the way the world works. But seriously, even as a person who's literally going into a career that requires compartmentalization of the neglect of living beings, I fully understand just how wrong the mice in the reptile industry are being treated.

To ease the inevitably helpless mood we'll have in the comments, I'll attach pictures of my new rescue babies. Give your thoughts, please, because I haven't heard a peep on this thread about the welfare of mice in the reptile industry and would like to know if there's people out there that think like me.

Hey mouse people! My sister has 2, female, adult mice and 5 of their female babies. The babies and mommas have been living in separate cages a few feet away (only enough to maybe smell or hear.) The babies are 6 months old now and I was wondering if the two groups could reunite with intros and everything. Considering the large final size of 7. And I do worry about introducing such a big established colony to just the two moms. I feel like the moms would get overwhelmed as they are pretty laid back mice. I will say my sister was not very well informed on mouse care (little clutter, huge open spaces, ect) the first month or so, so both groups are extremely social and act alot less like prey animals than all of my mice have ever acted. I feel like 7 is getting close to the group splitting range, idk. Looking for any thoughts, thanks!