When cleaning one of our Harvest Mice enclosures this week, the keepers were delighted to find some incredibly cute baby mice hidden inside the nest!The adult mice build their nests from materials they collect up such as the hay and leaves provided for them inside the enclosure.
The baby mice are born pink after a gestation of between 18 - 21 days. They will then start venturing out of the nest to start exploring at approximately 10 -12 days of age. Once the youngsters are around 8 weeks old they'll be fully weaned and independent!
Once at this stage, they will be moved into a nursery enclosure where they will stay for around 3 - 4 weeks before being housed into same-sex groups in the main enclosures. By separating the males and females we are able to control any indiscriminate breeding.
The adult harvest mice are only around 3-4cm in size so you can imagine how tiny their babies are!
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