How To Choose Mice Cages

Hi, my name's Marie. I'm the deputy manager of the Small Animal Department at Wood Green Animal Shelters and I'm going to tell you how to care for mice. I'm going to tell you how to choose mice cages.

Mice are best homed in glass aquariums as we have here. Never house your mouse in a hamster cage because often the bar can be too big and they're very good at escaping, so your safest option is to go for a large aquarium. These are also known as gerbil aquariums.

They've got three levels in them so you can add lots of enrichment and they can climb up and down on them. If you do go for a standard fish aquarium which you can either get at your local pet store or even go to your recycling center, make sure that you do provide a really secure mesh lid. This will help prevent them from escaping but also protect them from any cats and dogs that you may have in the home, also offers a really good ventilation and to the tank.

The other option is you could make your own mouse tank. Large storage tanks about 2 to 3 feet in length make excellent tanks for mice. All you need to do is just cut out a square at the front and get some good quality hard small-gauged mesh and you can just screw this on to the front with some washes.

Do the same on the lid, so again, that adds ventilation to both ways. These are really secure as they have large clips on the edge and you can easily access the accommodation this way. Because they haven't got lots of different shelves and things, it's actually quite a really good blank canvas.

You can fill all sorts of enrichment in here and tunnels. Mice in the wild would naturally be scavenging all over different tunnels, going underground and into caves and into rocks, and even into blanket areas, warm and cozy areas. So, you want to try to mimic this when you are setting the chosen age that you go for.

As you can see in here, we've got children's toys. They often make fantastic mice hiding areas. You got tunnels, ladders, and you can even get these hamster play balls.

They make really good sleeping nests for mice. You can just take the front off, pop some bedding in there, and they will climb in and make a nice little cozy nest for them. So that's how you're going to choose your cage, your enrichment, and then lastly, make sure you got good quality bedding on the base of your cage.

Never use wood shavings as this can often contain parasites and be really bad for allergies and asthma. The best option is either short shredded paper or a product called Carefresh. Both are absorbent and safe for your mice and protected against parasites.

And that's how to choose suitable mice accommodation. .