We would like to observe the transfer of various immunological factors through the breast milk of mice to their offspring to conclude our recent experiment. So, I request you all, to share your experience and suggestions in this regard. Thanks for your concern in advance....
Hi Vamshi. It is not an easy work but you can try like that: use a manual or electric vacuum pump (lower vacuum pressure or with a leak to lower the vacuum level under 35 KPa) and connect it to a bottle with a double perforated airtight cap (easy to do with a pirex bottle and a rubber cap with two holes). You can adapt another tube to the second opening of the cap made for suckling milk. At the extremity you can adapt a body of plastic sterile syringue of 2ml (Mice) to 5 ml (Rats, Does) that you can put on the teats (large extremity free to be placed on the skin). After that, you need to inject Oxytocin because mice never give milk voluntarily in theses conditions and apply your syringue with vacuum to obtain milk for each teats . 2 UI OT is sufficient and can act during 2 to 5 min that permit to suckle milk from all teats. Use only small diameter tubes because milk quantity is very, very limited (One to 3 drop of milk per gland!). Be careful with OT injection because OT can modify a little bit gene expression and protein recovery in milk thus don't use it very frequently. At the max each 3 to 4 naturtal sucking by pups. Good luck and courage.
best regards
Hi,
in my laboratory, milk from mice was routinely collected on anaesthetized animals with the aid of oxytocin. This reduces the stress for the animal, which doesn't need to be restrained, and it makes it possible for just one person to collect milk. Once the animal is fully anaesthetized and oxytocin starts to act, milk ejection is achieved by gently massaging around the teat. Milk drops budding from each teat can naturally be sucked into a pasteur capillary pipette with no need to apply vacuum, and will be immediately expressed into the collection tube. Depending on the mouse strain and on the litter size, 50 to 500 µl of milk can be collected from one mouse.
For the composition of the doses of anaesthetic and oxytocin, you can see the attached article by Boumarhou et al. 2009.
Hope this helps.
We collect milk from mice regularly in our lab, The article below describes milk machine and general approach, instead of a traditional vacuum pump we use an human breast pump to create the pulsation as well as wet the area around the nipple to create a better seal. It can be done on both anesthetized mice or without anesthesia if handling-restraining skills are excellent.
J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia. 2009 Dec; 14(4): 397–400.
Published online 2009 Nov 24. doi: 10.1007/s10911-009-9158-0
PMCID: PMC2789213
Methods for Collecting Milk from Mice