Mice-Pups-Cannibalism - problem with operated mice (Jan/08/2007 )
Hi all,
does anybody of you work with small pups?Im going to do some experiments on lets say 4 days old mice, but after control run all my operated
pups were eaten by mother 
I tried the trick with decreasing number of pups in cage (cost of killing going up), and also tried to preincubate 10-15 min the pup
in cage with others, before put mother. Both didnt work. Do you have any ideas or expierience with this?
Thx in advance
cheers
Hi Lukas,
try following:
put the pups (which you used for experiment) together with some litter of their cage (and their brothers and sisters) into your hand and let them warm-up for a few minutes. Maybe they lost their own smell, or blood heat decreased and mother could not recognize them...
Is the mother a good mum? Is it her first litter? Is it a strain where the females are not so good mothers from the very first beginning? Are there 2 females in the cage which can care for the pups or is there just one? Many questions...
If the mother has already demonstrated a successfull motherhood before, you may have success with the two things I described above.
If nothing works , try to mix the pups with some others of the same age (which differ e.g. in coat colour) and let another female take care for them.
Hope I could help you. 
bye
does anybody of you work with small pups?Im going to do some experiments on lets say 4 days old mice, but after control run all my operated
pups were eaten by mother
I tried the trick with decreasing number of pups in cage (cost of killing going up), and also tried to preincubate 10-15 min the pup in cage with others, before put mother. Both didnt work. Do you have any ideas or expierience with this?
Thx in advance
cheers
If you have operated on the pups then the mother is very likely to cannibalise them as mice like the taste of blood. Even an adult mouse with a wound will be licked and nibbled at by other mice, sometimes so much that that wounded mouse will die. Unfortunately I don't think there is any way around this unless you can train the mice to not go for blood.
May put bandage around the wound of the pups to deter their mother licking the wound, and change the dressing everyday.