Vet helped me to correctly dose antibiotics for a mouse: Here's how

by mikio Wed 17 Mar 2021, 11:48 am

Hello everyone,

My little girl Mikio has come down with a respiratory infection and no vet in the area treats rodents. I learned that doxycycline is a common antibiotic for this and I had some left in the house from when my dog had an issue (100mg - pretty standard dosage). I was lucky enough to find a vet who not only gave me advice on how to correctly dose, but actually prepared the first syringe for me and showed me how to make more. I wanted to share the "training" as it's actually really easy and is working very well!! Ear wiggle

Here goes:

The doxycycline dosage for animals is 5mg/kg. The average adult mouse is only 20-35g (my girl is around 30g). This means she is 0.03kg. That means the dosage would be 0.17g of the 100mg pill. How on earth do you administer that tiny of a dose? Not too difficult! All you will need is 1 pill of 100mg doxycycline (hopefully from a vet) and a 1ml syringe - they are super-cheap (https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Glide-Syringe-Included-Medicine/dp/B08FVFLG3T/). It MUST be a 1ml syringe because of the tiny dosage.

1. Finely crush up the 100mg pill in a very small bowl.
2. Add 5ml of bottled/filtered water.
3. Add 5ml cherry syrup.
4. Pull around 0.6ml into the 1ml syringe and put on the end-cap.

Cover the little bowl with saran-wrap/clingfilm and keep both the syringe and little bowl in the fridge (instead of leaving it in the bowl, I sucked up the remaining amount into a bigger syringe for storage - see pic). Administering it is super easy. Each mark on the syringe is 0.01. So, I just measure out 3 marks on the syringe for 0.03 which is about 3 big drops. The great thing is the liquid is pretty thick (like watery jam) so it's really easy to get the exact quantity. Best of all, it actually tastes really yummy because of the cherry syrup! Razz

My girl LOVES peanut butter and banana, so to make sure she gets the exact full amount I put 3 drops into her food bowl, add a tiny bit of either peanut butter or banana and mix it with a toothpick. I don't put anything else in her food bowl until she eats that. She comes out pretty much immediately and eats it all, so that's going well. I don't add the drops to anything she can "carry away" as then I have no idea if she ate it or not. Something sticky in the bowl means I can see if she ate it. Overall I'm feeding her less other food so that she's always hungry for the peanut butter/banana. With her other food, I sprinkle a bit of probiotic.

I was told to give it 3 times/day for the first week and then reduce to 2 times/day for the second week. I'm on my second day and things are going very smoothly. In the picture, the syringe on the left is how I measure out the dosage. The syringe on the right is the excess doxycycline/cherry syrup I store for when I've used up the 1ml syringe.

Image is at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sBjJxGfhXUzbNgFuLKdsQZ4KGiQmojJP/view?usp=sharing

For anyone struggling with trying to figure out how to give antibiotics to your mousie, I hope this helps!!!