# Couple breeding questions: Odd-eye and hairless.



## GibblyGiblets (Oct 2, 2011)

Things are coming along quite nicely, after the death of my hairless boy last fall, I now have one of his hairless grandsons and so far, 2 hairless grand daughters so this spring when the girls are old enough, I can officially start breeding for all hairless litters! yay!

Couple questions though, I have heard that hairless females have fertility issues because of the hairless gene or something? is that true?

I also can't remember which one it was that I heard once about either hairless mice or hairless rats that have problems lactating and so you should always have a furred foster on hand, again I can't recall which one it is, or if either are even true.

I've obviously never had hairless girls before (quite looking forward to naked pregnant mice xD) But I don't want to screw it up and end up losing litters because the mothers can't lactate or something.

Also Odd-eyed mice, I gots me one, she's pregnant, due on or around the 14th. I never thought I'd have one, because I was under the assumption that it was quite rare.

I would like more, But I dunno if it genetic in mice, or is it like in cats where it may or may not be passed from parent to offspring?

I had a friend several years ago who had an odd-eyed cat and she none of her kittens were ever odd-eyed so that's why I'm curious.

Thanks for the help!


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

You probably remember my oddeyed fawn tricolor buck, Oddball. I have odd eyed babies showing up in my tricolor litters, but none with the striking face of that little guy. I think odd eyes are partly coincidence/partly artifacts of genetic mixery. Tricolor meeces have a somewhat chaotic genetic tendency, and that's where mine came from.

On Oddball, his face was half burnt orange/half creme and I have often wondered if the dilution/reversion was the cause. It could be that pp dilution is also subject to reversion. I am also becoming very curious about other types of reversion that come in tricolor/splashed litters. Brindled, for instance. Curious that it looks like silvered or merle when splashed is added; curiouser and curiouser that meeces becomes virtually sterile in that cross. I am so curious about the unstable genotypes/phenotypes. So many of our more unusal types of mousies come from warping the genes in the lab or by forced breeding.

Fuzzy and fuzzy hairless are one thing to wonder about. I also wonder about aabbppee. I have what look like champagne meeces showing up in fawn litters with what seems to be reversion of champagne to fawn, and it's seriously weirding me out.


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## Mc.Macki Mice (Nov 24, 2012)

I breed hairless, and a lot of the times the female babies are mostly fuzzy hairless, I only have one hairless female. Anyway I have never had a problem with breeding my fuzzy hairless females with, furred males. I wouldn't recommend breeding a hairless to a hairless though. So far I have no idea if my female hairless can even breed, she may be infertile. Fuzzy/hairless will always be. Confusing gene but it's always a surprise!


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Mc.Macki: I have always been reluctant to inbreed certain types of mousie because of the increased chance of harmful recessives. when I saw that nuedai's stock did not suffer the same problems my rex and texel were having, I decided to give it a try. I did not get much in the way of lineage to go with the new stock, but I decide that I like the texels well enough to give it a try, which is how I discovered the fuzzy hairless. At first I was a bit sad about the little doe, but then she grew a lovely coat of fine curly red.

I have noticed that most rex/texel/fuzzies seem to tend towards an odd head shape; the snout rounded from forehead to nose. It
s the only thing about my little doe that I don't like.


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## GibblyGiblets (Oct 2, 2011)

Yup, the two females are I have are true hairless, naked as the day they were born lol.


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## madmouse (May 19, 2012)

Oh, I forgot to answer your message about the odd-eyes! As far as I know, they are just freaks related to splash and pied markings on the face (usually a mark falls over one eye). But not all mice with that marking are odd-eye and I've never had an odd-eyed mouse pass on the eye color trait. It's apparently not just a simply recessive/dominant thing.

As for the hairless, I think that people always say the females don't lactate bc apparently the original lab hairless often had imperforate nipples (they have milk but there's no hole in the teats to let it out). But I think that has pretty much been bred out of them- if you can't nurse your babies you probably didn't pass on too many genes. I've never personally known anyone who has had this problem with hairless females. In Chup's line, I've always bred hairless does rather than bucks. So I'm pretty certain your guys oughta be ok.


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