# Three's A Company! *pics*



## Autumn2005 (Apr 21, 2010)

I have three litters all born within a day of each other, from three different does and three different dads. They're all together in a modge pit of pinks almost fuzzies, and I'm having the expected problem: I don't know who belongs to whom!

Maybe you guys can help????

The pairings are:
Satin Blue Agouti Buck (sure of the agouti part, mostly guessing on the blue part) X Broken Satin Black Tan Doe
Recessive Yellow Buck X Possible RY Doe (her parents were both chocolates, but she's too light to be chocolate, but a really weird shade to be RY)
Chocolate Buck carrying Satin X Broken Black Satin Doe

The first two litters had 9 each, but the last doe had problems so I wasn't able to get a full count of her babies until it was too late to tell the older litters from the younger one. When I did a count, I had 19. I've now pared it down to 14, and am still in the process of selecting culls. I have already culled a couple PE males, most likely PEWs, and a few black males. One of the PEWs and 2 of the blacks looked satin.

Here I separated them into the relatively known pile, and the completely unknown:









My relatively known pile:








There looks like a satin PEW doe, a satin possible RY broken buck, a black possible satin doe, and the two brown ones I'm unsure if they're agouti or chocolate. One's a doe, the other is a buck. What do you think the brown ones are, chocolate or agouti?

My unknown pile:
















My problem here is that they are all very uniform. I've never had such a uniform litter before, even when I bred the same colors together. I just cannot make heads or tails of what they could be? All chocolates? All RY? If I have an entire litter that matches the unknown doe's color, I'm going to laugh my head off. This breeding was supposed to simplify her color, not compound it!

Anyway, any help on colors would be nice. I'll post again as they get more fur on.


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## peztree3 (Dec 20, 2011)

All I can say is good luck! lol


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

I would suggest littering your does seperately if you want to know who belongs to whom 

Without knowing anything other than that which you've listed:


> Satin Blue Agouti Buck (sure of the agouti part, mostly guessing on the blue part) X Broken Satin Black Tan Doe


= All satin agoutis and black, tans and possibly self.


> Recessive Yellow Buck X Possible RY Doe


= Recessive yellows... if the doe is recessive yellow!


> Chocolate Buck carrying Satin X Broken Black Satin Doe


= Black self, satin and standard coat.

Of course, they could all be carrying a mishmash of genes so I don't think you'll ever know for sure. Hope this helps, anyway.


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## candycorn (Oct 31, 2011)

Wow...yeah without seperating the mothers and knowing who is in each breeding...you don;'t have much hope. Being a good breeder is in part keeping GOOD records. You can't possibly keep good records with a mixed tank of babies like this. In the future I highly recommend giving each expecting mother her own 10 gallon tank.


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## Laigaie (Mar 7, 2011)

I would argue that you most certainly can keep good records if you have multiple mothers in one tank. You're just going to have trouble if those litters are expecting similar young and are of close enough age that you cannot identify them by size, as in this case.


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

> I would argue that you most certainly can keep good records if you have multiple mothers in one tank.


Absolutely, if you litter say a Dutch and a silver fox together, then yes it's easy to keep good records 



> Being a good breeder is in part keeping GOOD records.


I would also just like to say that while many successful mouse fanciers keep records, and many more don't. You've got to do what's right for you  In Tony Cooke's book "Exhibition and Pet Mice" he advocates keeping strict records. In Tony Jones' book "Encyclopedia of Pet Mice" he says time spent writing up records is time you could be spending with your mice. Both fanciers were very, very successful in the UK showing fancy.


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## Autumn2005 (Apr 21, 2010)

It was a bit of a goof that all three does ended up in the same cage at the same time, and all gave birth. I thought I had a few more days to get them set up, but once they had babies, I didn't want to disturb them. It was actually easy to tell them apart once they had all their fur in. One of the fathers had a vary distinctive face marking he passes on to ALL of his children, regardless of mother, any tans obviously belonged to my tan doe, non-satins belonged to the carrier father, and the identical babies that gave me so much trouble turned out to be all RYs.

Here's a pic of the girls I kept:









I do clean the glass, honest! They just smear it so quick. They like to kick out the food and then sleep in their dish.


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

Glad to hear it all worked out for you! Don't worry about the scuzzy, one of my girls likes to pick her poop up and stick it to the sides of her tank. Waaaay grosser then a little smeary glass. : P


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