# Odessa and Oddball have babies- now w/pix!



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

No pix yet, but they had a litter of very nice chubby little eekers sometime Monday night. There look to be eight of them, all in a neat little nest. Odd-eye, yellow tricolor with one red and one black eye, is doing his usual good job of daddy, standing over the nest when I put the food in and letting Odessa eat her fill first. Odessa came from the pairing of Nibbles, black tricolor and Nora, a yellow splashed tri doe, so I'm not at all sure what colors to expect. Pinkie pix tonight!


----------



## bethmccallister (Mar 5, 2010)

Your new little ones sound like they will be Lovely! Can't wait to see the pictures. I've also had daddy mice that I've left in the cage with the new mom because they are so affectionate and attentive. It's really sweet isn't it?


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Truth be told, other than seeing the size and girth, pinkie pictures are relatively boring. When the hair comes, that's when it get interesting and exciting, doubly so when they are tris and splashed. I'm trying to find another way of producing nicely marked yellow and red tris, as my current line is turning into BEW's more and more with every new generation. I need to get the right mix of c dilutes....I suspect I'm producing meeces that are c^e c^e and that's why they're BEW's. I've produced some honking huge BEW's both in length and some utterly porcinely fat. The fatties are OK; they're kinda cute, really. I'm switching to recessive yellow in the future, though, so there should be little of that in the future, I hope.

I'm hoping for another odd-eyed mousie fgorm this litter.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Here they are:


Babies


Odessa


Family portrait

So far, it looks like they all have two black eyes each.

beth: I didn't respond to your thought on leaving the buck in through the birth. I've found that an experienced buck is a great help for a doe who's giving birth for the first time. Odd-ball is not as obsessive as some of my other boys have been. He has a separate nest right next to the ones with the baby. Nibbles climbs right in with the doe and the babies, and seems to spen more time there than the doe. He even does butt duty, which I consider to be truly remarkable. Odd-ball always get over the babies when I open the lid in a cage where he has babies. 75% of the time there is no immediate pregnancy resulting in a second litter. If left in, Nibbles' and Oddball's mates have another litter around 6-7 weeks later, well after the doe has weaned the babies. I also have found that bucks will live with their sons 80% of the time when they are raised in a family setting like this. The sons also have a greater chance of exhibiting similar behavior when paired off later.

The first time this happened in my mousery was by accident; the doe didn't look pregnant at all, had four babies, which was enough of a surprise, but to see the buck curled up on one side of the babies and the doe on the other just blew my mind. I have found out since that many of the feeder breeders have been using family colonies like this all the time. Who knew!


----------



## Erica08 (May 20, 2009)

I love oddessa what color do you consider her?

I generally leave my bucks with my does I have one buck who is an obsessive dad and one that really doesn't care so much he helps a little and the third one is right in the middle not obsessive but doesn't ignore the litter either. With the first two I seldom have the does bred back right away usually week 7 or 8 is when the next litter arrives but the last guy has to be pulled or there's a new litter 19 days right on the dot fortunately all his girls have litters within 48hrs of each other so he's not out very long.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks, Erica08; she's a marked agouti tri. Her mate is her good old da, and think it's weird that she has the face pattern on the opposite side as his. I'm not sure if the swathe of white around her midsection is regular enough to call banded.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Here's a couple of new pix of the kids. I'm glad to see a couple of yellows in the mix. I can hardly wait to see how the coats turn out, and whether or not I get another odd-eyed baby.







Odd-ball's coat looks off to me; I'm going to put him back in bachelor's quarter and see if I can spiff him up a bit.


----------



## bethmccallister (Mar 5, 2010)

The first week is always the hardest isn't it? I love when the fur starts to come in and you can actually see what you've got. They're all chubby and doing well indeed! :gwavebw


----------



## themousemummy (Oct 4, 2010)

beautiful babies, you can soo tell the difference in standard to my pet shop accident babies!! well done you!! x


----------



## zany_toon (Apr 3, 2010)

Beautiful babies - can't wait to see the colours they have! 
It's interesting to note your experiences with leaving the daddy in with mum and their litter. If I breed again i might try it as i'd love to leave all my boys together. It worked well with my first mice (dad was in with mum and babies and the nanny until the babies were three weeks old and no other babies resulted, but in saying that I was told dad had been in with the girls for 4 months without any babies when I got them!)


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks, guys!

I am quite pleased thus far with this new direction...now I'll just have to hope there's no harmful recessives. I've had problems with early unexplained deaths, especially in young male tris. I think there problems with seizure disorders, which show up every half year or so. The yellow and reds have been the worst in that regard, and I need to weed out the genes that cause it. I'll do my darndest to try, anyway.

It's become quite clear to me that yellow and red tricolors are constituted very differently than the beige/black spectrum tris are. After three of four generations I get more and more BEW's, and with brindled (A^vy-the line I bred out the brindling in.... it happens after two generations. Probably because yellow dilutes more easily than black or brown....it's just one of the pieces of evidence I've seen that support my belief that it's Cattanach's at work).

I'll stop now as I am about to start babbling again about the transgenics/mosaic stuff.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

The coats have grown all the way in.



Chocolate or cinnamon?



Not sure of this one.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

bump it up! new pix


----------



## The Village Mousery (Aug 1, 2010)

hey moustress lovely litter you have here, i think the first one looks chocolate to me cinni looks more red i think.. those fawns look gorg in satin like they been dipped in gold lovely. not the first time i've wished you lived closer.... green eyed monster.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks! 6.6

I'm looking with great interest at the banded gold ones, as they appear to have one color up front and a different one in back. And I really love the gold one with the white snout.


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

Wowzers. So pretty. I love them.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thankywe...thankyew vury much....

(Elvis has left the room)


----------



## zany_toon (Apr 3, 2010)

moustress said:


> Thanks! 6.6
> 
> I'm looking with great interest at the banded gold ones, as they appear to have one color up front and a different one in back. And I really love the gold one with the white snout.


Those two are so so pretty!!


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I'm glad you enjoy them; it was a long hard road creating my satin lines.

The crescendo of that trial was sitting up in the wee hours delivering a litter form a doe who had munched her first two litters. I was a little sleepy, and she managed to chomp two of them. The rest I plucked out complete with the amniotic sac and the afterbirth, freed from the sac, cleaned with a fingertop moistened with my saliva, gently severed the afterbirth, and fostered with another doe who had a litter the same day, and had fostered babies before. I really needed that litter, and all the ones I delivered grew up healthy enough to breed and solidify my satin line.

Yes, it's true, those pinkies are a little tasty, at least the outsides are pretty yummy. I bet eating them would be kinda like tiny canned shrimp, only a little crunchier.


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

Is the desire to munch babies hereditary? I know weird question.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Some folks think it is, but I think it's an artifact; something that occurs as a behavioral fluke, and/or may be combined or strengthened by mishaps in birthing and being raised in a way somewhat damaging to the 'character' of the doe. the one that I had to intercede with had a mother who never did this, and a grandmother, and sisters who did not munch their young. there may be metabolic or hormonal conditions as well, that stress out a doe and make her hungry. some folks think it happens because the doe feels insecure or has some underlying health condition. Maybe it's postpartum depression.

In any case, it's hard to predict with first time moms, and I am always tempted to go and sit with them when their time is near. Now that I have some predictable paters it's less of an issue. One litter that recently got munched had a pair of very distressed mousies in with it when I found the grisly scene. I suspect that there was an altercation between the doe and the buck. The buck was guarding the nest, and I suspect that he tried to stop the doe from killing the babies, and pretty much stopped her from eating them. There were two badly injured babies remaining in the nest. Who knows, the scenario may have been significantly different....I'll never know, that's for sure.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

They are two weeks old now. I hope the little marked satin agouti continues to look so plushy; I have had long hair in my satin lines, but don't breed for it. Since was a sire to daughter mating, I think it may be long haired.


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

I am liking the red head. Does that one have longer hair. Sure looks fluffy.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

A number of them look extra plush; the founding stud of my satins had a longish coat of a type for which I have not yet heard a name good name for; I call it 'feathered' because each hair is curved and the hairs tend to shift in layers looking somewhat like pin feathers on a bird. I used to call it 'caracul', but I know that term is used by other mousey types to mean something else. So 'feathered' it is.


----------



## shadowmouse (Sep 17, 2010)

Whatever it is, I like it.


----------



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Odessa's two litters off of Oddball are both doing very well. The babies are nicely formed and the markings are coming in. The second litter was a bit smaller than the first, and two were lost in the first week. The rest look pretty good. The younger litter are very, very protective of their tiny siblings. Odessa is all mellow; all she wants is FOOD!!


----------

