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One mouse is chasing the other?
We have three females. Mostly they just ignore each other, or play together (they seem to teach each other things and help each other), but today when one of the mice (M) tried to go into the nest, there was a lot of squeaking, and she was turned away. She tried again, and the same thing happened. When she left and bumped into the other mouse (the one who'd turned her away from the nest, we'll call her D), and there was a lot of squeaking. M then hid.
D ran through the tube (toilet paper tube) M was hiding in with no reaction, but when D did it again M ran away from her, with a lot of squeaking. D chased M around the cage a few times, until we got up and opened the cage to break up the fight, at which case they stopped.
The third mouse (A) didn't participate in this at all.
Is this something to worry about, or is it normal?
We got them Sunday and their cage hasn't been cleaned since. They were all together in the pet store. They have in their cage a hideout (tissue box), water bottle, food dish, wheel (it doesn't work but they like to climb it; a new one's coming tomorrow), and the box they came in. (Which is quite gross- it should be thrown out now that there's feces all over it and urine spots, right?) Their cage is a 20 gallon long tank. Before you yell about climbing, they climb their wheel and the box in order to reach the mesh top, which they then climb on upside down. We have plans to put a 10 gallon mesh lid against one wall so they can climb that, and we have a tunnel system thing coming soon.
The main problem is that we're going away, and someone can only come check on them once a day, so if something happens we're not going to be home.
We briefly considered the possibility that the store had missexed one mouse (we got them from Petsmart, they'd all been together and we think were sisters), but this is a new thing and it happened while the third mouse was in the nest, so it seemed strange that D would only chase away M but not A.
I'm not sure that M will allow D to be dominant- M was the one that I thought would be the dominant one in the first place... and D is the one I thought would be submissive, so you can tell how well my predictions worked. :)
Lucky you with all those pets... we just have the mice and a hamster. :)
1 Answer
- 8 years agoFavorite Answer
I'm not going to yell about the 20 gallon tank. It actually sounds like a very good environment for your mice. About the fight, it could have been a one time thing. The female (D) was most likely asserting her dominance, which can sometimes happen with females. About two weeks after I got my female mice, they got slightly territorial and chased each other away from their nests. If the other female (M) got the message and allows (D) to be dominant, there shouldn't be a problem. However, two of my females wanted to be dominant and I had to put them in separate cages. If your situation gets really out of hand, you could always divide your 20 gallon tank in half.
Make sure you keep an eye on them. Wait one week; if it's worse, separate them.
There is a slight chance that female (D) could be pregnant, because ot happens a lot when you buy mice. She may have made a nest for her future babies and was trying to keep the female away from it by scaring her. This is unlikely, but still a possibility.
I hope i helped :-)
Source(s): I had five females, two males. They reproduced and I now have a total of 33 mice. Crazy, but they're adorable. I also have two dogs, five cats, one bearded dragon, one tarantula, one anole, one scorpion, and TONS of fish.
