| General Mouse Care Sheet |
| What bedding is best? whatever you do, DO NOT use cedar or pine bedding!! I can't stress this enough! Cedar and pine bedding gives mice and other pocket pets respitory problems that can result in death. Better bedding to choose from would be paper prducts like CareFresh, Yesterday's News etc. Other good beddings are SaniChips, Aspen, or Corncob bedding. Corncob when wet can mold easily and carefresh has an odd smell to it, I find. But these are all good beddings you can find on the internet, at local petstores, at feed stores, or even at Walmart! If you hve a large number of cages to clean you may want to use "Stove pellets". These are the wood chips that you feed some wood stoves. They are cheap, come in bulk and I hear they are safe to use. What food is best? Mice are generally not picky eaters. Lab Blocks are probably the best thing you could feed them, however you can suppliment this with fresh fruits and vegtables, rice, dry cerial, bread, mixed birdseed and other such foods. My mice get a mixture of lab blocks, Zu-preem natural bird pellets, alphalpha pellets and a mixed parakeet seed. What size/type cage is best? A ten gallon tank or similiar sized cage or habitat is plenty of room for 2-5 mice. Aquariums are pretty much escape proof but they are stufy and smell a little more. Wire cages can only hold adult mice as babies and hoppers will easily slip through. Plastic habitats are usually too small (in my opinion) How can I spend quaility time with my new mice?? Mice don't really need any special treatment like walks or frisbee session but you can just gently handle them (try not to pick them up by the tail if possable, tails aren't natures mouse handles!) You can let them play out of the cage on a table or like surface. Mice will not jum off such a surface although they may find a table leg to scurry down. Mice also like hiding places so feel free to give them toys like toilet paper tubes and bird ladders. If you want to give your mouse a wheel try not to give them a spoke/wire kind. They can get their tails and feet injured in those. Try weaving cardboard in the spoke wheels if you can't find any others, or if you can find something like a wodent wheel with a solid wheel. |