One hundred forty pubertal Swiss-Webster female mice (Mus musculus) were assigned randomly to a purified diet modified to contain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 ppm copper as copper carbonate (Diets 1 thru 6, respectively). Diet 7 was a commercial rodent laboratory diet containing 11 ppm copper. Following 60 days of prefeeding, the breeding regimen was initiated by introducing a proven breeder male into each cage of 10 females in the afternoon and removing them the next morning. The breeding regimen was conducted for 28 days and females were either sacrificed at 24 or 96 hours following detection of a vaginal plug. Body weight, hematocrit, heart weight, hemoglobin concentration, ova recovery rate and fertilization rate were recorded for each female. All morphologically normal embryos collected 24 hours after detection of the vaginal plug were cultured and development in vitro evaluated. Body weight, hemoglobin concentration and hematocrit were lower (P less than .05), and heart weight and percent body weight occupied by the heart (%BWOH) were higher (P less than .05) in mice fed Diet 1. Heart weight and %BWOH were not different among mice fed Diets 2 thru 6 (P greater than .05). Ova recovery rate and fertilization rate were significantly reduced in mice maintained on Diet 1. The incidence of in vitro blastocyst formation was lower in embryos collected from females fed Diets 1 and 3 (P less than .05). Blastocyst hatching in vitro was not observed in embryos from females maintained on Diet 1, and was greater in embryos from females fed Diets 4, 5, and 7 (P less than .05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)