Overall health from pet stores

by FawnRoyale Mon 15 Jan 2018, 6:35 pm

I'm looking to get some mice soon*, starting with a trio. However, I would like to know what the general/overall health was from different, chain pet stores. The ones in my area are Petco, Pet Smart, and Pet Land, though any other U.S-based chain stores are options if they have good health. I live in Missouri, in the STL area, so I sadly don't have any ethical breeders that I know of.
Thank you for your responses!

*This is relative, I'm doing all the research I can before considering actually getting mice!

by chiroptera Mon 15 Jan 2018, 6:43 pm

FawnRoyale wrote:I'm looking to get some mice soon*, starting with a trio. However, I would like to know what the general/overall health was from different, chain pet stores. The ones in my area are Petco, Pet Smart, and Pet Land, though any other U.S-based chain stores are options if they have good health. I live in Missouri, in the STL area, so I sadly don't have any ethical breeders that I know of.
Thank you for your responses!

*This is relative, I'm doing all the research I can before considering actually getting mice!

It will be different depending on the individual stores in your area, so I would definitely recommend visiting each of the stores near you, looking at their animals, talking to the employees, etc to just get a feel for the level of care that the individual store is giving to their animals.

In a more general sense, PetSmart doesn't sell mice as live feeders, they require you to be purchasing them as pets, so their mice (in my own experience, at least) seem more active, healthy, and tame. Overall I prefer PetSmart to Petco, but it definitely depends on the individual location.

Three of my mice (Trouble, Yahtzee, Pumpkin) are from PetSmart, and three (Checkers, Clue, Mahjong) are from PetSmart. Overall, the PetSmart mice are far bigger (even if we don't consider my brindles' fatness, Trouble is a good deal bigger than Checkers), and my girls from PetSmart were easier to tame than most of my others, excluding Checkers who's just a complete lovebug. I love all of my mice, though, and any mouse should come around, with time. Smile

I can't offer anything about PetLand, as I've never been to one.

by River Mon 15 Jan 2018, 6:55 pm

It'll vary depending on the store, I agree. I have good experience with Petco and Petsmart, and though I've never heard of Petland, I got a lovely girl from a reptile shop set up in the flea market more recently.

My Petco + Petsmart girls have been fine, long lived and with no tumors. My feeder girls were healthy too! My new mouse, from Petsmart, has some mysterious eye problems but as a general rule has been healthy enough. So far I haven't ran into any tumors or alarmingly low life spans. Bad breeding increases the risk of those though.

My oldest girl right now was bred within a pet supply store. She was an accidental litter between siblings, so her genetics are pretty poor. She's 22 months old and going strong, though. Its a hit or miss!

by AnonymousMouseOwner Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:01 pm

I've never gotten any animals from PetSmart, and don't know what PetLand is, so my experience with those is limited, but I have gotten a few animals from Petco, so here's my experience:

Holly - My first mouse from Petco, suffered at least 2 strokes that I know of in her lifetime, possibly more. She was always just under 20 grams (19 .8 ), so a very small mouse. She passed away at 1 year, 6 months old, suddenly and of unknown causes.

Violet - My second mouse from Petco, had a URI when I got her, and passed away almost 2 weeks after I got her.

Flint - My first hamster from Petco, was from the "back room" but was still bred wherever Petco gets their "stock" from, so he had to of come from the same poorly bred lines as the other animals in Petco. He suddenly and totally unexpectedly passed of unknown causes a month after I brought him home.

Jack - My third mouse from Petco, also from the back room. He's a mouse I have now and he seems to be doing well. He is missing an eye, but I adopted him that way. The eye could be due to poor breeding, or due to the fact that Petco houses hundreds of male mice together at once.

Either way, I wouldn't really recommend Petco as a place to get mice. I've also heard a lot of cases where mice from there were mis-sexed at Petco and people ended up with pregnant mice or a male when they wanted a female. But, in the end, it really all depends on how the stores in your area are, and where they buy their stock from. I know of a Petco with not-so-great care in one city near me, they house tons of PEW mice together and they are all very sickly looking and obviously too tiny to be away from their mothers. But there is a PetSmart in that same city with amazing care, they only keep 1-5 mice per cage, they appear to be fully grown, they have paper bedding, a decent wheel, hide, etc. However, I've heard people say the complete opposite, that their PetSmarts are awful and the Petcos are wonderful.

Maybe just take some time to observe the mice at the stores near you. Watch them and see if they seem lethargic, unhappy, sickly, too young to be sold, etc. or if they seem happy, energetic, fully grown, bright-eyed, etc. You'd want to go with the pet store that has the happiest, healthiest looking mice.

by FawnRoyale Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:17 pm

Thank you all! I'll definitely keep an eye out! The ones at Petco (which I saw today) were very lively it seemed, however I haven't gotten a good read on sizing or not, so I couldn't tell how old they were. I'll definitely keep researching my local stores and seeing what's best!

But wow, you guys don't have Petland? It must be a local thing then I guess haha! Sorry about that!

by chiroptera Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:28 pm

FawnRoyale wrote:Thank you all! I'll definitely keep an eye out! The ones at Petco (which I saw today) were very lively it seemed, however I haven't gotten a good read on sizing or not, so I couldn't tell how old they were. I'll definitely keep researching my local stores and seeing what's best!

But wow, you guys don't have Petland? It must be a local thing then I guess haha! Sorry about that!

I just moved to Texas where there are some in the cities / elsewhere, but none local. But I moved from Pennsylvania, where (I just checked on the store locator) there are a few in the Pittsburgh area, but none anywhere else in the state... which is the opposite side of PA from where I used to live/grew up. I've only recently even heard about Petland, haha

by AnonymousMouseOwner Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:33 pm

Yeah, I live in California, and there looks to be no PetLand stores in my entire state. I guess that would explain why I didn't know what it was Laughing

by FawnRoyale Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:43 pm

Yeah lol, wow! Also this is off topic, but I would rather not start a new thred so soon. How much bedding do mice require? I've only ever had hamsters, and I'm seeing cages with less than an inch of bedding, so I'm just confused lol! Do they not burrow?

by River Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:53 pm

Mice dont burrow excessively, no - they nest and dig! A mouses burrowing is essentially a small nest under the bedding to sleep in, occasionally with a few short tunnels. I used to offer around 5 inches but it was wasted. 1-3 is enough for what mice like to do! I prefer at least 2 though, so the option is always available.

by FawnRoyale Mon 15 Jan 2018, 7:55 pm

Oh wow, thank you! Gosh it'll be nice not having to use 5 bags of bedding for one spoiled pet Laughing

My hamster has about 6 inches at all times so that's a big difference! Thank you!

by chiroptera Mon 15 Jan 2018, 8:09 pm

As it was said already, mice don't burrow nearly as much as hamsters do, so you shouldn't have to have a too-deep pit of bedding. There's definitely no need for 6 inches, that would be a waste of bedding most likely.

Again, of course, it's also dependent on your individual mice! Trouble and Yahtzee barely burrow at all, but Checkers, Clue, and Mahjong love to wreak havoc and dig all around the bin.

Come to think of it- the burrowers are my Petco girls. It's probably a coincidence, but it's definitely interesting. Confused

by CallaLily Tue 16 Jan 2018, 7:45 am

No Petland here, but I've seen the store mentioned online before.

My nearest in-state Petsmart doesn't carry mice often so most of my mice are from Petco. I've only purchased one mouse from a Petsmart in Maryland and she passed very young due to tumors (tumors at 5 months, passed at 8 months). Out of the 8 mice I've purchased from Petco, 3 developed tumors later in life (around 1 year+). The rest were all relatively healthy, except Cheeseburger had some lingering damage from a bad ear infection (passed at 21 months) and Hashbrown was overweight (brindle, passed at 17 months). I also adopted 1 mouse from Petco (a return) at 8 months old who eventually developed ongoing eye inflamation/infections that wouldn't respond to any treatment (and he was another chubby brindle) He passed at 15 months.

The other two mice I've had were sisters from an oopsie litter 3 hours away. Not sure where their parents were from. Celyn passed suddenly at 18 months from unknown causes, but Rina is still doing pretty good at almost 26 months (on the 20th). Both chubby agouti-possibly-overmarked-brindle.

I do agree with the others that it can vary store to store so check out your nearest shops to see how the animals and their enclosures look. My nearest Petco does pretty decent caring for their pets and everyone looks healthy, but there's another a few towns over that was overcrowded, dirty, and the mice looked horrible. Unfortunately pretty much all pet shop mice -no matter the store- are from mills and poorly bred. If you want more of a guarantee on healthy mice, a reputable breeder is your best bet. Though I understand they're difficult to find in some locations. I only recently discovered one that may be good over in PA, which would be a drive for me but I'm sure worth it next time I'm looking for mice.

Bedding depth. I like to give my mice a few inches, but they don't need so much as a hamster. They do like nesting in boxes that are partially buried. At least mine do. I've offered deeper digging pits but they didn't really show much interest. Of course that may depend on the individual mouse, so you could certainly try offering a deeper area to see how they like it. But in my experience, the main time I've seen mice dig/tunnel is when they don't have enough hides/toys/cover. Give them the appropriate amount of stuff (they like it packed full, where everywhere they turn high or low is a new thing) and they seem to have little interest in tunneling. Now they will rearrange things to how they like it, which often means bedding piled over a wheel or a toy or a dish. Laughing

EDIT: This thread talks a little about what to look for when choosing a pet mouse. https://www.petmousefanciers.com/t6-bringing-your-new-mouse-home

by CinnamonPearl Tue 16 Jan 2018, 10:24 pm

In my experience, mice I get from pet stores die much quicker than those from anywhere else. i've had four mice from pet stores: Eglantine, Lilith, Monster, and Dandelion. The first three were from Petsmart, last is from Petco. With the exception of two other mice (one of which I got from a rehoming situation but he did originally come from a pet store, and the second of which died in a freak accident), all three of these guys died the fastest of all the mice I've had, from natural causes. Mice I've gotten from other places have lasted longer and been healthier in their lives, so I trust other sources more. Dandelion is still alive, I've had her for about six months now, and she's been very healthy so far.

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