Advice on FIELD MOUSE please!

[Bekkig87]

My cat has once again bought in a little mouse, but this one is alive and seems to be OK, I put him/her in a little box with some tissue over night and this morning Mousey was fine, Mousey has eaten some seeds stale breadcrumbs and has drank a fair bit of water Mousey is all about sleeping at the moment it looks to me that he/she is only a little baby! It looks like maybe he/she has an injured eye as it is half closed, and the end of its tail has been lost, I was planning on keeping him/her for another evening for rest and then releasing mousey in the evening. Is there any advice anyone can give me on looking after him/her? I'm not sure if i am doing the right thing or if there is anything else i need to be doing.

One other thing the mouse seems to be incredibly friendly i have never seen anything like it! He/she was sat in my hand cleaning its self and is happy to take food from me is this normal?

[Jason Green]

It sounds as though you may have become a surrogate mum!

If it is this friendly I would be concerned about releasing it - if it's this used to you it may be lacking the more 'wild' instincts!

Beware the place you release it - it may need you to hide food in a large area to teach it to find it's own prior to releasing it.

[Dogghound]

Some individuals can be quite friendly, it should still be released ASAP. If its eating solids its not a baby and can fend for itself.

[Pauline7]

Hi i need some advice, we found what seems to be a baby field mouse yesterday afternoon in the garden, its eyes are still closed and it has no hair yet, but it is able to walk on your hand, we have been keeping it warm and trying to feed it milk, it just sleeps for most of the time, should we release it into the wild or is there any chance of it surviving long enough to become a pet?

[Dogghound]

No its to young to fend for itself if its eating/drinking milk, im afraid they are very hard to look after at this age. If you can get hold of any rich puppy,kitten milk of somesort it would help. Also they need regular feeds.

[Pauline7]

The little field mouse died last night i'm afraid, i bought some kitten milk and fed it some and i put some hay in for bedding so i don't know if this had anything to do with it. Thanks for the advice anyway.

[Dogghound]

It is extremely hard to keep them at this age, 1) its hard to replicate the milk 2) its hard to replicated the number of feeds.

[Darley]

At the risk of being mobbed by cat owners, dare I proffer a solution to the rapidly increasing problem of bird and small mammal premature deaths? Get rid of the darn cat!

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by Darley

At the risk of being mobbed by cat owners, dare I proffer a solution to the rapidly increasing problem of bird and small mammal premature deaths? Get rid of the darn cat!

[vomit_alert]
But _my_ little pussykins wouldn't hurt a fly - would you darling little diddum sweetiepie?
[/vomit_alert]

Jim

[Jennie]

A few years ago I came across two very young wood mice on a woodland path. I can only assume they were searching for their (probably) demised mother. They were about an inch long, their eyes were only half open, and they were very cold. I warmed them up, fed them on Lactol every hour or so to begin with, then every two hours as they got stronger. Sadly the male died on the second day, but the female survived, and grew into a very tame and trusting animal. I called her Daisy, and she was with me for nearly three years, before finally succumbing to the cancer in her tummy. She loved all sorts of fruit, nuts, flowers and seeds, but her favourite food was Dandelion flowers, which she would eat petal by petal, turning the flowers around in her paws much as we would with corn on the cob.
Sorry I've gone on a bit, but she was very special to me, I am so glad I was the one entrusted with her life!