This morning we awoke to some new additions to our family. Our mice – Misa and Moo, had 11 tiny little pink pups. Unfortunately, 1 did not make it, but the surviving 10 seem to be doing well.
Female mice come into heat every 3 – 5 days, with their pregnancy lasting around 21 days. Litter sizes will vary from 4 to 32, depending on their genetics. After one week, the “Pups” will have a fine layer of fur and they will open theirs eyes at two weeks. By three weeks they will be bouncing around, causing all sorts of mischief and starting to eat solid foods. At four weeks they will be ready to go to the pet shop and will have reached sexual maturity, making it important to keep the “Bucks” (males) and “Does” (females) separated. Even though they are able to reproduce at such a young age, it is best to wait until they are at least 12 weeks old before breeding as it can take it’s toll on such a young mouse. Mice can fall pregnant again within days of having their litter.
It is actually mathematically posible for one pair of mice to become 26,121,388,032 within 12 months if each pair had a litter of 10 pups with equal amounts of males to females, and they were all able to reproduce every four weeks.
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