Mouse Weight Loss/Barbering

Question
Hi Natasha,

I have an albino mouse named Bianca who has lost weight over the last few days- she's only about 8 months old and shares her cage with another female mouse.

She had some previous sniffling and sneezing, so we gave her some of the same antibiotics that we gave our male mouse, who happens to have a chronic respiratory infection. We've only given her the medicine intermittently, on an as-needed kind of basis.

We went out of town for a couple of days, and when we returned she was sluggish and had lost a significant amount of weight. She was already slight, but now is bony. She is not sniffling or making noises, so I'm hesitant to give her medicine since I don't know what's wrong.

As an aside, her mouse roommate, Ash, has been barbering her worse and worse. Bianca's now mostly bald on the top of her head and has little patches missing on her back (awhile ago I took her to the vet and he confirmed it was barbering). I don't want to separate her from Ash, because I know that solitude can make a sick mouse worse.

My vet won't be available until tomorrow afternoon, but I don't know that he'll have any answers.

I was wondering if there's anything I can really do, and if there's a possibility that Ash keeps barbering Bianca to get rid of something on her skin?

I appreciate any advice you can give,

Thanks,

-T

Answer
Dear T,

I'm glad you have a good mouse vet who can help.  If I understand you correctly, you gave her medication when she was sick and when she got well, you stopped? So it seems the medication helped. I'd put her on the medication regularly. At least give it to her until your vet can see her.  The most important thing to do with any sick mouse is to make absolutely sure she stays warm.  A mouse with a compromised immune system can easily die of the cold.

Barbering isn't all that well understood even in the mouse world. Whether it is aggressive behavior or nervous behavior is unclear.  The one thing that can often (but not always) stop it is adding more mice to change the dynamic, which you certainly won't do while anybody is sick. As long as the barbered mouse isn't cowering, scared, depressed, or being kept from the food, nest, or wheel, and as long as your vet is sure the problem isn't mites or ringworm, a barbered mouse doesn't win any beauty contests but is generally perfectly healthy.  The only sure way to stop it is to separate the mice and then you want to get another friend for the  non-barbering mouse, etc.

Best of luck to your little Bianca. Hey, that's the female hero in The Rescuers-- a beautiful white mouse named Bianca.

squeaks,

Natasha