JAX® Timed-Pregnant Mice

Timed-mated and pregnant mice shipped to you when you need them.

Background

Mating in laboratory mice

Laboratory mice mate approximately six hours into the dark cycle. We can tell if a female has mated in the last eight to 24 hours if she has a vaginal plug, a transient waxy mass of congealed secretions from the male seminal vesicle and coagulating glands. We check females for vaginal plugs early in the morning on the day after pairing them. We transfer plugged females into a new cage marked with the date a plug is detected.

Pregnancy in laboratory mice

A female that has mated is not necessarily pregnant. The pregnancy success rate varies from strain to strain. We determine pregnancy by palpating the female eleven days after detecting a vaginal plug. If she is pregnant, we consider the date the plug was detected as gestational day 0.

Females ordered at gestational days 0-10 may not be pregnant; females ordered at gestational days 11 to 15 are guaranteed to be pregnant. The average time of gestation in laboratory mice is 19 to 21 days. To ensure that pregnant mice do not deliver litters during shipment, we do not ship them after gestational day 15.

Key benefits

  • Guaranteed mated or guaranteed pregnant specific and opportunistic pathogen-free (SOPF) JAX® Mice
  • Pregnant mice deliver virtually same-age pups
  • Difficulties of breeding "special needs" strains left up to JAX husbandry experts
  • Saves resources: vivarium space not wasted on cages of stud males awaiting females for timed matings
  • Saves time: no planning and/or colony maintenance

Capabilities

Standard

  • BALB/cByJ (001026), BALB/cJ (000651), C57BL/6J (000664), C3H/HeJ (000659), or DBA/2J (000671)
  • Gestational days 0-10 (only mating, not pregnancy, is guaranteed): $90/female
  • Gestational days 11-15 (pregnancy guaranteed): $150/female
  • Order through Customer Service at 1-800-422-6423, +1-207-288-5845 or email orderquest@jax.org

Non-standard

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