# Current Litters & Some Questions (Image Heavy)



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

Hey all, I decided to take a few snaps of my recent litters. These are mostly feeder maintenance litters (my project litters are still glimmers in their daddies' eyes), but I had some happy surprises! I found that a few non-satins were carriers for it, and I LOVE my satin.









Mostly just agouti and poor black tans, and one curious sooty satin RY (I think), but a few younger PEW mice have turned..well..not white.









It could be that they carry c^h as well, so these may start showing points.
____









A litter from my chocolate girl and four belonging to her pied dove nanny. Note the very shiny baby! I thought she was a pale argente, but now I have no clue. *She could be another pied dove like her mom, just satin and angora?*









One of her eyes is glued shut, and her tail is really starting to worry me. I hope she won't go downhill on me.









_____









First intentional black tan litter, this girl who looks like a fox her tan is so poor, with Dupioni who does have decent tan.
_____









Separate litter with more surprise satins! And some white-bellied agouti, which begs the question: *is it just poor A/a^t? Any chance of A^w? Is this a ridiculous question? When will I stop shouting in bold?!* :lol:


















A little surprise two-face baby, too cute. Same litter as the agouti tan(?)









Keeper. <3









PEW Satin - :thumbuo I will probably be keeping the satins. So much love.
____

Last but not least, the only black self I've produced so far (thank goodness!) I mean, tan is okay, but I love self. I'll be using him to darken up siamese and produce more self blacks (selectively breeding to get them super dark).


















"Whaaaat?"










Thanks for humoring me.  I really enjoy maintaining such a large colony.


----------



## besty74 (May 26, 2012)

lovely pictures, too nice to be feeder mice, especially loving the little broken baby with the half and half face.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

besty74 said:


> lovely pictures, too nice to be feeder mice, especially loving the little broken baby with the half and half face.


That's the problem with also having a large snake colony! But as it stands, I love both dearly and tend to pamper them all regardless of whether they'll be kept or not.  Thank you!


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

What fun! I too, was enthralled by satin meeces and am to this day. Love the pix!


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

moustress said:


> What fun! I too, was enthralled by satin meeces and am to this day. Love the pix!


Thank you, darling! It's like they were just dunked in metal, I may start hoarding them all. :lol:


----------



## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

I only wish I could find a satin. They are gorgeous. I would hoard them too. I have never seen one.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

Cordane said:


> I only wish I could find a satin. They are gorgeous. I would hoard them too. I have never seen one.


I know I'm not alone in saying I wish I could send you some! Darn laws. We all need to have a vacation and meet you with our pants full of meece.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

When I encountered my first satin mousie, I knew just about nothing beyond basic care of mammals in general. I got a red satin, called her Penny...trite...and wondered if there was a special gene that made a mousie look satin. I didn't discover info online right away, because I got my first PC a month or two after I got my first meeces. I was so freakin' clueless! I have to laugh at myself in hindsight!

Some of the stories I could tell of those early days..well, I have told some of them in my 'mousey ramblings' thread, and in other threads...I do love to write you see...I always have words in my head, right from the moment I wake up to the moment I conk out at night. I am full of words...and Irish...give me a glass of cheeky wine and the words flow quite easily. Right now I'm running on because of fatigue poisons, I think, while I slurp up some yummy iced coffee with vanilla, but I decided not to add the usual stiff shot of dark Jamaican rum, as it's been a weird and hard week, and I need to keep my wits about me.

Ii also have a lot of stuff in the Baja Manitoba Freepress thread, but I try to keep them separate, keeping the mousey stuff in the ramblings thread.


----------



## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

thewesterngate said:


> Cordane said:
> 
> 
> > I only wish I could find a satin. They are gorgeous. I would hoard them too. I have never seen one.
> ...


Oh I wish! That would be utterly fantastic! We have never seen a satin, reds, chocolates, self blacks. I haven't seen a lot of types actually. Never seen a curly haired one either. *drool
That would be amazing.


----------



## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

You say they carry chocolate? What about lilac for the light grey/creme ones?


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

I've tried to respond a hundred times and my net keeps going out!



Frizzle said:


> You say they carry chocolate? What about lilac for the light grey/creme ones?


I wish.  The younger ones in that litter are from a PEW x Agouti pairing, that includes the oddballs. Based on the offspring of both, I couldn't tell you what they are! I thought I had them mapped out, but I must have missed something, maybe c^h was hidden on one side or something.

I always try to keep a decent record just in case I have interesting babies crop up, but sometimes it escapes me.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

So I fished out who is now Camanco, the little broken marked baby to verify sex (it's a girl!) and she opened her little black eyes at me. Needless to say the rest of the litter has opened them, including the gorgeous little satin PEWs..

Does anyone else absolutely MELT on eye-opening-day?  Goodness, I know I do.


----------



## GibblyGiblets (Oct 2, 2011)

> Does anyone else absolutely MELT on eye-opening-day? Goodness, I know I do.


I absolutely love when they first open their eyes, I think that is the cutest age (from 2 till about 4 weeks) when their eyes are open and they still have that "baby" look, with the over sized heads and tiny little ears wobbly little legs..anyways xD then once they get into the "juvenile" stage, eh, then they're cute again as adults o3o

you've got some very pretty mice =) I am also a fan of self mice, but I particularly like the pied black girly.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

GibblyGiblets said:


> > Does anyone else absolutely MELT on eye-opening-day? Goodness, I know I do.
> 
> 
> I absolutely love when they first open their eyes, I think that is the cutest age (from 2 till about 4 weeks) when their eyes are open and they still have that "baby" look, with the over sized heads and tiny little ears wobbly little legs..anyways xD then once they get into the "juvenile" stage, eh, then they're cute again as adults o3o
> ...


Haha, I agree! Hoppers, or the 'popcorn' stage..they piss me right off. :lol: But right when the eyes open, and as sub-adults on (when they get a fear of heights), I love it.

Thanks, I was shocked at how much my heart squished with the pied baby when her eyes opened!


----------



## PPVallhunds (Jul 26, 2010)

the white belly agouti, what colours where the parents? That will help figure out if its A/at or AW.


----------



## Seafolly (Mar 13, 2012)

Aw man. These days I'm finding myself wishing more and more for rats (in my mind it's one or the other in terms of number of cages in this house) and today I got REALLY close to emailing a gal about her dumbo males. But then I saw your photos and melted because I love satin too, it's the one thing I know I can get from my mice, and a satin PEW would make my day. And moo mice, lol! I love those marked ones. I may have another couple of litters in me yet.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

PPVallhunds said:


> the white belly agouti, what colours where the parents? That will help figure out if its A/at or AW.


I'm having a hard time remembering the father, unfortunately! I'm 80% sure the father was my agouti buck, and the mother is a PEW Angora. Thus far, the agouti has only ever produced blacks, agouti and PEW. The blacks produced always had pale undersides, but I'm unsure if they were poor tans or not.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

That little one with the gummy eye also has an odd look to her tail that I know all too well. I didn't catch it when I first looked at your post, but she is suffering from what I call 'evil satin syndrome'.

It's a mixed bag of congenital abnormalities that most commonly occurs in satin mousies that have been carelessly inbred. Because satin has only been around for 50 or 60 years, and also because of the nature of that which is done to fix a new characteristic, namely, inbreeding...and the damage done originally in the radiation experiments from which most satins originated.

The syndrome can include the odd clearly visible segments in the tail, as if the outer layer of skin is missing, anemia, trouble digesting food properly, reduced overall vitality, difficulty breeding, and early death. Many mousies like this die by the fourth or fifth week of life. The ones that survive are no good for breeding, and are prone to illness.

Sometimes you will see tiny satins scrambling around even before their eyes are open, tasting all kinds of odd nonfood items, hungry from not even being able to get nutrition from the doe's milk. It broke my heart to see so many little satins suffer, and I scoured the local stores until I located a very sturdy looking male in a feeder gin. Pudge was the founder of my satin line, and it was a miracle to me to finally be able to produce healthy satins. If you breed satin from this line, I strongly suggest out breeding every other generation to a standard coat, it may help reduce the incidence of these problems.

There are folks who claim this problem doesn't exist, but I'm glad for them as they haven't had to see this. It's sad. And it's so clear to see. Occasionally one will see a nonsatin with similar problems, but that's rare, thankfully.


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

moustress said:


> That little one with the gummy eye also has an odd look to her tail that I know all too well. I didn't catch it when I first looked at your post, but she is suffering from what I call 'evil satin syndrome'.
> 
> It's a mixed bag of congenital abnormalities that most commonly occurs in satin mousies that have been carelessly inbred. Because satin has only been around for 50 or 60 years, and also because of the nature of that which is done to fix a new characteristic, namely, inbreeding...and the damage done originally in the radiation experiments from which most satins originated.
> 
> ...


I noticed soon that this particular mouse produced babies like that. She herself took a while to grow. It's terribly sad because it took SO long for her to actually get pregnant, and I discovered she and her mate carried satin. I won't be breeding from her or her offspring, even though I liked the baby. There's such a distinct difference in the health between those of that litter, and those in the other (the younger satin PEW and her pied sister)..the latter are so plump, bless 'em.

As for them scrambling, I did notice that! I'll probably cull the four before they die naturally. I had a different PEW (from a pet store, I originally needed more girls and grabbed a bunch BEFORE getting better stock)..half her litter ended up being these 'pin tail' babies. I learned from that litter that respiratory failure, along with weight loss, usually occurs. It was a sad lesson. I've gradually gotten rid of my pet store feeder stock, only keeping on the does that produce fat, healthy babies..then using their offspring to add satin to.

Thanks for your input, I like to be able to discuss these things.


----------



## Seafolly (Mar 13, 2012)

Whoa I was totally unaware of this. My two satins and their offspring seem healthy and lively...is this a rare thing?


----------



## GibblyGiblets (Oct 2, 2011)

moustress said:


> That little one with the gummy eye also has an odd look to her tail that I know all too well. I didn't catch it when I first looked at your post, but she is suffering from what I call 'evil satin syndrome'.
> 
> It's a mixed bag of congenital abnormalities that most commonly occurs in satin mousies that have been carelessly inbred. Because satin has only been around for 50 or 60 years, and also because of the nature of that which is done to fix a new characteristic, namely, inbreeding...and the damage done originally in the radiation experiments from which most satins originated.
> 
> ...


I also used to notice that problem when I had satin mice (personally never really liked satins anyway, but they would pop up from time to time) I had a heck of a hard time keeping those tiny little satin babies alive, the satins just never grew, to the point where the ones that DID live stayed the size of 3 week olds.

thus is why I now stay away from them, not that you can find them around here if I wanted them, but eh.

I never knew about the radiation thing, I don't like satin coats (yea I said that before) I just don't think they look "natural"..but then again, how many black and chocolate and PEW mice do you see running around in the wild o3o


----------



## thewesterngate (May 22, 2012)

Seafolly said:


> Whoa I was totally unaware of this. My two satins and their offspring seem healthy and lively...is this a rare thing?


I read a different thread all the way through about these types of genetic defects, and while it might crop up a little more frequently in satins, it's not limited to them at all. I think it's mainly hereditary, based in lines that are poorly kept (pet store stock)..I'm sure it appears far less in older lines more focused on health and size, unlike mine that's still basically in its infancy.  I do have satins and satin carriers that are healthy, so I'm not too devastated. I just feel bad for the babies. But I'm definitely phasing out the weaker breeders that throw these babies.


----------

