Most of my job duties revolve around mouse colony maintenance and genotyping. Our protocol for tagging and tailing is probably not dissimilar to most institutions, I take a 2-5 mm tail snip and cauterize immediately. We had four consecutive mouse deaths shortly after tailing last month and just today had two more deaths. This is puzzling, as this number of deaths has not occurred in such quick succession since I started five months ago. Is it possible for a mouse to bleed out and die from a cut that small if it somehow opens back up? There also isn’t a strain correlation between the mice that died, all were from different litters and strains. Unfortunately apparent cause of death is not listed when we get an animal death notification from the vet tech so I’m at a loss as to what’s going on here, has anyone else experienced this?
I doubt that the mice bled out and died from a tail snip, especially after you have cauterized it. The handler would know if something like that would happen on the day the tail was snipped. More likely possiblity is infection from the bedding.
Also, in one of my experiments a group of five mice were found dead on the same day with no apparent cause after only about a week of starting observation. Other people have also shared similar instances of a group of mice dying for no apparent reason during observation.
Some batches of mice in a litter seem to be more fragile than others.
