# Minky and Fiona



## fancyfeet

Both are females.. 
What do you guys think on colors?


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## Laigaie

Assuming the lighter mouse has pink eyes, it looks like you have black and dove!


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## fancyfeet

It actually has black


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## Laigaie

Interesting! The most common option for a mouse that shade but with black eyes is beige, but that generally has a mild yellowy tint to it. Could be blue beige, or just a very cool beige, though.


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## fancyfeet

The parents were a light grey or possibly cool beige doe and a black buck. Her siblings were dark grey and light grey. Not sure if they are blues or the leaden-blue I've read about though.


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## arex83

That's a really special one, then! I love that lilac color fur, but EVERY time I've ever seen it, there were pink eyes and not black!


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## Lilly

Would that be what is called dove in the US west coast or lilac in the rest of the world? (a/a b/b d/d C/* P/*).


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## fancyfeet

I'm not sure, because its my understanding that dove has pink eyes while lilac has black, so I'm thinking she is a lilac. I love her coloring.

Assuming she has a blue gene, what would be the best cross with her to get some beautiful blue babies?


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## Lilly

According to the AFRMA "DOVE - Color is a perfect blend of blue and chocolate, not too dark. Eye color is black."

It depends by which club standards you go by, if going by most of the worlds standards dove is pink eyed black, if going by AFRMA standards then what you have seems to be dove (which would be lilac to most of the world!). On my monitor she looks the same color as my pink eyed black.

I am not too sure on best crosses, I assume to a blue would be the best, but if not then perhaps a black if your goal is blue rather than more of what you have to try to weed out the b/b. But I am inexperienced still myself so take this with a grain of salt, just been doing a ton of reading on genetics lately!

I love This page for genetics and information about it though


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## fancyfeet

So do I! This and finn mouse have helped me so much! Yeah I want to get a true blue. I love the lilac color too though and all those in between. I would like to eventually venture to breeding fox but that seems a bit difficult with what I currently have.


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## Lilly

I have black tans that have such bad tan to look like silvery white at the moment which is making me consider trying to get a chinchilla to get fox, but there's too many colors that I want!


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## fancyfeet

I know! I'm crazy about the fox variety and the tans. But would love to get some good black, chocolate and blues for the time being. New to all of it so trying to research before I start. Unfortunately, i think one of the mice I got ended up getting pregnant. I bought 4 and 3 ended up being male and they were together for a week. They were all young so I don't know the likelihood. She is only about a week along if so, so i cant really tell at the moment. So that will be exciting even though I know its not the ideal situation since she was only about 6 weeks. She is the lilac or dove pictured and the buck would have been chocolate or a beige satin. The beige was absolutely gorgeous so I was kind of bummed to find out it was a male. I wasn't really planning on breeding just yet so I didn't want any bucks..and man do they smell!


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## Lilly

My fiance had nicknamed my buck as "the smelly mouse", it was bad enough before we moved that he was banished out of the bedroom so I did a lot of research to try to find out how to decrease the smell.

I ended up finding someone on here that recommended the lightly lavender scented paper bedding and vanilla in the water (1/4 ts to one cup) and this seems to have reduced the issue a LOT. I also found that if I had anything plastic in his cage like floors or even the wheel then he'd use that as a bathroom and within a day it would make him smell absolutely awful so I took those out, now he has a wire cage for good ventillation and a chewy branch hung up and he enjoys climbing the bars and sitting from his high vantage point without the smell issues.

Here is the bedding if you were interested, it is a little on the expensive side but I find that as long as I spot clean it takes a long time to get smelly compared to newspaper pellets.

A combination of that has meant that I have persuaded my fiance that males aren't so bad unless we're travelling and he comes with us in a small travel container... but then thats not really his fault!


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## fancyfeet

Ha! Yeah I will have to try that. I don't have any males at the moment. I think I am going to start with just one blue male and I currently have 3 females at the moment, the lilac one, a long haired chocolate (but she has tan ears which I guess is a fault) and an agouti.

From what I've read though you really don't know what you have genetically until those mice have litters. The lady I get mine from has been doing it for like 2 years but she doesn't keep track which sucks because that would tell me so much more about what I have!

Should I start with a blue male or black in your opinion? I'm not really crazy about agoutis. I liked the one I got and I think maybe bred with the right buck she might produce some nice colors.


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## fancyfeet

My new agouti, Butters.


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## Lilly

Honestly I am not really the right person to ask, I have only just got into mice breeding myself.

I have a blue tan buck, black tan pied doe and a dove doe. I love the blue color but I also want to breed with the intention of eventually being able to show or work towards show standards. Since I am a beginner I have chosen to work towards black rather than blue because I am not confidant enough in my knowledge of proper blue standards and because black seems to be able to be crossed into other lines to help darken them.

If I can get hold of a chinchilla or fox though then I would go for blue fox (since blue dilutes tan I think that blue tans are a lot harder to get the right color on top and below).

Your agouti is very cute ^^


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## fancyfeet

That's my problem is that there aren't really any show breeders around me. I've seen some people get some awesome mice from pet stores but the ones around here only have basic PEW. Soooo, I found this breeder that lives literally like a mile from me which only breeds for feeders but I can atleast get some sort of variation. She now has fawn, agouti, black, white, and all shades of blue (possibly leaden blue though). Plus if I did start breeding she said she would take the ones I'm not keeping which is awesome so I don't have all these extra babies.

I'm in south carolina, where are you Lilly?


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## Lilly

Oh I know that problem well, petsmart seems to have some nice colors but there are no breeders that I can find other than feeder breeders two hours or so away.

One day I hope to be able to get show quality to outcross to my lines.

I am in GA so I guess not terribly far from you.


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## fancyfeet

Yeah from what I've looked at the closest shows are Virginia. The mice at petsmart are all 3-5 months and I had a lot of trouble taming. (my first mouse was from there). Hardly any variety at all only PEW and a brown one that I had to give away because it was very aggressive.

I do want to breed to show color standards and perfect a line to maybe show but right now its kind of just a project to breed for color.

What are your current breeding plans if you don't mind me asking? And what mice do you have right now?


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## Lilly

I have to confess to being slightly unsettled on my breeding plans, I REALLY love texel so I am trying to get hold of a pair of those from a feeder breeder but having issues there, contacting other feeder breeders or anywhere that might have mice to see if I can get rex or texel. The feeder breeder had siamese texels, which was a really exciting prospect too...

If I cannot get hold of texels I am going to try to get hold of chinchilla or fox to start of blue fox, then I want to go for self black and I did want dove tan (but my fiance trod on those plans and would prefer fun "cow mice" so not sure on that now... have to keep him somewhat excited about my mice since rely on him to drive me places to get them!)

Currently I have a blue tan buck, dove (pink eyed black) doe and a black pied tan doe who has a 2.5 week old litter of six. The babies are two blue tan, 1 self black and three black tans (but they are very poor tan with throat spots, white tail tips, top color showing through on belly and incredibly pale tan).


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## fancyfeet

I am obsessed with Siamese! But you cant just "start" those and they aren't available anywhere around me. Sounds like an awesome plan! I am excited to see where it takes you!


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## raisin

In my science teacher's mouse room, I put my red eyed-dove male into his bin with solid blacks and PEWs. What came from that litter was a ton of lavenders( black eyes) and blacks. The next generation (it was a closed population and I removed my male) bourn a ton of doves, a couple lavenders, and 2 very lovely blues (one was banded. The only marked mouse in generations! Random mutation). I put a dominant-yellow Dutch male in with a dove and she gave birth to stone, black, dove, and one blue.

So it's my understanding that lavender blue and dove are all closely related genetically. I also got a random satin-blue by breeding two agouti's (grandparents gold and agouti). That litter had some unexpected things.


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## raisin

I've read that dove and chocolate make Champaign, and that silver and fawn make lavender. All of the science teacher's mice were lab mice inbred to only contain black and white genes. They were all genetically similar due to this inbreeding.

As it happens, my starters were chamaign, silver, and fawn! So there's that. I'm not entirely sure where the blue came in. I am hoping that I can somehow pull the chocolate out of the champaign's progeny's genes.


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## Laigaie

I'm not sure what you'd get putting together silver and fawn, but it might well look similar to lavender. Normally, lavender is pink-eyed lilac: aa bb dd pp. Since you have both champagne and silver, that's in the cards. Silver is pink-eyed blue (aa B dd pp), so that'd be where the blue came from.


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## micurious

fancyfeet said:


> I am obsessed with Siamese! But you cant just "start" those and they aren't available anywhere around me. Sounds like an awesome plan! I am excited to see where it takes you!


If you ever want to truck up to New York, or know someone coming through, I have at least one Siamese doe. Probably more, but she's the only one whose points are definitely in. Only the first generation out of the feeder bin but at least you'd have the gene to work with!


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## Laigaie

There'll be some of the show quality Siamese out of Wisconsin coming to the Indianapolis show in March, if you're making it up. I don't know whether that crowd will make it down for the Knoxville show in the summer, though, and that's more your neck of the woods.


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