#feeder mouse

@blanketcreature said to @ask-drferox: Hey doc, I was wondering what you would think of feeding cats and dogs frozen thawed mice/rats like tbey do for reptiles. They are bred specifically for pet consumption so, they are supposed to be safe. I also once read that cats benefit from each part of their prey. So what's the tea?

While you certainly could give your domestic cat whole prey items, most people are not super inclined to do so. Certainly a whole prey item (mouse, rat, chick, rabbit, etc) is reasonable nutrition for a cat, assuming that prey item was in reasonable condition itself. It’s not perfect though, especially for growing and lactating animals, and we may lose some essential nutrition in freezing.

I would not feed such items to my cats for the following reasons:

Trash Bag picks up his food and runs away with it, to hide and eat at his leisure. This is fine for dry food, but not fine for half a rodent.

Wonka in uncoordinated and tosses his food while eating. It frequently ends up on his head, and I stopped feeding him raw meat after he successfully but accidentally tossed an entire raw chicken wing into my fruit bowl. I am not keen to do that with a whole prey item.

It’s just not going to go well in my house.

There is also difficulty in enforcing a ‘whole prey diet’ on some cats. With a snake it’s easy - they eat the whole animal. A cat can nibble and chew and leave behind the bits it doesn’t want to eat and potentially miss out on some nutrition that way. How many cats just lick the sauce off their favorite wet food and don’t eat the rest?

It always kind of makes me wonder me when I see posts from other mouse blogs and most of their mice are rescued feeder mice or just other mice with a “bad type”. What I’m saying is that I live in northern Finland in a small town and I am somehow able to find well bred close to show type mice, by asking around the local community and arranging transportation from the other side of the country in some cases. From a certain perspective I am almost literally living in the middle of the woods. And I can only assume that other mouse bloggers live somewhere were there are generally more and better breeders, bigger pet shows and better transportation, but they still have feeder mice.

I’m not saying that feeder mice are a bad choice necessarily. It’s a riskier one for sure, depending on where you get your mice, pet stores usually being that worse case scenario. I’m also not saying that breeders, who mainly breed feeders to feed their own snake or sell to other snake owners, are bad breeders. They should care for their animals just like show and pet breeders and I bet most of them do. So if you’re one of those people who get their feeders straight from the breeder and know the mouse’s background, that’s good. But I’m still curious to know why feeders and pet store feeders especially are such a normal sight on Tumblr.

//Also if you’re asking why your mice don’t get along and they’re feeders or other pet shop mice from an unknown background, I’m sorry to tell you this, but that background is most likely playing a part in those problems.//

Now, I know that it’s very common for a beginner to get their mouse from a pet shop. I did so too when I was 11. I got two males. It didn’t go well. They were separated to their own terrariums after one day of fighting in their new home and one of them was aggressive towards me for the most of his life. After that I got three females from the same shop. One of them was a “dancing mouse”, a mouse with a balance disability that made it run in circles. All 5 of these mice got external parasites at some point of their life, which can happen to any mouse, but some mice are genetically more likely to get them. Those were all cute mice, but I would not recommend that experience for anyone over the experience I’ve had with mice from trustworthy breeders.

I might write another post about breeders and pet shops and what warning signs to look for etc. This post is already long enough. :D

They usually pluck feathers, but the sausage grinder idea is viable. That’s the principle in making pellet food for parrots or commercial feed. It’s all mixed in, they can’t pick it out.

This is perfectly fine for plant foods, but you’re right in that there would be some gut contamination in doing this with a whole prey item, so you might choose to use an eviscerated prey item and add back in some of the offal.