# black litters



## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Here are two litters of blacks I bred, with one Siamese doe for posterity.










Blacks are one of the smallest show varieties, and my blacks are no exception. They are by far the smallest as babies of any variety I breed. They always seem so small and skinny compared to my others.


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## JayneAlison (Nov 16, 2010)

I don't think I've ever seen a completely black mouse before,they are beautiful.

Until 2 minutes ago I always preferred lighter colours lol. I have just added solid black to my wish list


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Thanks. Black mice are supposed to be solid black. They're the only variety that has a single color on the fur, ears, toes, nails, eyes, and skin (and with extreme black, they're born already black so they're never really "pinkies").

Mine have a few faults (light noses plague me) but in general they're one of my favorite varieties. Here are some pictures of the babies' relatives:

Moms:









Dad:









Aunt:









One of the most important things about black mice is that their toes and tails must be fully pigmented. You should never breed from mice who have light extremities because once they're introduced they're almost impossible to get rid of.


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## JayneAlison (Nov 16, 2010)

They are really pretty. I have always preferred solid colours to patterned and the fact that every part of them is the same colour really appeals to me.

As a novice breeder do you think they would be a good variety to get,as I also want to show?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

The fact that every part of them is supposed to be the same is one of the things that makes selecting a good black easy. One pink toe, and you know you can't breed from that mouse.

I do recommend blacks for new breeders. I wish more people would breed them. The only thing to be careful about is that in order to keep the consistency of color and avoid wrecking havoc on the line, blacks shouldn't be outcrossed to any other variety, ever. The only recessive my blacks carry is Siamese, and I think that if they didn't, they would be even darker and I wouldn't have light noses pop up all the time (this is a particular challenge because the light noses often don't show up until after the first adult molt). I'm working on eliminating Siamese so that my blacks carry nothing (I never breed from Siamese animals), which is how blacks should be. They're a great variety. When you hold a good black in your hand, it feels like you have a little furry ball of ink moving around.

The only other "challenge" I could think of with blacks is that because good examples are so dark, they're really hard to photograph. They tend to look lighter in pictures because the camera can't differentiate between their features, so it tends to make the whole scene appear lighter and blurrier than it really is. All mice are hard to photograph, but black mice are particularly so.


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## JayneAlison (Nov 16, 2010)

Thanks Jack that's really helpful. I am now on the lookout for some blacks to get me started 
I love your description 'a furry ball of ink' it sums them up perfectly.
If I go to a reputable breeder they should know whether the lines carry anything else shouldn't they?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yep.


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## The Boggit keeper (Mar 5, 2010)

Congrats, they are beautiful Jack!


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Thanks.


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## laoshu (Sep 16, 2009)

stunning blacks Jack!
I can see why they are converting people to wanting some.


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## thickgiraffe (Nov 3, 2010)

truly stunning mice. i have had several pure black mice but your win for depth of colour hands down. keep up the good work. (that goes to the mice too!)


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Awww! Thank you.


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## minibears (Jul 30, 2010)

just a quick q, i'm assuming these mice are a(e)a(e)'s right? we don't have that (to my knowledge) in australia, do u have any tips for those of us working with aa's in order to achieve our blacks? I'm especially interested in your outcross with the siamese (also assuming a(e)a(e)). is this just about the only 'safe' outcross for blacks and do u use seal point? beautiful mice, good blacks are so hard to come by


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## icedmice (Oct 4, 2009)

Jack I'm working on a black line to try and breed exhibition quality mice in Australia. The ones you have there are stunners!

I've managed to breed my blacks so that the black is reaching the second knuckle and I use tanning around the vent as an indicator to select from ones with minimal silvering, tan hairs.

Short tails were an issue for me but I'm staring the correct that fault, only trouble is their tails are long but thin, I need to work on that thickness.
Ears aren't great, but my priorities for the moment are getting the black colour half decent and correcting any significant flaws.

We don't have extreme black here and I haven't noticed a difference in size from any other line.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Sometimes I wonder if my mice are really extreme black, anyway, since there are light (though not yellow) hairs. I don't know how you could test that except for genotyping, anyway.

Of the Australian mice I've seen, yours are definitely the nicest. You work with what you have and I think you're doing a terrific job.


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

minibears said:


> just a quick q, i'm assuming these mice are a(e)a(e)'s right? we don't have that (to my knowledge) in australia, do u have any tips for those of us working with aa's in order to achieve our blacks? I'm especially interested in your outcross with the siamese (also assuming a(e)a(e)). is this just about the only 'safe' outcross for blacks and do u use seal point? beautiful mice, good blacks are so hard to come by


Since Jack's Blacks are the result of repeated inbreeding of the original animals, which I have sent to Kentucky, I can add my few cents about these blacks. 
The original blacks were sold to me as extreme blacks from a judge of the dutch NMC. He himself had bought the blacks from a UK breeder as extreme blacks. The mice I got were very very dark and had no yellow hair at all. I had no doubt that they are ae/ae. Here are old fotos of an ae/ae buck, which is forefather of Jack's blacks, together with one of my first Merles:

































I bought them not for the color black itself, but for breeding siamese with dark points, since the dutch blacks already carried ch. It worked well. My siamese have very dark points now. All the blacks of this line always carried ch, because for breeding extreme-black-siamese I never crossed two blacks with each other, I always crossed a black carrier (for siamese) with a siamese.

Therefore the black mice sent to Jack were ae/ae C/ch and were continued by inbreeding. As always recessive genes can be carried for generations, therefore it will take some time before the ch will be completely deleted from the line.

Best regards, Roland
Chilloutarea Mousery - Tricolor , Splashed , Merle , Recessive Red


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I remember this mouse (and that dollar bill! lol). 

Very pretty!

(P.S. I have some more people picking up some black mice from me soon! They seem more popular over here than most varieties, which honestly surprised me, but it's a good thing!)


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

Jack Garcia said:


> I remember this mouse (and that dollar bill! lol).
> 
> Very pretty!
> 
> (P.S. I have some more people picking up some black mice from me soon! They seem more popular over here than most varieties, which honestly surprised me, but it's a good thing!)


Yes, I remember the dollar bill too ;-) You had to "rescue" me from an excited US citizen, who was more than angry about a ****ing German showing a US dollar bill with mouse feces on his homepage.

Since (to my knowledge) ae has its origin in the USA, I wonder if there are no other good black lines available in the States for an outcross?
I do not know how my line developed under your skilled hands, but I think an outcross to another very dark line could enhance the genepool and therefore should enhance the chance to improve the mice. OF COURSE the line for outcrossing should not be a step back!

Roland


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I agree...there used to be extreme black in the hands of Jennifer Hipsley but I can't seem to contact her. I'm not sure if she still has them. There are a few folks who have extreme black in New York but they've been outcrossed to many other varieties and that scares me.

I'm in the beginning stages of preparing a shipment to California (or just driving them there if I'm living in Texas at the time), so if I could do a trade then and get some true-breeding a/a blacks, that might be my best option for an outcross since at the very least I would know that they didn't carry anything.


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

Jack Garcia said:


> I agree...there used to be extreme black in the hands of Jennifer Hipsley but I can't seem to contact her. I'm not sure if she still has them. There are a few folks who have extreme black in New York but they've been outcrossed to many other varieties and that scares me.


When I met Mike in NYC last time, he still had ae/ae, and I think they were from Jennifer. Perhaps he could be of help? Mike's blacks carry many recessives in the meantime now, that is indeed fact.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yeah, I've asked Mike and he said his mice carry everything (I don't think he was joking, hehe...). 

I'm still waiting to trade other mice with Mike, though. Maybe next Rodent Fest. Fingers crossed!


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## minibears (Jul 30, 2010)

wow, thankyou jack and roland


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## icedmice (Oct 4, 2009)

Jack Garcia said:


> Sometimes I wonder if my mice are really extreme black, anyway, since there are light (though not yellow) hairs. I don't know how you could test that except for genotyping, anyway.
> 
> Of the Australian mice I've seen, yours are definitely the nicest. You work with what you have and I think you're doing a terrific job.


Cheers  .

Got a long way to go to get true exhibition quality though. They're just exhibition wannabes... :lol: .
I am picking up heaps from critiques of true exhibition specimens, stuff that often gets overlooked in the Australian fancy.

I particularly like your blacks and PEW. In addition to Roland's funky merle tans!

Roland, that black is stunning! I love the shape of his face, very masculine.
I know the ears aren't ideal but I really wish we had ones half as good as that.

What does merle look like with the extreme gene?
Does the extreme gene also create more vibrant bellies on black tans? or does it only effect the black areas?
Is it possible to get black with that much colour depth without the extreme gene?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

icedmice said:


> Does the extreme gene also create more vibrant bellies on black tans? or does it only effect the black areas?


Neither, actually. Extreme black is ae/ae. Black tan is at/*. The A-locus, like all other loci, only has two places for alleles. In order to have an extreme black tan, you'd have to have a mouse who was ae/ae/at and that's not possible.

In other words, an extreme black has to be ae/ae and that leaves no room for at.


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

There is room for two different alleles at the A-locus. Although A is dominant over the other alleles, A/at mice show an intermediate phenotype. You can very well see a difference between A/A and A/at. The same could be true for at/ae, although at is dominant over ae.

I have written a short text about ae/at on my homepage (see below). It makes sense to have a look to my NEWS section http://tinyurl.com/ybh5rth from time to time....

2010-06-14: Extreme Nonagouti Black & Tans (ae/at)

Black-and-tan (at) mice have a black dorsum and yellow or cream belly. They have been first described by Dunn in 1928. Some yellow pigment is also found behind the ears of at mice. at is dominant over non-agouti. It is not possible to separate at/at from a/at by the phenotype, both homocygotous and heterocygotous Black & Tans just look black and tan. The allele at is particularly interesting because it is recessive to A on the dorsum, but dominant to A on the ventrum.

Extreme nonagouti ( ae) was found and described by Hollander & Gowen in 1956. It appeared after irradiation mutagenesis (J Hered.1956; 47: 221-224). The Jax homepage describes ae as recessive to all the other alleles of the agouti series. Homocygotous ae mice are completely eumelanotic. No yellow hairs occur on the ears or around the genitals.
Here are some pictures from Jax: http://www.informatics.jax.org/javawi2/ ... ges&key=12

No information is available about the phenotype of at/ae. Is there any interaction between at and ae? What is the phenotype of an Extreme Non-Agouti Black and Tan (ae/at)?

From my experiments to improve the colour of Merle, I crossed a nice nonagouti black and tan merle buck (a/at) to a normal non-agouti black (a/a) female and to an extreme nonagouti (ae/ae) female. The tan halfsiblings from both mothers differ very much:









The picture on the left shows a/at, while the right picture shows ae/at. 
NOTE! These mice are no Black & Tan Showtype! They are a very small step to improve colour and type of Merle only!

Conclusion: Black & Tan (at) is dominant over ae, but there seems to be some interaction between ae and at on the phenotype of heterocygotous mice.

Best regards, Roland
Chilloutarea Mousery - Tricolor , Splashed , Merle , Recessive Red


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

icedmice said:


> What does merle look like with the extreme gene?


Hi icedmice,

I have some extreme black merle. The ears and tails are very dark black without yellow, but the merle markings look the same as they are in a/a merle. Probably I will not continue the lines, because they gave no improvement in type at all and the tan bellies of ae/ae merle look dirty. ae/ae merle are more interesting for people who do not want to breed tan merle.
Remember that my long distance goal for merle is a true breeding line of typey Piebald-Tan-Satin-Merle ...

Regards, Roland

PS: Did you ever think about importing mice? Should not make a huge difference to sent mice to the USA or to Australia.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Importing mice into Australia for any reason is illegal. See here: http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/cat-dogs/other

About a year and a half ago (if I remember correctly) I called some Australian authorities and they told me that it was because Australia has a unique and precarious wildlife situation, that almost no animals can be imported except by the government or laboratories.


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

Jack Garcia said:


> Importing mice into Australia for any reason is illegal. See here: http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/cat-dogs/other
> 
> About a year and a half ago (if I remember correctly) I called some Australian authorities and they told me that it was because Australia has a unique and precarious wildlife situation, that almost no animals can be imported except by the government or laboratories.


oops, I did not know that, I thought it would be a procedure with health certificate and quarantine etc etc


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yeah, it's unfortunate!

I wondered out loud on the phone if it would be possible to ship mouse fur in a plain envelope and then have it cloned, as an incredibly expensive way of getting around Australia's import ban, and the lady on the phone thought I was crazy. :lol:


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

Jack Garcia said:


> Yeah, it's unfortunate!
> 
> I wondered out loud on the phone if it would be possible to ship mouse fur in a plain envelope and then have it cloned, as an incredibly expensive way of getting around Australia's import ban, and the lady on the phone thought I was crazy. :lol:


Fur is not the best idea, but for sure the idea is not crazy at all. I know that several labs "harvest" sperm of interesting mice to freeze it in liquid nitrogene for artificial inseminations years after the line has died. 
Anyway, probably this starts to be a more academic discussion, which is of little help for icedmice.


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## icedmice (Oct 4, 2009)

Cheers for the explaination Roland.

Many desire the extreme gene and it would be great because it would improve diversity however I think there is a mistaken opinion here that the extreme gene is the main reason why international mice are more vibrant.

I recall a topic about a really super dark agouti, it was explained that the extreme gene could not have influenced that animal's appearence. Actually, that's what started getting me thinking about blacks and wheather we could breed a black that looked extreme but wasn't. An exceptional regular black line would certainly be valueable to improve colour vibrancy in any line of mouse!
In addition to being much simpler to select for better conformation with a line of animals that have uniformity in colour...like PEW....but to a lesser extent blacks as well.

Importing mice is technically not illegal, just next to impossible for the average Joe wanting prettier mice. Laboritories are able to import animals.

Getting exhibition mice in Australia legally isn't impossible, just difficult and time consuming because it's something that you need to breed for.
It's difficult for me alone because I have 3 distinct lines and an experiemental line which is probably a few too many for someone breeding at my scale. I'd be better off focusing on one or two, as I refine what I need I will cut back to my black selfs and one other line, likely dutch.


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