Bug Facts - Mice
Physical
Characteristics
 Mice travel over
their entire territory daily, investigating each change or
new object that may be placed there.
Mice have poor vision, hence their activity patterns rely
heavily on smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
Mice use the long sensitive whiskers near the nose and
hairs on the body as tactile sensors. The whiskers and hairs
enable the mouse to travel in the dark, adjacent to walls in
burrows.
Mice also have an excellent sense of balance, enabling
them to walk along telephone wires, ropes and similar thin
objects.
Mice are excellent jumpers, capable of leaping at least
12 inches vertically.
Mice can jump against a flat vertical surface using it as
a spring board to gain additional height.
They can run up almost any vertical surface; wood, brick,
weathered sheet metal, cables, etc.
They can easily travel for some distance hanging upside
down.
Although they are good swimmers, mice tend to take to
water only if left with no other alternative.
Mice are basically nocturnal in nature.
Breeding Habits
House mice breed throughout the year and can become
pregnant within 48 hours of producing a litter.
There are usually about 6 mice to a litter and females
may produce as many as ten litters (about 50 young) per
year.
It takes 18 to 21 days for gestation, and 35 days for a
mouse to mature. Most mice live anywhere from 15 to 18
months.
Nesting Habits
They make their nests out of the same types of soft
materials as rats, and as many as 3 females may use the same
nest. They commonly nest in insulation in attics, also in
stoves and under refrigerators. Mice do not travel far from
their nest, about 12 to 20 feet.
Feeding Habits
Mice normally feed 15 to 20 times per day and will eat
pretty much anything a human will eat.
Food preference is cereal or seed, but also gnaw through
insulation or wires, sheet rock, storage boxes, etc.
Mice are nibblers. They do small amounts of damage to
many food items in "home range", rather than doing extensive
damage to any one item.
While mice are nibblers and feed many times in many
places, they have two main feeding periods, at dusk and just
before dawn.
They have to consume about 10% to 15% of their body
weight every 24 hours and require extremely small amounts of
water.
Disease & Sanitation
Factors
Mice droppings sometimes are confused with droppings from
the larger species of roaches, such as the American roach.
Mice droppings are smooth with pointed ends, and are
1/8th to 1/4 inch long.
In six months, one pair of mice can eat about 4 pounds of
food and during that period produce some 18,000 fecal
droppings.
Deer mice are a primary vector of Hantaviral infections
which cause hemorrhagic fevers.
Mice may infect food with their droppings transmitting
such organisms as salmonella and the microscopic eggs of
tapeworms.
Mice transmit disease in a number of ways including
biting, infecting human food with their droppings or urine,
indirectly via the dog or cat and bloodsucking insects.
Prevention &
Control
Good sanitation is essential for effective long term
control. Mice can enter any opening larger than 1/4 inch,
making it virtually impossible to completely mouse proof a
building.
The control of mice can be widely varied, depending on
the individual situation. It may range from physically
altering the conditions allowing the infestation, such as
covering holes, filling cracks, etc. to baiting or trapping.
Your Burge Pest Control technician will determine the best
means of control for your home or business.
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