# New to the Fancy Mouse World!



## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Hello, my name is Yuukiko, or Yuuki, and I have just recently been introduced to the world of Fancy Mice.

This is my first time owning small animals. I have experience with cats (including show cats), parrots of all sorts, some very little experience with snakes and dogs, but mice are totally new.

I've had my mice for about...a few weeks now, I think. I got three lovely, pet-quality does from a local breeder.

I'm not sure how to show pictures on a post yet, so I'll just have to try and describe them.

Mocha is a longhaired, chocolate variegated doe. She seems to be the boss of the bunch, but so far in a good way.
Caramel is a pink-eyed recessive yellow...or at least she's supposed to be. The breeder mentioned having issues with obesity in her yellow line, that she was trying to breed out of, and I think I read somewhere that obesity is usually associated with fawn/lethal yellow rather than recessive/safe yellow...?
Kahlua is a black tan doe. She is extremely high energy and seems to be a bit on the nervous side compared to the other two. They all came from the same breeder at the same time, and the other two are somewhat shy but still willing to be handled, so I think it's just a personality difference.

My friend, Elf, also adopted a mouse the same day. Her's is named Reese, and she's a chocolate tan doe from the same litter as Kahlua. She's apparently a bit of an Alpha Bitch (pardon the term), so I'm not terribly surprised about Kahlua's nervousness if she grew up with that. Neither of us plan on breeding fancy mice anytime soon (though Elf is breeding African Soft-Furred Rats), but sometime in the future I may be willing to consider breeding.

Someone on a Facebook group I belong to recommended this site, after I started having some bad feelings about another mouse forum. I looks forward to learning more about mice here!


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

Gish yeah. NO ABUSE HERE! Gosh not mentioning the forum I came from.,,...,,..


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

Welcome!  We're a friendly and helpful, fast growing bunch of people, so I'm sure you'll fit right in.
I'm not sure about the whole yellow=obesity thing, as I don't breed them, and I don't think anyone here in Denmark does.
But for the picture part, I recommend using a site like photobucket.com to upload them to, and then do it from there. I'll be more than happy to help if it's a little tricky.


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## NikiP (May 7, 2013)

Are you located? Some places don't have certain variations, may help determine what is going on with your yellow mouse as obesity isn't supposed to be an issue. Not to say it can't it.


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## thammy24 (Dec 20, 2012)

lol, let me guess, the 'Fun Mouse Forum'?


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

Welcome! I'm glad you found yourself here, I tried pming you *elsewhere* to join but your mailbox was disabled. I used to keep ASFs, but I found that they just weren't for me. :3 I think you'll find lots of varying opinions here!

There could be the possibility that Caramel is an undermarked brindle, another variety prone to obesity. The pink eye dilution can wash out the stripes that help identify them, so if the breeder has a line of "pink eyed recessive yellows" then it could just be the stripes have never really popped up.

Welcome again!


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## Miceandmore64 (Jul 16, 2013)

thammy24 said:


> lol, let me guess, the 'Fun Mouse Forum'?


No it wasn't! Ha has that had bad reports ?


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## thammy24 (Dec 20, 2012)

It's an okay forum but each and every post has to be validated by the operator and she also has a very very low tolerance to breeding unless you breed mice with big long pedigrees. Anybody who mentions breeding pet mice gets bashed. Also a low tolerance for 'commercializing'. In my introduction post, I mentioned that i wanted to clicker train my mice and my post was denied .


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## thammy24 (Dec 20, 2012)

I don't know, instead of suggesting making changes, like using carefresh instead of pine shavings, she DEMANDS you change it. She's never attacked me about anything, but I've seen her attack other people. lol


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## WoodWitch (Oct 18, 2009)

Everyone is allowed to think freely on this forum and we have lots of users that approach mouse breeding from varying angles: exhibitors, feeders, the odd litter to please the owner..... no one is judged. All are welcome and healthy debate is encouraged, not feared. Welcome amongst us, I hope you will be happy here


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Wow, glad I'm not the only one with similar issues at The Fun Mouse.

First the forum admin there went on a completely uncalled for rant about a friend of mine having both a fancy mouse (Reese) and African Soft-Furred Rats. Yes, we know ASFs are a new exotic breed, but the breeders who do specialize in them have put a lot of effort into figuring out their special needs and everything that makes them tic. Every ASF breeder we spoke to said housing Reese with the ASF does should be fine; they treat her as if she's one of their own babies.

Then when I finally got her attention back to the issue I was asking about (getting Kahlua calm enough to handle), she kept ignoring the fact that I got all three from the same breeder at the same time and that Kahlua was the only nervous one...and then she made a nasty comment about "I'll bet that breeder you got them from also breeds 'feeder' mice."

I kind of snapped at that point, told her off a bit, and started trying to cancel my account there. It made me really sad and frustrated, because I remember the same thing happening with the parrot community in general; there's this sort of "Mommy Wars" thing going on, where if you don't do things exactly the "right" way, as determined by some stranger, then you get labeled a terrible parent who shouldn't be allowed to have kids or own a pet of any sort. And it's almost always things that are crazy specific, extremely expensive, not even necessary or even outright harmful, and next to impossible for average people to keep up with. It was really disheartening to see the same thing happening at TFM with mice.

To answer a previous question: I live in the Seattle area of western Washington State. I read over on The Fun Mouse (NOT the forum part, the rest of the site is fine) that there are two different genes for yellow: Recessive Yellow (aka 'Safe Yellow'), which tends to be sootier but healthier, and Fawn/'Lethal Yellow,' which were created in a lab and tend to have problems like obesity because of how the yellow pigment is stored in the fat cells. Again, I'm new to all this myself, so I'm mostly repeating here what I've read elsewhere and asking for clarification.

My three mice didn't come with a pedigree or anything, since the breeder was fairly new to breeding just fancies. That's fine for me, since I'm not planning on breeding them myself. But it would be nice to pinpoint whether Caramel is a recessive yellow or a lethal yellow.

(Also, sorry it took me so long to reply! I forgot to check the box for "Notify me when a reply is posted," so I kept checking my email for a notification that never came!)


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## ThatCertainGlow (Jun 23, 2012)

Ah! You are in the US.

In answer to a few places about the 'yellow', it's highly unlikely (unless the breeder mentioned getting lethal yellow from someone who imported the gene), that you have lethal yellow. American brindle is much more likely, so is recessive yellow. Both can tend to fat, the brindle MUCH more so. Brindle doesn't always look like brindling. Pictures of undermarked brindles might help some (I think someone linked you a start).

Welcome to the forum.


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## NikiP (May 7, 2013)

If I hadn't bred this one, I wouldn't even know she was a brindle:










She had black striping when her fur started, but now has none.


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## YuukikoOgawa (Jul 26, 2013)

Wow! I honestly had no idea that recessive yellow and brindle are linked that way!

I think Caramel has some other genes in there too; she's got pink eyes, and her shade of yellow is so pale that there's a couple spots where it fades to an odd sort of bluish-white.


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## RavennaHallowed (Jul 6, 2013)

Welcome! I think you'll find this forum MUCH more friendly and accepting then any of the others! Everyone is brilliant here.


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