Can rats and mice share the same room?

Ok, I searched this forum pretty well, and didn't find a match for this question or anything like it, so maybe someone has heard of this. Could also be it is fairly common knowledge, and I'm just out of the loop. Anyway, here it is:
I'm building a rodent building and a good friend of mine I trust has better knowledge regarding animals has told me not to house rats in the same room as mice because they both can give each other a respiratory disease the other can not fight off, and many people have lost entire colonies due to this. In other words, mice carry a virus rats can't live through, and visa-versa.
Has anyone else heard of this? I've been buying frozen rats and mice and chicks, and finally decided to set up my own building for their production, and now I find this out. Welcome to my world.

If that were the case, there would be an awful lot of dead rodents in every pet store in the world. I think they'll be fine in the same room. It's kind of like the salmonella thing--it could happen, but you'd be hard pressed to find a herper that it actually happened to.


Noelle

Rats and mice in the same room are just fine IME. I've been housing rats, mice, and soft furs in a room together for about three years now with no issues.

I'm very careful about bringing new animals in, and at first sign of any sort of sickness, I cull heavily and it's never gotten past the original sick animal's group.

Originally Posted by Shadera

Rats and mice in the same room are just fine IME. I've been housing rats, mice, and soft furs in a room together for about three years now with no issues.

I'm very careful about bringing new animals in, and at first sign of any sort of sickness, I cull heavily and it's never gotten past the original sick animal's group.

Same....before I sold everything. Never had a problem..,in fact, did a experiement with rats and ASFs and they became friends. Didn't have the patience to see if they would mate. Too many irons in the fire. But I did raise rats and ASFs together as babies in the same bin ( this also served the purpose of pre scenting rats.

I sure appreciate you taking the time to respond. I'm still a little concerned only because I know my friend is usually right. I'm hoping he is pulling my leg, but he swears he isn't. Time will tell.

I only did it for six months and had no problems.

The only time one of my colonies had a respiratory virus..it was given to them by other rats. I didn't have ASF and mice at that time. As they died off, the rest developed an immunity and I never had the problem again. Even after adding the mice and ASF to the mix.

Originally Posted by akonitony

I sure appreciate you taking the time to respond. I'm still a little concerned only because I know my friend is usually right. I'm hoping he is pulling my leg, but he swears he isn't. Time will tell.

If you ever go to PetSmart and look at the enclosures the rodents are kept in, they all share a ventilation system that cycles air in and out of the enclosures. Effectively, everyone shares the same air. In the months I worked there, I never noticed an instance where mice passed something onto rats or vice versa in that manner.

If a mouse or rat was sick, it went into the quarantine room in its own enclosure, but shared the room with other sick animals. Again, had no instance of diseases being swapped like that.

Mice and rats are very similar so I find it hard to believe that, under normal circumstances, one is going to pass this super disease on to the other that it is unable to comabt with its immune system while the other one seems to be immune. So long as we are talking about let's say ... Fancy Rats and Fancy Mice of course. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but as stated before, I'm sure there would be tons of dead rodents if this was the case.

So long as you are not trying to mix rats and mice together, I'm sure it would be fine. Rats are actually much cleaner than mice and they like to keep themsleves that way. They spend a third of their waking life grooming themselves.

Well, it certainly makes sense they would share the same air in captivity as they would in the wild. I went ahead and contacted RodentPro just to see if they had ever heard such a thing, and I'll let you know what their response is as soon as I get one. Thanks again for the input.

I know I said I'd get right back to this thread, and it has now been a couple months, but better late than never. I received a courtesy email from Rodentpro which basically stated they do not keep rats and mice in the same rooms, and have them separated for that same reason. So I called my friend back up to get further info and he said the rats carry a disease the mice can't recover from, but the mice don't carry anything that will kill the rats. I asked him how he has his colonies set up, and he said the regular rats have their own building, and ASF rats share the same building with the mice. When I asked if those rats carry anythingthat kill mice or regular rats, he said not that he knew of. So since my ASFs are doing pretty well, I think I am going to harvest all my mice, and let the ASFs take their place in my rodent room (Casa Rodentia), and see how things go. I have been noticing a few of the mice sneezing a lot and breathing with a slight gurgling sound, so maybe they really do need to go. I know I trust this friend pretty much like I would trust an older brother ... yeah, a crotchity wise-arse older brother, but brother none-the-less. I found over the years he has an uncanny ability of being right whenever he says something about fauna of any type, so, yep, I'm going mouse hunting in the morning.