There is a huge amount of misinformation out there about mice and coffee and we constantly see people on social media asking for advice on if mice can eat coffee grounds, if coffee will repel mice, and if coffee is toxic to mice.
More often than not, the responses we see to these questions are incorrect and offer little to no help to the person asking the question so we decided that we wanted to publish this article going over ice and coffee grounds.
Our hope is that we will help our readers better understand the various interactions between mice and coffee as it really is not as simple as many people on social media try to make out.
In addition to that, there are also some very specific things to factor in if you keep pet mice too so we felt that a dedicated article would probably be the best route to take to help as many of our readers as possible.
We will be covering the three most commonly asked questions that we see from the community about mice and coffee in our article.
To make it as easy as possible for our readers to navigate, we have decided to add a table of contents to our article below so you can skip to specific sections that you may want information for.
Do Mice Eat Coffee Grounds?
Many species of mice will happily eat coffee grounds, especially if they are wild mice and food is scarce for them.
Although coffee is far from an ideal food source for mice, if they are hungry, many species will eat it in varying quantities with most mice not having any adverse effects from eating the coffee either.
This can often confuse a large number of people who are told time and time again that coffee grounds will repel mice only for the local mice they are trying to repel to eat the coffee.
If you do want to keep mice away from your property then a specialist rodent repellant is always going to be the better option for the majority of people rather than coffee grounds that offers minimal benefit.
Although a very small number of species of mice and other Myomorpha (rodents similar to mice) may have issues if they eat a small amount of coffee, the majority of them will be fine.
As there are around 1100 different species of mice and Myomorpha, it is highly likely that the mice you have in your local area will be fine with eating small amounts of coffee and not get sick from it.
Do Coffee Grounds Repel Mice?
Coffee grounds do not repel most mice and it can be common for the mice to end up eating any coffee grounds you put out for them if they don’t have access to food due to it being winter.
Coffee grounds is commonly recommended as a mouse repellant on social media but this is not correct and will do little to nothing to keep mice away from your property.
As we touched on above, if you are looking to keep mice off your property then you really should be looking at using a specialist rodent repellant that has been specifically designed to repel mice and other rodents.
Although we have not seen any scientific research to back it up, we have seen some people report that some species of mouse in North America can actually be attracted to coffee with it actually bringing more mice to your home.
That said though, as we touched on above, there are around 1100 different types of mice and Myomorpha so there may be a very small chance of coffee being able to repel mice but we would not rely on it.
The chances of the coffee working and being able to scare the mice off is minimal and there are much better options available to you.
Is Coffee Toxic To Mice?
The toxicity of coffee to mice is controversial as most mice can eat a small amount of coffee without issue but as with many animals, too much caffeine is a bad thing and this can result in toxicity issues and long term health problems.
Although the coffee is not actually toxic to the mice, the caffeine within the coffee in high enough doses can definitely cause problems.
This is why some people do consider coffee to be toxic to mice as it really can result in some serious problems in high enough amounts.
If you do keep pet mice then we would highly discourage you from even trying to add coffee to the diet of your pet mice as it’s simply not worth it as the risks are too high.
We have seen some people try to leave large amounts of coffee out to deal with wild mice on their property but the majority of mice will only consume small amounts of coffee unless they are starving as they tend not to like its rich taste.
This usually results in the mouse being totally fine due to not eating enough of the coffee to have any actual problems with the caffeine that it has ate.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over if mice can eat coffee grounds or not to a close. We hope that we have been able to help you as there is a huge amount of incorrect information on social media about mice and coffee. We have also gone over if coffee can repel mice as well as if coffee is toxic to mice too due to these both often have incorrect information being passed around on social media when people reach out for help.
