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Hi. My wife pointed out to me thismorning that my female breeder mouse is loosing all her wiskers and hair all over her face. Looks fairly funny actualy any ideas as to what could be wrong?
RR

>>Hi. My wife pointed out to me thismorning that my female breeder mouse is loosing all her wiskers and hair all over her face. Looks fairly funny actualy any ideas as to what could be wrong?
>>RR

Maybe they are just going through evolution. Maybe they are on their way to becoming hairless mice. If you can genetically prove them out, you are sitting on a potential gold mine!

You can start sell het to hair-less for $$. j/k.

Sorry. Just in a goofy mood tonight! cheers!
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Longtang. I like snakes and rats.

Anyone with a little more serious answer?
RR

>>Anyone with a little more serious answer?
>>RR

Actually, Longtang is correct -- there is at least one and I'm pretty certain more than one genetic trait that, in mice, will cause hairlessness. I'm way out of my league if I try to explain with specifics - others who frequent this board should be able to give more empirical details. But I am aware that one type of hairlessness does begin with loss of fur around the face. (Whiskers I'm not positive about.) I'm more familiar with the genetics of rats than I am mice.

Additionally, if memory serves, mice can also present with the same (or similar) alopecia that humans do.

If you do have mice that are hairless, it is a recessive trait (I'm pretty sure that the only hairless traits in mice are recessive, unlike the more complicated variations of hairlessness in rats) and you can prove this out for yourself by crossing father to daughter or mother to son.... if the same thing occurs in offspring then you do, indeed, have a "relative" goldmine on your hands. "Pet" mouse folks tend to see this trait as rare and desirable in their rodents.

So besides the hair loss, are your mice healthy? Does it seem that they are behaving normally? There's also a phenomenon in rodents (mice for certain) called "barbering" where a mouse will over-groom it's cage-mates to the point of actually razoring off fur and whiskers. It could be possible that this is happening, too. Can be difficult to tell who the culprit is within a large colony but sometimes it's as simple as determining the ONE mouse who remains fully-furred!

So, lots of possibilities to consider with your balding mice. =)
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Rebecca
TSBabe66@hotmail.com
Honored to moderate at Snakefeeders, the place to buy/sell/trade feeder animals. Come check us out! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/snakefeeders/

There was her and 2 males in the cage but a couple of weeks ago I fed one of the males to a snake so now here are just the 2 mice wich I might add are not reproducing as activly as when there were 2 males in there. As far as I can tell they are both verry healthy They are my breeders so I take care of them just as good as any other pet I have. They are a little chuby and over fed but thats all.
RR

>>Hi. My wife pointed out to me thismorning that my female breeder mouse is loosing all her wiskers and hair all over her face. Looks fairly funny actualy any ideas as to what could be wrong?
>>RR

If you are talking about an adult mouse, there is probably one of several things wrong.... it could be that another mouse in the cage is "grooming" the whiskers and fur right off the mouse, which can be uncomfortable, but isn't something that can't be lived with. I've occasionally had adult mice lose fur on their head, neck, shoulders, face, and even all of the above... My first thought was mites in those instances, but since only one or two in a cage of six or seven was effected, I decided it must be some allergy, or some grooming, or something like that. In each case the fur grew back, and there was no more indication of problems.

If you are talking about a baby mouse that is just getting ready to, or has just opened its eyes, and it's starting to lose fur beginning around the eyes and proceeding backward from the snout then you have a classic hairless mouse. Whilst these might actually net you $5 at a PET store, they won't make you rich. I have one hairless male mouse at the moment, I bought his ancestors at a lab... all of the ones I bought, and the first two or three generatios I have bred, have all been sickly, got eye infections quickly, and died after barely getting the chance to breed once, if that. Finally, almost 9 months after beginning the project, I have one male mouse who doesn't show any of the genetic related sickness that the others have shown. My thought is I've outcrossed these inbred animals to my own animals enough so that there is less to worry about. Hopefully my next generation of hairless are actually saleable.

Anyway, I digress.

If the mouse is adult and has sunken in sides, I would say it's dying. If it's adult and seems otherwise healthy, and no other mice in the cage are effected, I would not worry. If it's a hopper, it's hairless, and will lose hair progressively until it's all gone.

Hope that helps.
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~Sasheena