# New to breeding! Little help?



## PrinceAlexis (Feb 17, 2017)

I've had a pair of pregnant mice before, so I am aware on how to look after the litters and such but I wanted to go about breeding my own litter or two in the near future. Hands down, I don't know much about genetics at all, but this is where I would like to learn. 

I have one girl of breeding age, Nikki. And a a young girl, Alex who I would like to breed in the future with POSSIBLY one of Nikki's babies if they all seem healthy, and she provides a nice boy.

My issue right now is which of my two boys to use with Nikki for best results. Genetically and for interesting colours. Without tests, these boys are a few months old, happy and healthy as far as the eye can tell. 
I apologise for bad quality pictures, but hopefully you can see what I am trying to show you.

The female I would like to use now is this girl here. Nikki I assume is a solid chocolate?









This is Speck. I only named him that because he appears to have a small, single black speck on his thigh. 
I do not know what that is. He has a tan underside, but I'm not sure if it's prominent enough to call a dove fox? His mum was a dove/white marked with tan. His father is unknown. 
That speck alone has me interested in him.









This is Specks brother. He doesn't have a name, so I just call him Yellow.








I'm from the UK, I don't know if these lines were somewhere imported, so I assume this guy is a lethal, and not just a recessive yellow.

So that aside, which would be better to breed to a chocolate, a dove/tan or a yellow? If my friend is correct, I may just end up with a bunch of solids of whatever colour I decide to use.

This is Alex, who I would like to breed with a good male that is produced in my above planned litter. Is she champagne? She has a more dusty colour to her dove brothers, and was the only one like it.


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## WoodWitch (Oct 18, 2009)

Alex looks more like a pied argente than pied champagne but cham is possible, you'd have to blow the coat back on the coloured patches to see if there's a bluish undercoat.

I would suspect that, as pet mice, there will be masses of recessives within those genes, making the possibilities of matings hard to predict and the chances of surprise colours marks and coats highly probable....which I think is what you want.


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## PrinceAlexis (Feb 17, 2017)

I put Nikki in with the yellow boy because to me personally figured it might be more interesting and he seems the better buck.

I admit I'm not sure where I aim to go with breeding yet, but maybe in the litter I'll find something to work on. I absolutely love brindles, merles and splashed mice. How exactly does one go about breeding a brindle, and should it be avoided due to the genetic health issues they carry?

Alex isn't argente. I've checked that but her hairs are all one solid colour. In person, her colouring is just like this one.


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

That one baby looks like champagne (cannot see the original image for some reason)

I had thought that most yellows in the UK were recessive yellow now, I have certainly talked to several breeders who have recessive yellow from pet lines so its definitely not just an imported thing.

I know you have paired now so it may be somewhat irrelevant but tan is dominant so if bred to a mouse with tan then 50-100% of the litter will also be tans. Assuming that the yellow is recessive yellow there could be a few interesting things hidden underneath it including tan


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## WoodWitch (Oct 18, 2009)

Lilly said:


> I had thought that most yellows in the UK were recessive yellow now, I have certainly talked to several breeders who have recessive yellow from pet lines so its definitely not just an imported thing.


No, this is inaccurate. We have recessive yellow over here now (via import) and it has definitely found it's way around and about, but show stock is dominant AY and will remain so for years I imagine.


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

That is great WoodWitch, I was mostly going by "i don't know if the lines are imported so assume Ay" when quite a few people have got ry from pet shops/feeders/per breeders and among pet breeder seems a lot more common than Ay from the ones I have encountered, I'd be happy if this isn't the case overall


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## PrinceAlexis (Feb 17, 2017)

I honestly don't know if he is RY or a lethal. The yellow boys mum, was from a feeder tank where the breeder kept all males/females mixed together. I think he said he had 11 in total, and from what I saw, only two mice were the same, chocolate. Every other mouse was different colours. I'd have thought having all those mixed mice, you'd end up with them all being inbred and mostly all the same colours, which I have seen from other feeder bins in the past. There was a yellow broken marked boy in there, and that could potentially be his father? Yellows mum is dove broken marked with tan, and her litter was as follows:









Father could be any of the 6 males in that tank, so I have no idea what he's carrying.

Can anyone answer the question about brindles in my earlier reply?


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

If you're in the UK a lot of the brindles will be sex-linked (Mobr). With this variety they do not have genetic obesity but are only ever female (since the males suffer from a copper deficiency so almost never survive (and if they do are almost always sterile). Due to this males are usually culled in the next but the females are perfectly healthy and gorgeous.

I do not know how common US/American Brindle is over there but they have obesity in some lines. You can select for the ones that have the least obesity issues. They are usually bred a bit younger than lines not prone to obesity as the obesity messes with fertility however they can easily live long healthy lives.


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## PrinceAlexis (Feb 17, 2017)

That's interesting to know. I also like splashed mice a lot. Do you need to have a mouse with brindle or splashed markings to be able to produce more, or is it a recessive thing?


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

Brindle is dominant, so you cannot just make it, you need a mouse with it in the first place

Splash is kind of dominant, that is its dominant on c-diluted mice, so if you have a c-dilute that is not splash you cannot get splash from it unless bred to a splash, however if you were to breed a splash mouse to a black mouse lets say the black offspring may carry splash and it will not show up since they're not c-diluted.


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## PrinceAlexis (Feb 17, 2017)

Thanks for the info. Yello boy was trying to mate with Nikki this morning quite a bit so that's positive. He'll stay with her a few more days just to ensure he does his job.  Just kind of hoping they're hiding lots of surprises and that I don't end up with more solid chocolates and yellows or that would be a bit disappointing.


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## KingoftheWindlover (Apr 10, 2017)

This probably won't help very much now, but in the future when you get a good idea of what your stock is carrying, this might help. You can input the gene name (like agouti or Chocolate dilute, whatever) and the alleles and it will give you percent chance of getting certain combinations.

http://www.silverfallchinchilla.com/gen ... ulator.asp


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