High laboratory mouse pre-weaning mortality associated with litter overlap, advanced dam age, small and large litters

The excel file contains mouse (C57BL/6) breeding data for 219975 pups, provided by breeding facilities of two research institutes in the UK. Each data line has information on the pup fate (whether it survived or not until weaning), litter identification, age of parents, litter size, litter mortality, number of older litters in the cage along with the number and age of older siblings. These data were used to investigate potential social and environmental factors affecting mouse pre-weaning mortality. Results showed that high pre-weaning mortality in C57BL/6 mice is associated with advanced dam age, litter overlap (i.e. presence of an older litter in the cage when new focus pups are born), presence of high number and age of older pups in the cage, and small (less than 4 pups) or large (more than 11 pups) litter. Along with these data, you can also find a graphical abstract and a file with the Excel headings´descriptions.