# Mouse Breeding Colours



## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

I've started breeding my own feeders to supplement/eventually replace a lot of my frozen rodent orders.









Mouse Colour Chart by Merlins Magic Mousery.

I've started off with some pet shop fancy mice. I'm trying to wrap my brain around what colours I have and am getting!

First Litter:
A chocolate pied looking buck and a pink eyed "fuzzy" coat doe (she's definitely pied but the sparse, pale-but-not-white areas are hard to work out).








The top two are pink eyed, the other four are black eyed. One of the black eyed is lighter in colour.

I think this rules out the doe being champagne pied, as the litter would have been all choc pied, or a mix of choc pied and champagne pied (as the buck has proven out carrying pink eye).

The presence of black pied babies suggests to me that the doe is actually a dove, the pink eyed version of black, or a silver, the pink eyed version of blue. I'm looking forwards to seeing if the middle pup is a blue pied. All are carriers for "fuzzy" coat.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litter 1 from "Fuzzy/fz project" (red eye pied fz doe x choc pied buck) at 15 days old. Two of the black pied babies were bucks and were culled at 10 days. These remaining mice are all the females, except for the blue?pied boy at the top left. He will be bred back to his mother to produce some visual fz babies. The red eyed champagne?pied doe at the bottom is the strongest of the litter.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

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Litter 1 from "Merle/roan project" (blue roan Hereford doe x black pied buck) at 8 days old. There were 8 in this litter but a runt and a baby with a deformed/exposed eye were culled within the first 24hrs to leave 6 pinks. Looking like two black pied, 3 blue?pied and one mystery tricolour/merle.


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## Jibbajabba (Jan 31, 2011)

The funniest bit here is that the forum classified the picture as sensitive for 18s only ....


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Jibbajabba said:


> The funniest bit here is that the forum classified the picture as sensitive for 18s only ....


I know, they're some x-rated mice apparently! Or at least they were, they've grown a proper coat of fur now. This litter has turned out to be a bit of a sausage party though, looks like two of the blue pieds are girls and thd rest are all boys.


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## Jibbajabba (Jan 31, 2011)

You gonna grow them to breeding age or are they feeder for small snakes ? Surprised you even care about their coats given they aren't pets


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Jibbajabba said:


> You gonna grow them to breeding age or are they feeder for small snakes ? Surprised you even care about their coats given they aren't pets


I'm keeping back all the females at the moment to increase my stock (and the odd specific male carrying genes I want to propagate). Some young males have already ended up as Cape House snake and variable kingsnake dinners!

I still find the coat types and colours interesting. I'd rather have all sorts of colours for the sake of variety and telling them all apart, than ending up with the lot reverting back to wild types or something 😂

I was motivated to start up mouse breeding as a few kukri snake keepers in the US swear by using furless mice, and I can't find any frozen/thawed for sale over here. Allegedly, the fur is the problematic component for amphibian/reptile eating snakes. It does make me wonder if I could keep Asian vine snakes on a diet of scented hairless mice.

I'm tempted to get a trio of asf going too, but I'll stick to these mice for now.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litter 1 from the "Merle/roan project", at 16 days old. 2x blue low-white pied does, 1x blue low-white pied buck, 1x tricolour buck. The litter was very male heavy. I kept back an extra buck to help maintain milk production stimulus in the nursing doe, as apparently 3 is cutting it a bit fine. This blue boy will not be held back for breeding.


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## MKHerps (Dec 31, 2019)

Some cracking mice you’ve bred there 
I started breeding my own feeders about a year ago after a friend set me up with a few groups from his collection and also acquired some ASF’s and rats shortly after. I wish I just got some white/albino lab mice as I hold back far too many “pretty” mice instead 🤣


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

MKHerps said:


> Some cracking mice you’ve bred there
> I started breeding my own feeders about a year ago after a friend set me up with a few groups from his collection and also acquired some ASF’s and rats shortly after. I wish I just got some white/albino lab mice as I hold back far too many “pretty” mice instead 🤣


You can get hold of them really easily! Stop looking for "lab mice" because they aren't really a thing. Lab strains generally have specific genetic traits/defects for study, like susceptibility to certain cancers, diabetes, problems with certain enzymes...

You want pink eyed whites or black eyed whites. PEWs or BEWs is what they're known as.

I'm tempted to get some ASF at some point, I like the badger faced ones and there's some pink eyed/golden furred ones for sake near me.


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## MKHerps (Dec 31, 2019)

JustABeginner2 said:


> You can get hold of them really easily! Stop looking for "lab mice" because they aren't really a thing. Lab strains generally have specific genetic traits/defects for study, like susceptibility to certain cancers, diabetes, problems with certain enzymes...
> 
> You want pink eyed whites or black eyed whites. PEWs or BEWs is what they're known as.
> 
> I'm tempted to get some ASF at some point, I like the badger faced ones and there's some pink eyed/golden furred ones for sake near me.


I’m not quite sure you read my reply. The point I was trying to make is that I wish I didn’t choose “fancy” mice for breeding as feeders as out of the many litters I’ve had I find it hard to cull due to the fantastic markings that my line produces. I could be wrong but everyone I know who breeds feeder rodents refer to albinos as lab mice, pretty sure they’re not referring to your classification, but hey we’re all different. I’m also aware that whites and albinos can be readily sourced 👍


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

MKHerps said:


> I’m not quite sure you read my reply. The point I was trying to make is that I wish I didn’t choose “fancy” mice for breeding as feeders as out of the many litters I’ve had I find it hard to cull due to the fantastic markings that my line produces. I could be wrong but everyone I know who breeds feeder rodents refer to albinos as lab mice, pretty sure they’re not referring to your classification, but hey we’re all different. I’m also aware that whites and albinos can be readily sourced 👍


It's a bugbear of mine that reptile keepers can accurately refer to and understand so many reptile phenotypes, locales, morphs and mutations, but call PEWs "lab mice".

Not all lab strains are pink eyed or white.
If you have a pink eyed and white mouse, it is not a lab mouse unless you've ordered it from a university or laboratory supply company and they're not cheap feeders!

It's crackers.

As for nice looking fancy mice cropping up in your feeder farm... a nice marked fancy doe is worth £10+ as a pet, at which point you're best off selling it as a pet and using that £10 to buy plain white feeders.

If you breed show quality mice, they're worth a lot more than £10 a pop and you still have to cull down litters to manageable sizes. A doe's milk production does not increase proportionately with each additional pink above 4. She's got 10 nipples but not all nipples produce the same quantity or quality of milk.

It all depends what you're current aim is. My current aim is to increase my numbers of females so I don't mind feeding off surplus males as soon as I can identify them.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

2nd Litter from the Roan/Merle project, 10 pinks at 4 days old.

Roan Hereford Doe x Black Pied Buck. Originally there were 12 pinks but there are only 10 nipples available. One died and another straggler was culled in the first 24hrs as they were failing to get at the nipples.

It looks like there's lots of does in this litter, it should become easier to tell on day 10 but at the moment it looks like a 7:3 female:male ratio.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

2nd litter from the merle/roan project.









3 Males. I've kept back the black and white boy just in case. The two males I kept back from the first litter - blue pied died and the splash/tricolour is a bit on the small side.









7 females! There's 1 blue, 1 blue splash/tri, 1 splash/tri, 1 black and 3 black pieds. Really pleased with the sex ratio in this litter, lots of females to raise up and be future breeders.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

2nd & 3rd litters from the "fz" hairless/double rex/fuzzy project. 13 pinks at 3-4 days old.










Unfortunately the visual "fz" fuzzy/hairless doe who founded this project died of a respiratory illness, so I was unable to breed her son back to her. If she hadn't have died, breeding her to her het fz son would have yeilded an average 50% visual fz and 50% hets. It's a real shame that I lost her, she was a good mother!

The pinks above were instead from breeding her son to two of her daughters. I don't have an up to date picture of these mice as adults, but the blue and white is the father. Litter 2 was from the red eyed doe with the white blaze on her face, litter 3 from the black pied doe. See below.









The red eyed doe with the white blaze was the pick of the first litter from this project. She was always the biggest pinky/fuzzy in her litter. However she didn't very big during her pregnancy. I only saw 6 pinks in the morning when she'd just given birth but two were pale/injured/dying and they were gone by the time I got home from work. Her remaining 4 pinks were 3 black eyed and 1 red eyed (in theory should have been 50/50 as the doe is red eyed and the buck is het red eye). 24hrs later the black and white doe gave birth to 9 pinks to compensate, which is a good number for a first litter in fancy mice. 7 black eyed and 2 red eyed.

These 2nd and 3rd litters should be very varied! 25% should be vizual fz/fuzzy/hairless and the colours might include black, chocolate, blue, dove, champagne and silver. I'll be keeping back any fz visual females and one fz males for future breeding. The remaining normal coated mice will only be 66% possible hets, so they'll all become snake dinners. I'm not sure at what age the fz trait becomes visible, I've heard that some strains grow their first coat as normal around day 10 but then it falls out and grows back sparse if at all.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

After a bit more reading from other mouse fancier pages, I've found out that visual fz mice should be identifiable by their curly whiskers as early as day 2! I'll have to give litters 2 & 3 a good look to see if I can spot the fz stock. Out of 13 I should have 3 vizual fz mice, if the odds gods work out how they should!

"Fuzzy babies are clearly recognisable by their curly whiskers usually by the age of 2 days. Later on they also differ from their non-fuzzy littermates in that their coat development is notably delayed. Fuzzy babies have very thin coats that become more dense with later molts."



Hiiret.fi - Breeding


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litter 2 & 3 from the fz project.

7 does









6 bucks









It looks like I've got a Black Eyed White buck in there too, which I didn't know was lurking in the group's genetics.

I've looked for curly whiskers and can't see any, so I might have 13 feeders and no holdbacks this time around.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litter 4 from fz project.









From the blue pied het fz buck x other red eyed het fz doe from 1st litter. 8 pinks, should have a 25% chance of hitting visual fz but beat the odds with 3 obviously crinkle-whiskered pinks! Here at 6 days old, the pink on top has normal whiskers, the one on the bottom has fz curly/crinkled whiskers.









The 3 fz visuals. One doe, two bucks. The doe is one of the dark eyed babies.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litter 4 from the fz project at about 14 days, eyes beginning to open.

3 visual fz coat type and 2 standard short coat type.

















I'm tempted to keep the pink eyed white, people are keen on 'lab mice' for their own feeder breeding projects.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

3rd litter from the merle/roan project.

Original roan doe x her son, a black pied buck het for roan/merle. Really tiny litter of just 4 pinks. The buck was an awful breeder, seemed more interested in picking fights or begging to be groomed than in breeding! He's since been fed off, but he did manage to sire this one litter. The other doe in the same tub didn't get pregnant at all, and the mother of these 4 pinks had a litter of 12 last time, by a different buck. I'm not having the best of luck with males in this project. I've had one holdback buck die young, one undersized and bitey that was foddered off and the last one was a very poor breeder.

This litter of 4 looks like splashes, roans or merles. Hopefully there's a decent buck in this 4!


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

3rd litter from the Roan/Merle project at 11 days old.









Left to right: black roan pied buck, black roan pied doe and black merle pied doe.

It's easiest to think of these three mice as being black pied underneath. They would be black and white, except they are all homozygous for recessive "Roan" written as "ro/ro" for two copies of roan.

Roan causes the pigmentation to partially fail, causing dilution of pigment and white hairs. The areas on these mice which should be black become a blue/grey of various depths ticked through with white.

Roan itself is unstable in it's expression. During development some roan areas on roan mice fail to become roan and revert back to the underlying coat colour. This causes the darker blotches seen on "Merle" mice, written as "ro^un/ro^un" for "roan^unstable". The doe on the right is a black merle pied, with some of her black areas remaining black whilst some are roaned.

The roan and merle gene can be overlaid on other colours. I might have a go at creating some chocolate and blue roans/merles too.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

4th litter from the fz project at 4 weeks old. Clockwise from top left: a blue pied doe, a black pied buck and a pink eyed pied buck.

They have a moult at about 6wks old where their actual level of hairlessness becomes apparent. These might get more naked or might get fluffier.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Litters 5&6 from the fz project at 10 days old, out of a combined litter of 15 pinks from two het fz females bred to a het fz male, I've got another 5 visual fz mice.

One doe at the top left, the rest are all bucks.


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## JustABeginner2 (Nov 30, 2016)

Fz Merle combo project: Litter 1&2.

An accidental start to this combo project!

As I am starting to produce visual Merles and Fz mice, some of the hets are less crucial to those projects. I'm not about to cull off mice that I've raised up to breeding age whilst I still have spare tubs in the rack. This has led to the het Fz blue pied buck from the 1st Fz litter being bred to the het Merle solid black doe and het Merle solid blue doe from the 2nd Merle project litter.

8 Visual Fz poss het Merle babies have unexpectedly popped up. I strongly suspect that my founding Merle female is probably het Fz.


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