Itchy Skin Condition

by Champagne12 Sat 02 Dec 2017, 9:18 pm

I'm a first time mouse owner. I have two mice that I bought at Petco, a little brown mouse, Mocha, and a little white mouse, Vanilla.

At the beginning of November, I noticed Mocha had a large, bloody patch of fur missing and worried that Vanilla, who is the more dominant mouse, had attacked her. After keeping them separated for a few days and seeing Mocha obsessively scratching herself and her wound worsening, we brought her to the vet.

They told us that brown and black mice bred for pet stores carry strands that have severe skin conditions that cause itching. They gave Mocha a shot and antibiotics to give her twice a day for a week, and it seemed that as the week progressed, her would was healing and she was scratching much less but around Thanksgiving, it came back.

The wound is very red, she's starting to bleed out of her opposite ear, and I see fur missing around her eyes that look watery to me. I made an appointment for an exotic animal vet for today, but they canceled my appointment due to an emergency surgery that came up. I was rescheduled for Tuesday (today is Saturday) and was advised to put vegetable oil on her to alleviate some of her itchiness for the time being.

I swabbed some on her this morning, just on the side with the largest wound, and also dabbed a bit of Neosporin where I could (she doesn't like me to hold her and definitely did not want me to touch her wound) but she has been scratching relentlessly the whole day and I'm very worried.

Should I coat her all over in vegetable oil or is there something else I can do for her just until her appointment on Tuesday? I'm very worried that she's going to seriously hurt herself. Any advice at all would be very much appreciated. I just want to do my best to make Mocha comfortable.

NOTE: Vanilla is absolutely fine. No health issues other than being a tad chubby, so I believe the first vet when she says it's a skin condition unique to brown fancy mice.

by River Sun 03 Dec 2017, 4:06 pm

My girl had a cut in the days leading up to her death -- of old age! the wound wasn't related, so don't worry -- and the scratching came only after she got the wound. In my opinion if it had been obsessive scratching, you would've noticed thinning on her hair more recently.

Skin conditions are still possible, and scabs are just very itchy in general. I applied neosporin as I could two times a day for the remainder of her days, and eventually she learned to enjoy it. It took a while to help, too. What I reccomend if this isn't working is to keep her in a cage nearby and when you notice she scratches, stop her. It'll decrease the itching.

You can also put sanitized rocks or a clean brick in the cage to help wear down her nails. I put them in front of my girls nest and water bottle and it began scabbing on her last day.

by Champagne12 Sun 03 Dec 2017, 4:12 pm

The rock tip is great! Thank you very much!

I actually opened both cages today so my girls could interact. Vanilla wouldn’t leave Mocha’s cage, so I closed them up and have let them be together and I’ve noticed that with Vanilla, Mocha has scratched less. And now they’re both definitely covered in vegetable oil after cuddling all day. It’s cute!

Anyway, thank you!

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