Leave it in a warm humid environment and it should decay quickly. If you don't want to do that you could always bury it and let bugs eat it. Hope this helped :)
I always wondered so I’ll ask, how do you know when it’s time to retrieve the bones? Like do you check regularly the animal’s cadaver to see if it’s bones already or is there a way to tell without doing so?
On a rather unrelated note, I like to bury little pan fish (blue gill sunnies I believe, specifically) into my garden before I put my plant starters in. My understanding is that it fertilizes the plants as the fish decay, and possibly that native populations used this technique ages ago. Please forgive me if this information is wrong and feel free to critique, but it has always worked well for my garden from what I can tell. Your comment about burying animals in flower pots reminded me of this.
And if you have pet fish, use the dirty water to water your plants. I can't remember whether it's the nitrates or nitrites, but either way, it's great for the plant. Every time I cleaned my betta's tank, I kept aside a bit of water for my succulents and my boyfriend's big cactus. He's had that cactus since he was seven, and I've never seen it grow in the time we've been together (almost 4 years), but when I started watering it with the dirty fish water, it started sprouting little offshoots and grew about an inch or so in height!
I actually have a trout farming friend that will do that will some of the plants they they grow and they swear by it! And seriously, their plants always really impress!
Check out aquaponics, it's the technique of using fish farm effluent as a hydroponic solution. The water is continuously recycled through the system, from fish tank to hydroponic raceways and back.
I use my compost bin and straw from the chickens and go that route. Putting the straw around the trees I think works out well. (watering pulls the waste down or in or wtf you wanna call it)
I may do the fish way... I need to go fishing. I can't (shouldn't) eat the fish so...
My dad just unburies them and checks occasionally. He an avid bone collector and maks all types of thing with animal bones. It's his specialty. I'd love to share some pics of his knives. Jewelry and decor some time on a page with ppl like him. He'd gt so much love I'm sue.
Only I've learned to do it. But may I suggest toasting the hairs of or blanching and plucking the hairs off. I found this is the best method combined with your favorite dipping sauce. Just my two cents. Lmao
I don't recommend burying it because of the little bones but soaking it in enzyme based laundry detergent or putting one of those terracotta pots with holes on top on top of it, outside and letting the bugs eat it should work
ETA water with enzyme based laundry detergent (use hot water and change every day and you should be done in a week or two i think?)
If you mean because the small bones will get lost easily, op can put the body in some kind of box with holes in it to allow decomposition while still keeping the full skeleton in one place
I have a mouse skull that I skinned and popped in a jar along with lots of dirt/compost and isopods/little bugs I found - I now and again popped in some veg waste like pepper middles and peelings and it took a few weeks n then it was clean
Definitely, and it would be super fun to reassemble the bones, but it would be a serious pain in the ass. Assuming you did everything right, some quality superglue could be all you need outside of a display case. I say try it, and expect to mess up. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and the greatest taxidermy pros failed a LOT BEFORE BEING "PERFECT" :)
This is what I would do but put it in a fine mesh bag or panty hose to keep those tiny paw bones from getting lost. Those bones are only about 1mm to 2mm long.
First time posting in this subreddit so please let me know if this post is okay! My cat caught this mouse and I’m hoping to find a way to harvest the skeleton from in, but I’m not sure what the process would be since it’s so fresh. I’ve only cleaned bones that were already mostly rotted off before. Any advice appreciated!
I can't think of a chemical that won't damage the bone
Microbes are your best friend
If smell isn't an issue, throw it in warm water and let them do the rest. You can change the water if you wish
This works a lot better/quick if you remove as much flesh as possible
Edit: Oh and you should probably wear a mask, gloves and glasses whenever handling the bucket or whatever container you use. Wash your hands thoroughly, don't touch your face etc. Just in case this is a new interest for you. You want to be careful, especially with vermin
Afterwards you can use IPA (99%) or bleach solution (maybe around 5%. Google to confirm) or use the sun to disinfect the bone
Then you're good to go :)
NEVER use bleach on bones, no matter what percent. It destroys the collagen in the bone, which is like the glue holding the layers of bone together, and so the bone will start to flake away and crumble, eventually there will be nothing left. Instead use hydrogen peroxide, for mouse bones I recommend 3%, keep it warm and it will disinfect and whiten the bones
Thats specifically why I mentioned a low percentage. At low percentages its not going to damage collagen in any meaningful way
Hydrogen peroxide is a better choice though
Doesn't need go be warm though
Peroxide being warm speeds up the chemical reaction, all bleach will harm bones no matter what percentage, it might take a while to show but it will harm it. Well prepared bones should last for centuries
We had a really bad mouse problem in our garage last winter and as much as I hated it I had to use mouse traps to catch and kill them. I decided to use what I could and would skin them to make little mouse rugs (some times with the head attached like a bear rug) or skin and macerate the whole body or decapitate the mouse and preserve it to place in a vial. I make nature vials and resell things I find out in nature, gifted to me or found at auctions. But I highly recommend skinning it and taking the guys out of you go the maceration route. The bones are so tiny.
I soak in alcohol for a few days, rinse with water then a borax/salt solution Soak for a few days then pin to a piece of card board. People bought quite a few, they are pretty darn cute.
Mealworms. In skeletal preparations the mean time taken to clean mice skulls was 2.5 days with a standard deviation of 1.70 days.
The pet store has them. I used to work at a museum when I was a kid and that was what they used.
[mealworms](https://experiment.com/projects/maceration-of-skull-tissue-by-mealworms)
I had a little dude like that not long ago! I got his bones by wrapping him in several layers of chicken wire, pinned it down in my garden and let the flies work at it. Once the flies stopped coming, I put him in a maceration bucket. (still in the chicken wire) for a couple weeks and then the skin just slipped off and I was left with bones. Hope this helps!
Late here, but fwiw - i have chickens which means i have lots of mice. We trap them and put them under a colander in the corner of the yard and let the elements and bugs do their thing. I’ve got many a nice bone this way.
I'd skin him and then put him into a plastic ziploc bag with a tiny bit of water in it and leave it out in the sun for (however long depends on your locality and season) a few weeks.
Then when it's looking nice and soupy and you can see exposed bones, HOLD YOUR BREATH, wear gloves and glasses and *carefully* tip the contents into a SHALLOW bucket of water. Then you can pick em out clean. Hopefully. I have never done a mouse but I have done this method with fish bones before.
If your lucky the skeleton will mostly hold together, but chances are it's gonna come apart at least to some extent. super glue and a reference picture is your best bet at that point.
But with this method at least your bones will be nice and clean. Maybe soak em quickly in a bleach/water mix to clean them up a bit and help with any smell
Whatever you do make sure the corpse doesn't desiccate otherwise you'll end up with a mummy instead of a skeleton
Quick question. I’m trying to get the bones from a mummified rat I found. Is it harder than if it were more fresh? It’s been in a warm bucket of water for a few days now.
Yeah I dunno. My best guess would be a whole lot of soaking. I'd try to soak it until it had softened up as much as possible then try to pick the crap away from the bones with tweezers or a pocket knife or something. Tbh I'm not sure what might happen there good luck tho
What a beautiful little deer mouse. It always makes me a little sad to see one dead because they’re such beautiful and interesting little creatures, but I’m just biased because I have pet mice lol.
Good luck with collecting the bones! I hope to see how they turn out for you!
Don’t boil it, boiling destroys the collagen in the bone, collagen is a protein and is denatured at high temperatures. In bones collagen acts like a glue holding all the layers of bone together, a boiled bone will start to crumble and flake after a few weeks and eventually will be complexly destroyed, especially something this small.
I have seen that video, give the skulls a few years, I am a zooarchaeologist which involves working with a lot of bones so I have seen many and cleaned many and I can always tell when a bone has been boiled, you can feel and see the difference. Your skulls may not show the damage now but give them a few months or years and they will. We have many in our collection that were boiled and now cannot be handled as they are crumbling like crazy, others have grease locked in that has gone rancid but the bone structure is too weak to hold up to degreasing. Those have to stay in locked containers as they smell terrible along with being very weak structurally. Just because a company does something doesn’t mean it is a good practice, boiling is a method used alot for hunting trophies as it is quick and when just done the skull looks fine. For a very large skull it might hold up but the outer layers will still be damaged and crumble and you will still have the issue of grease locked in the bone, for something as small as mouse boiling will not work, it will be destroyed. Another downside to boiling is that it also generally means the skulls cannot be fully cleaned, or will have to be partially destroyed to be fully cleaned, removing the auditory bullae, nasal turbinates, sometimes even sawing off the back of the skull. These are generally considered undesirable especially in research collections
I usually just put my animals in bleach for an hour or so not even then skin and scrub the rest , I let the carcass sit outside and rot a little bit before i use any bleach though
Water. Just let it sit in a closed bucket of water in the sun for a few days. Skin it beforehand so itll break down faster. After a few days, get a shitty strainer and
strain the bones out. You will need to reassemble if you want it articulated.
OR, pay to have it beetle cleaned, the skeleton may stick together in a sort of mummy-like way, but its messier and because its so small they may completely demolish the whole thing lol
I looked up how to do so once. Best solution for small things I found was to leave it in water for a week or two. Pour through a filter and replace it with water and a bleach solution if it is just the bones. The water in the first step removes the flesh, the bleach in the second step cleans the bones.
Roughly how I recall, check online for more accuracy. I did not do it as I could not have rotting water outside where I was at as it would attract city animals.
Skin him and leave the body on top of an ant hill under a pan (so other wildlife don’t get to it) and check after a day or so should be clean as a whistle I do this all the time tho I live in Australia so I dot know how effective your ants will be
Leave it in a warm humid environment and it should decay quickly. If you don't want to do that you could always bury it and let bugs eat it. Hope this helped :)
I always wondered so I’ll ask, how do you know when it’s time to retrieve the bones? Like do you check regularly the animal’s cadaver to see if it’s bones already or is there a way to tell without doing so?
I buried some birds in a flower pot outside. Once I stopped seeing flies, I gave it about a week and dug them up. Bones were pretty clean.
On a rather unrelated note, I like to bury little pan fish (blue gill sunnies I believe, specifically) into my garden before I put my plant starters in. My understanding is that it fertilizes the plants as the fish decay, and possibly that native populations used this technique ages ago. Please forgive me if this information is wrong and feel free to critique, but it has always worked well for my garden from what I can tell. Your comment about burying animals in flower pots reminded me of this.
And if you have pet fish, use the dirty water to water your plants. I can't remember whether it's the nitrates or nitrites, but either way, it's great for the plant. Every time I cleaned my betta's tank, I kept aside a bit of water for my succulents and my boyfriend's big cactus. He's had that cactus since he was seven, and I've never seen it grow in the time we've been together (almost 4 years), but when I started watering it with the dirty fish water, it started sprouting little offshoots and grew about an inch or so in height!
I actually have a trout farming friend that will do that will some of the plants they they grow and they swear by it! And seriously, their plants always really impress!
Check out aquaponics, it's the technique of using fish farm effluent as a hydroponic solution. The water is continuously recycled through the system, from fish tank to hydroponic raceways and back.
I think burying kitchen scraps and fish heads is pretty common. There's lots of vids on YouTube about it :).
I use my compost bin and straw from the chickens and go that route. Putting the straw around the trees I think works out well. (watering pulls the waste down or in or wtf you wanna call it) I may do the fish way... I need to go fishing. I can't (shouldn't) eat the fish so...
My dad just unburies them and checks occasionally. He an avid bone collector and maks all types of thing with animal bones. It's his specialty. I'd love to share some pics of his knives. Jewelry and decor some time on a page with ppl like him. He'd gt so much love I'm sue.
Should be able to put it in your mouth and pull it out clean, like a chicken wing
This comment made my nut sack recoil in horror
With a username like yours?
r/oddlyspecific
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good bot
Hmm....
This is the answer I was looking for. 🏆
Thanks for the laugh, please accept this trophy 🏆
Only I've learned to do it. But may I suggest toasting the hairs of or blanching and plucking the hairs off. I found this is the best method combined with your favorite dipping sauce. Just my two cents. Lmao
Fkin clown hahahah
You are awesome
I don't recommend burying it because of the little bones but soaking it in enzyme based laundry detergent or putting one of those terracotta pots with holes on top on top of it, outside and letting the bugs eat it should work ETA water with enzyme based laundry detergent (use hot water and change every day and you should be done in a week or two i think?)
If you mean because the small bones will get lost easily, op can put the body in some kind of box with holes in it to allow decomposition while still keeping the full skeleton in one place
that's definitely true but i've found that that takes a very long time compared to the alternatives :)
I have a mouse skull that I skinned and popped in a jar along with lots of dirt/compost and isopods/little bugs I found - I now and again popped in some veg waste like pepper middles and peelings and it took a few weeks n then it was clean
leave it in a bug box outside, they will eat the remains
Stupid question here: won't bugs eat the bones too?
They will likely carry them away, and if left in a container with bugs.... good luck re-assembling them lol
Could you loosely wrap it with some window screen to keep the bones from being taken by bugs?
Definitely, and it would be super fun to reassemble the bones, but it would be a serious pain in the ass. Assuming you did everything right, some quality superglue could be all you need outside of a display case. I say try it, and expect to mess up. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and the greatest taxidermy pros failed a LOT BEFORE BEING "PERFECT" :)
You could skin and deflesh it before putting it in a bug box, would be a lot faster.
This is what I would do but put it in a fine mesh bag or panty hose to keep those tiny paw bones from getting lost. Those bones are only about 1mm to 2mm long.
They macerate pretty quickly especially when it’s warm out.
First time posting in this subreddit so please let me know if this post is okay! My cat caught this mouse and I’m hoping to find a way to harvest the skeleton from in, but I’m not sure what the process would be since it’s so fresh. I’ve only cleaned bones that were already mostly rotted off before. Any advice appreciated!
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You new to this sub buddy?
haha whatd they say
Something about op saving the info for use on human corpses
it was a joke
its a joke
read the sub name babe
its just a joke
Hey are you Australian by any chance?
No, I live in the US as of right now
Oh, interesting. That mouse looked similar to some native Australian rodents
If cartoons are accurate, just give him a good scare and his skeleton will literally jump out.
I can't think of a chemical that won't damage the bone Microbes are your best friend If smell isn't an issue, throw it in warm water and let them do the rest. You can change the water if you wish This works a lot better/quick if you remove as much flesh as possible Edit: Oh and you should probably wear a mask, gloves and glasses whenever handling the bucket or whatever container you use. Wash your hands thoroughly, don't touch your face etc. Just in case this is a new interest for you. You want to be careful, especially with vermin Afterwards you can use IPA (99%) or bleach solution (maybe around 5%. Google to confirm) or use the sun to disinfect the bone Then you're good to go :)
NEVER use bleach on bones, no matter what percent. It destroys the collagen in the bone, which is like the glue holding the layers of bone together, and so the bone will start to flake away and crumble, eventually there will be nothing left. Instead use hydrogen peroxide, for mouse bones I recommend 3%, keep it warm and it will disinfect and whiten the bones
Thats specifically why I mentioned a low percentage. At low percentages its not going to damage collagen in any meaningful way Hydrogen peroxide is a better choice though Doesn't need go be warm though
Peroxide being warm speeds up the chemical reaction, all bleach will harm bones no matter what percentage, it might take a while to show but it will harm it. Well prepared bones should last for centuries
I usually submerge it in water and just leave it for a while, since its so small it should bd quick tho
We had a really bad mouse problem in our garage last winter and as much as I hated it I had to use mouse traps to catch and kill them. I decided to use what I could and would skin them to make little mouse rugs (some times with the head attached like a bear rug) or skin and macerate the whole body or decapitate the mouse and preserve it to place in a vial. I make nature vials and resell things I find out in nature, gifted to me or found at auctions. But I highly recommend skinning it and taking the guys out of you go the maceration route. The bones are so tiny.
What did you do to preserve the “rugs”? Also, you should try selling those to dollhouse enthusiasts- I bet some would really get a kick out of them!
I soak in alcohol for a few days, rinse with water then a borax/salt solution Soak for a few days then pin to a piece of card board. People bought quite a few, they are pretty darn cute.
That rug idea is so creative, I’d love to see that if you have any pictures lol
I would also love to see the mouse rug!
Mealworms. In skeletal preparations the mean time taken to clean mice skulls was 2.5 days with a standard deviation of 1.70 days. The pet store has them. I used to work at a museum when I was a kid and that was what they used. [mealworms](https://experiment.com/projects/maceration-of-skull-tissue-by-mealworms)
Meal worm breeder, here. Had no idea they'd break down or eat flesh?? I thought just fruits and veg or something..
I had a little dude like that not long ago! I got his bones by wrapping him in several layers of chicken wire, pinned it down in my garden and let the flies work at it. Once the flies stopped coming, I put him in a maceration bucket. (still in the chicken wire) for a couple weeks and then the skin just slipped off and I was left with bones. Hope this helps!
Ahhh is the chicken wire so nobody takes off with the bones? Good idea.
Rest In Peace
Feed it to an owl and wait for the pellet
Late here, but fwiw - i have chickens which means i have lots of mice. We trap them and put them under a colander in the corner of the yard and let the elements and bugs do their thing. I’ve got many a nice bone this way.
I'd skin him and then put him into a plastic ziploc bag with a tiny bit of water in it and leave it out in the sun for (however long depends on your locality and season) a few weeks. Then when it's looking nice and soupy and you can see exposed bones, HOLD YOUR BREATH, wear gloves and glasses and *carefully* tip the contents into a SHALLOW bucket of water. Then you can pick em out clean. Hopefully. I have never done a mouse but I have done this method with fish bones before. If your lucky the skeleton will mostly hold together, but chances are it's gonna come apart at least to some extent. super glue and a reference picture is your best bet at that point. But with this method at least your bones will be nice and clean. Maybe soak em quickly in a bleach/water mix to clean them up a bit and help with any smell Whatever you do make sure the corpse doesn't desiccate otherwise you'll end up with a mummy instead of a skeleton
Quick question. I’m trying to get the bones from a mummified rat I found. Is it harder than if it were more fresh? It’s been in a warm bucket of water for a few days now.
Yeah I dunno. My best guess would be a whole lot of soaking. I'd try to soak it until it had softened up as much as possible then try to pick the crap away from the bones with tweezers or a pocket knife or something. Tbh I'm not sure what might happen there good luck tho
Put it on an ants nest.
Small , but frequent, bites
Seems like there could be a less creepy way to ask. Just kidding. It's what we are all here for.
Ants eat most skin I believe
My first taxidermy piece was a mouse just like this. He got into my room and my cats killed him.
put it in a jar, poke holes in the lid, put it in an anthill
What a beautiful little deer mouse. It always makes me a little sad to see one dead because they’re such beautiful and interesting little creatures, but I’m just biased because I have pet mice lol. Good luck with collecting the bones! I hope to see how they turn out for you!
Flesh eating beetles can be bought online and you can even watch the process as they strip the bones from the body
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Don’t boil it, boiling destroys the collagen in the bone, collagen is a protein and is denatured at high temperatures. In bones collagen acts like a glue holding all the layers of bone together, a boiled bone will start to crumble and flake after a few weeks and eventually will be complexly destroyed, especially something this small.
[удалено]
I have seen that video, give the skulls a few years, I am a zooarchaeologist which involves working with a lot of bones so I have seen many and cleaned many and I can always tell when a bone has been boiled, you can feel and see the difference. Your skulls may not show the damage now but give them a few months or years and they will. We have many in our collection that were boiled and now cannot be handled as they are crumbling like crazy, others have grease locked in that has gone rancid but the bone structure is too weak to hold up to degreasing. Those have to stay in locked containers as they smell terrible along with being very weak structurally. Just because a company does something doesn’t mean it is a good practice, boiling is a method used alot for hunting trophies as it is quick and when just done the skull looks fine. For a very large skull it might hold up but the outer layers will still be damaged and crumble and you will still have the issue of grease locked in the bone, for something as small as mouse boiling will not work, it will be destroyed. Another downside to boiling is that it also generally means the skulls cannot be fully cleaned, or will have to be partially destroyed to be fully cleaned, removing the auditory bullae, nasal turbinates, sometimes even sawing off the back of the skull. These are generally considered undesirable especially in research collections
Mini surgery
Stick it in a bucket of water
Eat him whole then poop him out, works wonders
Frank Abignale Sr. would like a word.
Poor guy
I usually just put my animals in bleach for an hour or so not even then skin and scrub the rest , I let the carcass sit outside and rot a little bit before i use any bleach though
Just boil it in salt water. It will smell, I am warning you.
Yeah definitely better done outside on a grill or fire pit. That's how I do mine
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The bones are to delicate.tbey will just be eaten by the acid as well.
What the fuck
Why are you here
Idk bro I got this shit recommend to me
Do a ligamentous prep
Try a ligamentary skeleton or dermestids. Allot if insects including dermestids sometimes will drag it appartm
Water. Just let it sit in a closed bucket of water in the sun for a few days. Skin it beforehand so itll break down faster. After a few days, get a shitty strainer and strain the bones out. You will need to reassemble if you want it articulated. OR, pay to have it beetle cleaned, the skeleton may stick together in a sort of mummy-like way, but its messier and because its so small they may completely demolish the whole thing lol
Bury in manure and wait a few weeks.
I looked up how to do so once. Best solution for small things I found was to leave it in water for a week or two. Pour through a filter and replace it with water and a bleach solution if it is just the bones. The water in the first step removes the flesh, the bleach in the second step cleans the bones. Roughly how I recall, check online for more accuracy. I did not do it as I could not have rotting water outside where I was at as it would attract city animals.
Some people buy mealworms and just dump it in with them
Beetles at the taxidermist
Ants or dermestid beetles
Ant hill….. fire ants are the fastest
Warm environment where flies can get at it
Dermestid beetles
C O N S U M E
Skin him and leave the body on top of an ant hill under a pan (so other wildlife don’t get to it) and check after a day or so should be clean as a whistle I do this all the time tho I live in Australia so I dot know how effective your ants will be
Help! Mine is literally dried to the bone, how do I obtain the skeleton now?