Rodents
General Info About Rodents:
Rats and mice can eat our food virtually anywhere; in farms, orchards, during production, while its being stored and during transportation. Additionally, they can eat our food while it is in supermarkets, restaurants and houses. They contaminate food with their urine, fur and feces.
Experts estimate that rodents destroy enough food each year to feed 200 million people.
Rodents can also damage property, such as doors, floors ceilings sand walls. They also gnaw on items such as pipes and wiring, which can result in fires, flooding and equipment damage.
Rodents have been the cause of over 55 disease over the past few centuries. Because of sanitation practices, effective medications and rodent control programs, the threat of rodent associated diseases is not quite as significant as it once was. Because of rodent habits, such as travelling in sewers, eating from the garbage, etc., they are still a significant vector for disease transmission. Aside from simply being allergic to mice (their urine carries a protein that can trigger asthma and allergic rhinitis), a few other diseases associated with rodents are: hantavirus, plague, murine typhus, and rickettsial pox. Food-borne illnesses such as salmonella can be transmitted by rodents as well. Rodents can carry an transmit a wide variety of additional diseases!
The House Mouse
It is believed that the house mouse originated in current day Turkmenistan and made its way west via ships in the 15th century. The house mouse weights 1/2 to 1 ounce as an adult. It has large ears and its tail is semi-naked; the house mouse’s tail is as long as it’s head and body combined. It typically has dark gray fur on the back and light gray on it’s stomach, however there are many possible color variations.
Under ideal living conditions, rodents can multiply very successfully. When conditions are stressful, reproduction efforts are greatly slowed down. Under average conditions, a female mouse produces 4-7 pups per littler. The gestation period is approximately 19 days. Female mice typically produce 4 littlers in their lifetime, but under ideal conditions she can birth a little of pups every 28 days! Young mice are sexually mature in 5-8 weeks. In the wild, mice normally live less than one year, however dominant mice can live for as long as two years.
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