# Chocolate odd-eye tricolor



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Here's a young doe from the 'mystery' litters of merlish/roanish meeces. She's pretty much all grown up now. I'm not sure if she's tricolor or whether the lighter patches are just from white hairs mixed with the chocolate.


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## candycorn (Oct 31, 2011)

Looks like a chocolate pied merle to me! Stunning!!!


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## besty74 (May 26, 2012)

she is beautiful


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## shiremice (Dec 16, 2010)

Love!! She is gorgeous.


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## Whurmy (Mar 10, 2012)

Oh what a beautiful little girl. :O I agree, I think it *looks* like a lovely merle, very clean and elegant, rather than the splotchy that is so common. However, I'm not a mouse expert, this is just my opinion. :')

Either way, she is DARLING. <33


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks, guys! 

I'm still up in the air about what is causing this 'merle' appearance. I never bred merle, or roan, for that matter. I suppose it was there lurking, waiting to be brought out by all the inbreeding I did to recover my fawn line after the accident a year and a half ago.
I'm still doing more pairings of the meeces that have this intermixture of white hairs with the colors. The appearance of these mousies changes, which is something one might expect from roan...I'm not sure about merle, but then, who is?

My current pairing of Shimmer and Cinque, both of whom come from the litters that produced this doe and the others of her kind, hopefully will shed some light on the subject.

I've got the splashed/tricolor genes mixed in with all my other genes with the exception of the ones from the reptile store and pet shop. I'm pretty sure of their genetic makeup, so maybe I'll try breeding one of the mystery meeces with one of those. It's fun for me to try to discover the genes of the meeces I have. I started with pet store stock about 14 years ago, have added and mixed some English show genes. Recessives can, I've heard, hide for many generations, so maybe that's all that is going on. We'll just have to see what happens.


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## MissStitches (Mar 31, 2012)

Oh, how I love the odd-eyes! :lol: She does look merle to me too, but she could be a tricolour. Who knows! She's extremely pretty, though.


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