Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is strange, Angel's babies are almost weaned now and my mouse Twilly had a litter of about 17 babies last night. Today I got them out to fill their foodbowl(since the food goes fast with 7 mice in the cage) and Angel was eating something.
She drops what she was eating and looks up at me and it was a baby! I've seen mothers eat their babies but these aren't her babies and there was food and water in the cage, and they hadn't been bothered in over 24 hours so I'm not sure why she did this. Then when I cleaned out the water bowl she had taken paper towels and stuffed them in the water bowl ,with not even a half an inch of water in it, and as a took out the paper towels I noticed something, there were more remains of babies in there!
So I'm guessing there were around 17 babies because when I discovered the babies last night there were 3 dead(from "natural deaths" which got fed to my WTF's and and when I counted then there were 9, and I found the bottom halves of 5 babies. But I have never had a mouse that has had more than 14 babies. My friend suggested maybe there was more than one mother to all of the babies but I'm positive that Twilly is the mother to all of them seeing that theres no males in the cage.
Am I stressing out too much about this or should I be concerned that she had a very large litter and Angel is killing the babies(Angel is the only one that stuffs bedding and food into the water bowl)?? Should I remove Angel and her 3 babies from the cage and away from the pinkies? Please help, thanks.

Twilly, her sister and babies

Twilly and babies again

Though stress is a common reason why mice will eat their young or the young of other females, another reason could be lack of protein in the diet. I suggest incresting the amount of protein offered your mice, either by adding extra seeds like sunflower seeds, and nuts, quality rodent lab chow (for breeding/growing mice) or dry dogfood that has at least 15% or more protein and about 5% or more of fat. Find a dogfood that doesn't contain red dyes as these can be harmful, especially if you are not intending the mice to be strickly pets. Once the mice are fully weaned and no more babies are expected, you should cut out the dogfood and extra sunflower seeds and use regular maintenance diet rodent lab blocks. (or go back to the regular food you have been feeding your mice).

Separting the female mice with pinkies may add stress and may not solve the problem of the pinkies being eaten. I would however, remove all the fully weaned babies into different cages (separate by sex, to prevent any more breeding).
-----
PHLdyPayne