A Conversation for Keeping Mice as Pets

cage changing

Post 1

Sea Change

I disagree with the section that advocates thorough cleaning of cages. Mice are stinky because they use scent cues, so totally cleaning the cage will cause new territorial disputes and agitation. Also, if you leave parts of the old bedding behind, you get to observe stashing behaviors.

Much better to my mind is to save about a 1/10th of the old bedding, and then adding 9/10ths new. One should keep in mind that mice use one corner of the cage as a urinal, so that part should always be completely changed. The area where they construct their nest (or your cottage cheese cup or egg carton half that they sleep under) they usually go out of their way to keep clean, so you needn't change it for months.


cage changing

Post 2

.

Yes that's a fair point. I did read in a couple of places that it's best to keep some stuff left behind, but I obviously didn't add it to the entry. smiley - erm I do clean the whole cage of my mice, because even though I remove all the old crap and sometimes do a brief scrub, the cage still has their general smell around, and all their equipment is the same and smelly, so they don't seem to mind. Also the nest area stays the same for a while, I guess I assumed that the nest part would be different when writing the entry. smiley - erm


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