My mice have lice :(

I got 3 new girls almost 2 weeks ago, 8 days after 1 dies and 3 days later another passed. I took the remaining girl to the vet and she is crawling with lice. Poor baby! So now I am treating all 26 of my mice with a topical lice treatment. So far my 25 mice that are in a different room(the new girl is in quarantene for 3 weeks) have no signs of of them, since lice are mobile they are at risk too. Which is why I am treating them all. Thankfully lice is specie spasific(can't spell today...) So mouse lice will only infect mice. The poor babies have such bare cages now, I had to remove all the wood, cardboard, ropes, hammock ect. So now they have wheels and water bottles. I'm getting some plastic and ceramic toys and houses for them today.

hey wow, same thing just happened to me! I noticed something living on Epsilon and John had been mentioning how he'd been loosing weight - so off to the vet and lice it was! we gave him a general insect Advantage treatment, along with the other 5 mice two weeks in a row and they're all gone now. We still bought enough to last for all 6 for the next 6 months. just a single drop from a needle onto the back of their neck seems to have worked wonders. vet also said Epy prolly didn't get hurt to start with by his brothers, she said my pictures looked like he might have had ringworm and that our taking care of him personally probably gave him the immune system boost to evict it - also said he'd prolly had the lice the whole time it just took the season change around here for them to breed enough to harm his immune system. (again that was a TOPICAL drop of Advantage on the back of the neck from a syringe needle - just so you get the right sized bead) A relief is now the neighbourhood stray can visit and we don't have to worry if she drags in fleas.

I'm sorry to hear about your babies though. Mice are so hard to save from the edge, they stand so darn close to it to start with. How are they all doing now?

Hey, never heared back from you about your babes. They ok? Epsilon's immune system didn't do so well getting over the lice. Now he's fighting a bout of pneumonia. At least he's taking his medicine and eating/drinking fine. Was touch and go there for a few days though.
Hope you're all doing fine!

I'm back been busy with the kids. I unfortanly lost the 3rd girl from that group. She was clear from lice and all alone so I introduced her to a group of girls and they attacked her. Unfortantly Goldy did not survive the attack
I hope Epsilon's doing better, the lice seem too attack the weaker mice 1st, which is why i lost the 2 little ones too them.

i'm so sorry to hear that! Mice can be very odd in their habits toward one another. I'd never have guessed that girl mice might do that!
Epsilon is doing well, so well he can run away before getting picked up and won't take his medicine voluntarily anymore (mmm common boy it's chicken, really!)

Aside from that the latest threat to Epsilon is the local cat. We've been adopted! lol. To be fair to the cat she didn't know we had mice when she adopted us. That to her is just a bonus. Don't worry we don't leave her in the same room with them alone.

It's good too hear Epsilon is good! I think that Something more then the lice was affecting Glody, she was just too calm I guess. I think the other mice senced something wrong with her and decided too put her out of her misery. I have introduced other mice to this same group with no problems at all.

To help me feel better I got another 3 mice at the petshop, my kids named them Choclate, Chip and Cookie. Chocolate is a cinnamon(chocolate agouti) tan, Chip is argente(pink eyed agouti) and Cookie is agouti. Pics will be posted once I figure what's going on with my camera....

Congrats on being adopted! I have cats, my lids are secure and the cats enjoy their cat tv lol.

lol, well our owner likes her tv too but the mice aren't very appreciative of being the stars. we just found a place yesterday to move to where we won't get in trouble for being adopted so we have a task ahead of us - staying adopted and adjusting our owner to a new neighbourhood.

Epsilon developed pneumonia after the lice so it's likely that she had trouble with something other than lice too. Lice tend to bring other unwelcome guests with them. We lost our gamma to myco and i just know if he'd lived he'd never have survived a lice issue - his immune system was so terribly weak (sniff... we still miss him though.)

any advice on peace and harmony maintenance between cats and mice? for instance how to you get time to handle the mice w/o the cat around? and do the mice even want to be near you with cat smell?

The best way too keep the cats away from the mice is too have 4 kids lol. My cats are usually around when the kids are sleeping. My 3 oldest kids are allowed too hold the mice, supervised of course. So we try too hold them when the cats aren't around. If they do get in the way(the 1yr old cat is worse then the 9yr old lol) we lock them in my bedroom. I don't think the mice notice the cat smell on us, the pet shop I get my mice from has lots off other animals around, so I think they ignore them. I have noticed that pet mice show no fear too my cats and often sniff through the mesh lids.