# What colour?



## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

This is one of my boys, he's actually the father of some babies due on the 31st of May.
His Mother was a broken Agouti and the father was a broken RY, both smooth coat. 
He was the oddball in the bunch, all his brothers were broken black and broken RY, all standard coats except maybe him.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Is "cute" a color?

He looks like he may be a marked brindle, just really sooty and/or C-dilute (it's hard to see in the picture). If so, that would explain some of the "recessive yellows," which could actually be stripe-free brindles.

In terms of coat he is either poor standard (too long) or poor angora (too short), but cute nonetheless! Judging on the whiskers I'd guess poor angora.


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## Laigaie (Mar 7, 2011)

Could we see a photo of him from the side? It looks like he's got splotches of a darker color, but it could be shadowing.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Jack Garcia said:


> Is "cute" a color?
> 
> He looks like he may be a marked brindle, just really sooty and/or C-dilute (it's hard to see in the picture). If so, that would explain some of the "recessive yellows," which could actually be stripe-free brindles.
> 
> In terms of coat he is either poor standard (too long) or poor angora (too short), but cute nonetheless! Judging on the whiskers I'd guess poor angora.


Thank you for that. There is only one "mousery" in New Zealand but from what I understand, they just have a lot of mice and they are all from the pet shop. Every mouse here seems poor in some way, whether it be the coat or the colour but I love them all the same. I would love to really get into breeding and breed mice that look like what they are meant to. 
He is my oldest, 2 years in July. He was paired with a poorly coloured rump girl who is a little over 3 months. I don't exactly know what I am trying to accomplish in colour wise..

Here are a few more pictures of him and some close up coat colours.
























And to show his under-coat..









Please excuse his tail, he has been flipping it over his back recently, never done it before.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I forgot that you were in New Zealand. Australia has brindle (AKA American brindle, AKA Avy/*), so I would not be surprised if New Zealand did.

He's definitely some sort of C-dilute brindle, perhaps beige (Avy/* ce/*) or chinchilla (Avy/* cch/*) with white spots (s/s).


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Jack Garcia said:


> I forgot that you were in New Zealand. Australia has brindle (AKA American brindle, AKA Avy/*), so I would not be surprised if New Zealand did.
> 
> He's definitely some sort of C-dilute brindle, perhaps beige (Avy/* ce/*) or chinchilla (Avy/* cch/*) with white spots (s/s).


Oh wow, thank you so much 
I seem to have a thing for C-dilute boys. My other boy is a C-dilute fox. He's a coffee colour.

I'd love to be able to learn more about mouse genetics, it seems so much more complicated than Scottish Highland genetics, (Which I understand well).
I've never actually seen a brindle here but I'm not always 100% sure what I'm looking at. The pet store closest to me always has brokens of some sort, (blacks, tans of some sort, agoutis and the odd siamese that has white patches as well).


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

You're welcome.

Brindles are by "default" orange or red with brown or black stripes. This is a pet store brindle I that bred a few years ago:










When you add various C-dilutes, the orange/red gets reduced to a cream or buff color, and the dark stripes become gray or blueish.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Ohhh! The same as in cows, we have a brindle bull. By the way, that is adorable!
I know this isn't the thread for it but I'm curious, I assume breeding broken with broken, you'll get broken babies..
This boy was put to a colored rump girl (parents were colored rump and BEW), what sort of colors would there be in the babies?
I guess I'm more curious on how much the the parents of these two play a part on their babies. I hope that made sense.

If I really seriously went into breeding I would love to breed light colored mice with dark/black eyes. I find them adorable.


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## littlelovesmousery (May 19, 2012)

Cordane said:


> Oh wow, thank you so much
> I seem to have a thing for C-dilute boys. My other boy is a C-dilute fox. He's a coffee colour.
> 
> *I'd love to be able to learn more about mouse genetics, it seems so much more complicated than Scottish Highland genetics, (Which I understand well).*
> I've never actually seen a brindle here but I'm not always 100% sure what I'm looking at. The pet store closest to me always has brokens of some sort, (blacks, tans of some sort, agoutis and the odd siamese that has white patches as well).


I can SOOOO relate! Cattle genetics seem like childs play compared to the mouse genetics.

And Jack that brindle is a total cuteness overload!


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

When a mouse with white spots is bred to another mouse with white spots, 100% of the babies will generally have white spots (unless the white spots are two different types of spotting, which is not likely).

Beyond that, it's hard to say because the parents are so mixed up. Do you know if the BEW was ce/c or a marked mouse who was all spots?


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Sorry but I have no idea. She's a pet store mouse.
If it helps, my colored rump girls sisters all had colored rumps but there was one who had a spot on its head/ear.

Its ok if you can't answer, she hits the 3 weeks pregnant mark on the 31st, I'm excited.

I have another questions, Gosh I'm full of them..
How can you get a C-Dilute fox from a Siamese with a Broken Black?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

The Siamese and/or the marked black had to have been tan, but since either can "hide" the tan belly (the siamese due to being too light anyway, the marked mouse by having a white belly).

So what you have may not be fox proper (at/* cch/cch) but rather some C-dilute combination paired with tan, such as at/* ce/c or at/* cch/ce.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Jack Garcia said:


> The Siamese and/or the marked black had to have been tan, but since either can "hide" the tan belly (the siamese due to being too light anyway, the marked mouse by having a white belly).
> 
> So what you have may not be fox proper (at/* cch/cch) but rather some C-dilute combination paired with tan, such as at/* ce/c or at/* cch/ce.


All I have to go by is phenotype. The Broken Black is actually my older boys brother.

You are amazing for answering my questions, thank you so much


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

You're very welcome! 

This is a side-note, so you can ignore it if you want to: "broken" (along with "even") is a show term which designates that any particular mouse meets or is bred toward a specific pattern of spots. All broken mice have white spots, but all white-spotted mice are not broken (in fact, very few are).

A more correct term for mice who are white-spotted but do not look like brokens is "pied" or "piebald" or "marked." Just FYI.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

How do you tell the difference?
Is a broken mouse more even with its spotting?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

A real broken mouse looks like this: http://www.thenationalmouseclub.co.uk/marked.php

(Scroll down to "broken" and hover over the picture.)


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

they are some really pretty mice. 
Would you class her as broken?









I assume this one is not?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Neither one, because the areas of color are supposed to be equal or near-equal in size, and distributed evenly. Both have huge areas of color and huge areas of white, and the color is clumped on certain parts of the body rather than distributed evenly.

Also, in the first example, the ear markings are contrary to what a broken should look like ("_it should not have either Dutch cheeks, saddle or any markings which may be considered evenly placed_").

This is what I mean when I say very few spotted mice are actually broken. Many people use the term way too loosely.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

So really a broken mouse should have spots instead of clumps?

Eh, either way, I find those two adorable. 
Thank you again.


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yes, it should appear to have similarly-sized, evenly-placed spots of color on a white background (in truth it has white spots on a colored background).

I agree that your mice are adorable. They look well-taken care of.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

I actually have 5 girls and 2 boys.
















This is momma. Terrible rump but she is my favourite.
















I would assume shes a 'broken tan' due to her underbelly.
















My Foxy like boy.

I still would love to breed properly. *sigh*


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

They're all very cute! 

Now that I see the one with the colored rump, I'd bet you a dollar that the BEW is all spots (s/s).


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Jack Garcia said:


> They're all very cute!
> 
> Now that I see the one with the colored rump, I'd bet you a dollar that the BEW is all spots (s/s).


Thank you!
I'll take you up on that bet if I knew how we could prove it, kidding. I never even thought you could get a mouse that is just all spots. Makes them sound cuter


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## sys15 (Nov 26, 2011)

the last mouse (fox) looks very much like a ce/ce black tan.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

sys15 said:


> the last mouse (fox) looks very much like a ce/ce black tan.


Is a Black Fox just a diluted Black Tan?


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## sys15 (Nov 26, 2011)

Cordane said:


> sys15 said:
> 
> 
> > the last mouse (fox) looks very much like a ce/ce black tan.
> ...


a chinchilla diluted black tan. chinchilla impacted the black coloration only slightly, so it still appears black. ce dramatically dilutes both eumelanin and pheomelanin, so the black is changed to a beige/stone/coffee while the tan becomes white or something close to it.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

I was curious about that. His brother was a black tan but with the black diluted to a chinchilla colour.


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## sys15 (Nov 26, 2011)

Cordane said:


> I was curious about that. His brother was a black tan but with the black diluted to a chinchilla colour.


what do you mean by chinchilla color? in mice, chinchilla usually refers to either a gene (a c dilution allele, which removes pheomelanin and has a much lesser effect on eumelanin) or a variety (agouti tan, also expressing the chinchilla gene). the color of an actual chinchilla would probably be closest to a blue mouse (of common mouse colors).


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Oh, sorry. Still totally new to colours. A champagne colour with a the tan/ginger under belly of the black fox.


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## sys15 (Nov 26, 2011)

Cordane said:


> Oh, sorry. Still totally new to colours. A champagne colour with a the tan/ginger under belly of the black fox.


hmm, a dove tan? did it have pink eyes?


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

He did.


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## sys15 (Nov 26, 2011)

Cordane said:


> He did.


so, a black tan with pink-eyed dilution. that would be unrelated to any c locus dilutions.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Mouse genetics are awfully confusing to me. I still want to learn though.


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

Have you tried the finnmouse site?
http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/genetics/chart.html

What I did, was try to learn as much as possible pertaining to the mice I was working with. Also, regarding pied and broken, it is comparable to how every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. Broken mice are also pied mice, but not all pied mice are broken. Like Jack says though you can ignore the terminology, but I think it helps to be specific.


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## Cordane (May 22, 2012)

Frizzle said:


> Have you tried the finnmouse site?
> http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/genetics/chart.html
> 
> What I did, was try to learn as much as possible pertaining to the mice I was working with. Also, regarding pied and broken, it is comparable to how every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. Broken mice are also pied mice, but not all pied mice are broken. Like Jack says though you can ignore the terminology, but I think it helps to be specific.


I like to be specific when I know what it's meant to be.
I only used "broken" because that's the term I used for my minilop colouring.

I'll have a look at that website soon, I'm meant to be cooking dinner for my Dad.
Thank you in advance


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