well, being a snake owner i have to feed my snake. and i generally feed my snake mice. i always buy frozen mice from the petstore and just thaw them out for my snake. well, the biology teacher at my school breeds mice to feed the the class snake, but recently he ran into a problem. the mice were breeding to fast. so after mentioning that i own a snake he ended up giving me some mice, which i intend to breed (knowing full well i will probably run into the same problem, but i know yet another snake owner who could serve as an outlet for extra mice.) so i now have 3 mice which i am waiting to breed. and these three i will also probably just keep as pets and only feed their babies to my snake.
but anyways, i just got to thinking, mice have a very soft fur, and i was thinking it would make a great dubbing. but now the problem and purpose of this post. how would anyone recommend obtaining the fur (be it shaving, trimming, whatever) without hurting the mice. it seems like they have a very thin skin so i would be afraid of taking the scissors to them.
Well, I would skin them and tan the hide, but that is just me. Good luck shaving them, mice get mean and they do bite.
As for the teacher, you can give him this input from someone who raised mice, albeit mostly involuntarily, for 16 years. Feed the pregnant ones first, then the mean ones. Gerbils are a while lot cleaner, nicer, and don’t breed like…mice.
Mouse hair, like mole hair, would probably make excellent dubbing. The hair from white mice could be dyed almost any color. I’m afraid I have to go along with DG on skinning and tanning the little critters hides, then dying and using.
There is nothing that hasn’t been dubbed on a thread
and wrapped around a hook.
In the 19th century and earlier mouse, rat and any other
animal with fur was used.
The wild ones were used as well, the colour was regarded as desirable.
If mole skins are useful, so should evrything else be worth a try. I’d avoid the wild city rats and mice, could be a bit dodgy, especially rats. Country rats might be ok.
I would think mice would be no more problem than moles.
Get those big idle house cats in training, it will be
good for them.
Good morning Ratus and Mouse hunters and recyclers.
When you recycle your mouse, for its skin and fur, don’t forget the whiskers, as they are like Ratus whiskers only finer…reads better, these make tails for little 18’s and less dries.
The tanned hid, great zonker strips.
When removeing the skin and tanning, be careful as the skin/hide is very, very thin and will tear easly.
By rubbing into the skin Alumn this will be enough to tan it.
The steps, remove the hide
cover will salt to lock the hair into the skin.
remove salt
cover and rub in over 48hours Alumn
remover
wipe the skin with butter, the common table type
to lubricate the skin again,
And you have a white skin ready for dying to your selected colour or for dubbing or for zonker strips.
I’ve used mole fur with critters that were “donated” by our cat. I simply skin them, stake them onto a piece of cardboard and apply 20 Mule Team Borax. They last for years or at least until I use all the fur off of a hide. I don’t think I’d mess with tanning them. I don’t know what mouse fur would be like since it’s not quite as soft and plush as mole fur, but I’m sure there are several applications where it would work well.
thanks for the responses. the thing is though, i was hoping to find a way to get the fur without killing the mice first. i’ve done tanning before in the past, but i wouldn’t want to mess with killing and skinning a mouse just to use the fur. plus i’ve never fed my snake a skinned mouse, and i dont know how it wuold react or if it would even recognize it as food.
Go to wally world and get yourself a set of electric beard trimmers.
wrap the little sheet around their little neck, and ask them if they jusy want a trim.
Just from my own experience, (I use a beard trimmer instead of shaving. I hate to shave. Takes too long.) your gonna make a mess. Hair goes everywhere. You might want to get a cookie sheet or a cake pan to do this in. Just don’t borrow one. They prolly won’t want it back.
All kidding aside, I think it would be cruel to hold a mouse and shave off its fur. Can you imagine the terror it would be feeling. I know that this probably sounds strange since we’re talking about mice earmarked as snake food, but at least being eaten by a snake is in the realm of “normal” whereas being shaved is probably a bit over the top even by one of us demented fly tyers.
Having a bunch’a laughs myself at some of these responses.
I’d join it too 'cept for the fact that I’ve trapped a few moles (they were raising heck w/my yard) and taken to skinning them as well a mouse!
Yep. Their little hides make some great, fine dubbing that’s really cool!
Nuttin’ like seeing that little carcase all stretched out.
Seriously, it may sound odd but moles have some wonderful fur that’s clean and lustrous. And that little mouse hide was just plain…cool! He was a mixed brown and tan w/a white underbelly.
I smile every time I snip some hair off of that pelt! Cute little rascal, whiskers an’ all!
My son has “done” snakes for years. Ball pythons mostly and some wild color variations including morphs and albinos. Quick tip, if the snakes that you have are large enough to feed “pinkies” to, forget the mice and get rats. Might sound funny but rats are much cleaner. The mice had to go in our house, but the rats were very clean. I even carried one fellow around in my shirt pocket many days. Rats are actually bright and entertaining and I didn’t mind having them around, but the mice went the way of the ferretts in our house. Out the door - too stinky for me. Let me make myself clear, I’m not talking about two or three mice. My son had a doz pythons and use to go from Wis to Florida for reptile shows. You needed a number of mice to feed all of those guys and whatever mice did, rats did it better.
Back to fly tying. I probably would have whacked the rat over the head first (dispatched cleanly) then shaved part of the rat and then feed the rat with partial fur while stilll warm to the snake. If the snake has imprinted on live rats, you could have your work cut out for you. But if you were feeding frozen then thawed, you would do much better. By the way, don’t let your wife see you thawing out those frozen mice in the microwave.
I bet that the shavings might make some good dubbing, it would be worth a try. I would still sprinkle with borax to avoid any furture issue in the house though.
After this long discussion, two bucks for a package of synthetic dubbing sounds like a great value right about now.
Polly Rosborough used to dub with anything and made an unreinforced noodle of any furs, even the shortest. He tied a dubbing loop in the normal place, twisted up a tiny piece of dubbing into a noodle all by itself. Then he tied the noodle down with thread and ran the thread forward.
After that he wrapped the noodle forward. Just dubbing, no thread in the noodle. The dubbing loop was then counterwrapped over the dubbing to segment, strengthen and ease picking out the fuzzy ends.
Mole is easy after you realize what is possible…
art