Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a colony of lab-grade white mice that I keep in a rack in my garage. I've had the colony for nearly a year. Over the last couple of months I've started to see a problem with some of the mice. Their fur appears to be "thinning", giving them a gray appearance. I've seen this is both young mice and old. Some of the adults continue to breed and don't seem to be affected that much. I do however find dead mice here and there so I'm a bit concerned. Has anyone ever seen this before with their mice?

The pics show one of this "thinning hair" mice next to a healthy specimen.

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Paul Weaver
Carolina Herps

Ive kept mice at one time and noticed that as well, the sqare pattern of this baldness looks like they or other are chewing it off maybe due to an irratant that other mice don't have, The other thing that comes to mind, is i have the same thing in rat babies but that is cause its a rex gene, maybe you have a hairless mouse gene going on???
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"Have you hugged your snake lately?"

I don't think it's a chewing problem because the fur is thinning over each mouse's entire body. There are some tubs where the entire 1.5 colony shows the thinning, so it's not like there's one mouse that's picking on the others.

I don't think it's genetic. I started my colonies with some lab-grade mice that came from a friend. His colony isn't showing any signs of thinning fur. I do have some pet-store colored mice in my rack as well, but I've been careful to never breed the two types. Even if they had bred though, I don't think it would explain the random deaths.
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Paul Weaver
Carolina Herps

I maintain small breeding groups 1.3 and get those thinning hairs every so often.

I feed off all individual thinning hairs, runts, cannibals, bald patches, and tumors. Even if one of my breeders dies for an unknown reason the entire group gets fed off.

Get rid of them asap, and keep your future offspring healthy.

>>I have a colony of lab-grade white mice that I keep in a rack in my garage. I've had the colony for nearly a year. Over the last couple of months I've started to see a problem with some of the mice. Their fur appears to be "thinning", giving them a gray appearance. I've seen this is both young mice and old. Some of the adults continue to breed and don't seem to be affected that much. I do however find dead mice here and there so I'm a bit concerned. Has anyone ever seen this before with their mice?
>>
>>The pics show one of this "thinning hair" mice next to a healthy specimen.
>>

Take one of the mice to a vet to have a skin scraping done.. it is possible that they could have a type of microscopic mite infestation with a minor case of mange.
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PHWyvern