# Lots of Blackthorn Mice (Pic Heavy)



## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Young black Dutch buck:













































Adult dove Dutch buck:






















































Silver Foxes (black, Burmese and blue):








































































Marten Sables:






















































Edited to add some blue selfs, which I got from Mousebreeder a few days ago to help improve the blue foxes:


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## Roland (Aug 17, 2009)

Hi Sarah,

your foxes are improving very much (even the blue ; -) and the Marten Sables are very nice too. Both varities should be good stuff for export to the USA...

Regards, Roland
Chilloutarea Mousery - Tricolor , Splashed , Merle , Recessive Red


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Thank you, Roland


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## Malene (Jun 8, 2010)

Very nice. I like your black fox


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## The Boggit keeper (Mar 5, 2010)

Oh super mice- I love your Foxes and the Sables are a beautiful colour! :mrgreen:


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## maddeh (Jul 14, 2011)

The Dutch Dove buck is gorgeous! It's a shame that his saddle (don't know if that's the right term..) isn't very even, but I think I love him :love 
Also your Black Fox has enormous ears! Very jealous!


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## ekimsivad (Sep 20, 2011)

Hi Sarah,

Some really nice mice here. As someone who enjoyed quite a lot of success with Dutch in the 90s and early 2000s, I have to say that yours are looking very good. What impresses me most is the type you seem to be getting with them, gone are the snipey little so and so's that used to love to nip and then jump off the judging table.

I was very lucky to have Frank Hawley as my mentor all those years ago and spent many an educational afternoon at his house where he kept over 70 boxes of Dutch in his spare bedroom. You are to be encouraged and commended for the work you are doing with them, I'm sure Frank would have been very impressed.

Regards,
Mike


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Thank you for your kind comments everyone!  Mike, that's high praise indeed and much appreciated  



> The Dutch Dove buck is gorgeous! It's a shame that his saddle (don't know if that's the right term..) isn't very even, but I think I love him


He is rather sweet. Very calm, as you can see he barely moved whilst having his picture taken! His saddle is pretty good, it's just such a shame about that single dove spot just above it. The under is better but the cheeks are rather poor. Still, his type and size make him a great breeder mouse.


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## maddeh (Jul 14, 2011)

Sorry I didn't mean to insult him, I was just trying to say that (to my amateur eye) that little spot is the only thing spoiling him. 
His cheeks look good in the last photo (hard to see in the others because of his colouration), how are they supposed to be? 
I love big typey calm bucks, they look quite 'hard' but are soppy little things when it comes to it


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Oh I didn't take it as an insult :lol: you're right, his saddle does let him down but his cheeks are worse. You can't really see in the photos though (it's much more obvious in real life), one cheek extends too far behind the ear and the other just touches into the whisker bed.


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## ekimsivad (Sep 20, 2011)

Sarah,

I particularly like the work you are doing on the Dove Dutch. I know the old argument about the contrast and that's fair enough but you should defitely persevere.

In the 1990s I spent a year working on Red Dutch and although I never got to the stage where I had one that I would have been happy to show (although I got pretty close once or twice), the contrast between the red and the white was very pleasing on the eye. I also bred Chocolate dutch and these were very attractive. In fact I actually won Best in Show at a L&SCM&RC show with a choc dutch buck who went on to gain championship status. However like most dutch breeders, most of my success came with blacks and blues.

You have to be a very dedicated fancier to take on Dutch mice as they are not for the fainthearted. If you like to win lots of prizes breed something else was always my advice. As you will know only too well Sarah, the great thing about Dutch is that when you do produce a good one it can potentially have a fairly long show life. I had a black buck who became a champion and was still winning at nearly two years old!

Mike


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Yes, I find the dove Dutch very attractive Mike. This is the best one I've bred so far:










She's an old moulty girl now though:










Sadly, she had a big v-shape in her undercut, but she held her own at the shows, beating quite a few black Dutch in her classes. My dove Dutch are directly descended from dove self outcrosses so their type is wonderful (for Dutch).

I have been lucky enough to breed four winning Dutch in the last year, all black though. My big aim for this year is for best marked with a pink eyed Dutch. Don't know if it will happen, but I'm gonna try


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## ekimsivad (Sep 20, 2011)

Sarah

I just love the type you are getting on your Dutch, that dove is really nice.

I'm sure the work you are putting in with the doves will be rewarded soon. I tended to find that any judge who had actually kept dutch themselves was always more appreciative of the "rarer" colours as they knew what effort and commitment had gone into creating them.

Are there many dutch breeders in the NMC at the moment?

It seems to be cyclical with dutch, sometimes there are lots of people keeping them and then they go through periods when they are just bred by a dedicated few. I can recall one point when I was the only person in the South of England breeding and exhibiting them. I ended up managing to convince a couple of other serious fanciers to take some on. One of those was Tony Jones and he ended up producing a cracking chocolate dutch which did a lot of winning.

Mike


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Thank you 

There are more people with Dutch than there were when I started! When I was taking them up there were only three or four people with them, there's a few more now. It's great to see them on the show bench. The whole of the marked section has become more popular actually. SarahC's fantastic work on her brokens (which I believe were just about extinct on the show bench when she took them up) has done a lot to make them more popular and persuaded many others to take them up, and variegateds are getting their fair share of winning in too. Bandeds are still only shown by one person as far as I'm aware, and Hereford is very rarely seen at Northern shows but is slowly increasing in numbers. It's amazing how things have changed in three years: marked is rarely the smallest section now but I remember when there barely fifteen Maxeys on the bench.


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## ekimsivad (Sep 20, 2011)

For my sins I have acquired some Brokens from Sarah C and Phil Arnold. They will keep me suitably frustrated no doubt but you cannot beat the anticipation as you wait for the markings to show through on the pinkies.

I have kept and bred mice now for forty years and in all that time I have always had at least one marked variety so it was never going to be any different this time. Who knows I may even be tempted back to Dutch!  The only marked variety I have not kept in all that time is the Hereford (and the Tricolour to be fair).


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

That blue in the second to last pic has incredible color saturation; even his toes are blue.


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Tooksomepictures of young Dutch ladies before the camera battery died today:


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## kellyt (Nov 23, 2011)

They are lovely.


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## Viry (Oct 31, 2011)

They are so beautiful.


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## laoshu (Sep 16, 2009)

I love looking at your posts sarah! such attractive mice all of them! love the blue fox the best


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Thank you! I love my Dutch mice so much :love1


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## Kingnoel (Apr 23, 2011)

Those Martin sables are stunning. Are they seen at all in the states?


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

I don't think so, at least not like these. They are made with the dominant red gene, tan and chinchilla (Ay/at cch/cch), but to get the belly white you first need to have a really strong red tan, as the redder the tan the whiter the chinchilla gene can bleach it. In other words, the more pheomelanin, the more the chinchilla gene can affect the colour. Due to your unfortunate lack of good pheomelanin in your country, you wouldn't be able to make good marten sables. But then, after the import of some good reds... 

I don't know if recessive red can make a sable as good as dominant red can, but if it can the chinchilla gene would work the same way.


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## Kingnoel (Apr 23, 2011)

Thanks for the info! The seeds are planted


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

> Thanks for the info! The seeds are planted


I think that deserves an 'evil scheme laugh': mwahaHAHAHAAAAA! :twisted: :lol:


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## WillowDragon (Jan 7, 2009)

The type on that dove dutch is stunning, you are a mouse genius!!

Sometimes it physically hurts me not having mice anymore, especially when i see pictures of great ones... i'm in pain right now!!


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Kingnoel, if you do want to make these beautiful mice then this info will help you:

The marten sable below is lacking a bit in pheomelanins. You can see that instead of a white belly, her belly colour is cream:








Her siblings were black foxes but not ones with good contrast like the ones I posted, these were charcoal with cream bellies. So that tells me there isn't enough contrast in the modifiers. The fox they produce should be black on top and pure white underneath. I think that breeding in my showline black foxes will help the contrast between the top and belly colours.

This buck has been bred from a cream outcross, he is Ay/at c/cch and has produced pink eyed white offspring:








They were bred to creams to improve the type,as dominant red suffers from poor type as a rule. The albino gene has given him a snowy white belly, but it has also lightened the top colour as well.It is not the 'rich sepia' that the show standards calls for. I kept him for breeding because of his white belly.

This doe is the closest to the show standard that I have:








She has the rich sepia top and her belly is very pale, although not quite white yet.

I am still learning about this variety myself, but if I can help you I will certainly try


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## SarahY (Nov 6, 2008)

Thank you Willowdragon!


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## Kingnoel (Apr 23, 2011)

Sometimes it physically hurts me to look at Blackthorn posts. That last sable doe is stunning, that evil seed found way to fertile soil :lol: Maybe I'll just export myself your way!


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