# Hi from Colorado, USA!



## kates

Hi,
I'm really not a "breeder" per se, I just have 5 females from the pet store right now. When I was younger I used to breed them and enjoyed it a lot, thats why I'd like to get back into the mouse fancy as a hobbyist. I am enthralled by all the colors possible, and I love how curious mice are and each has her own personality. The hobby of breeding and showing fancy mice doesn't seem to be very big here around where I live- most places only carry feeder mice. I'm excited to join this forum and learn more about mice and keeping and breeding them, as well as hearing from people from all over the US and Britain, which is fun too


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## minibears

hi and welcome, you'll like it here, there is some pure genius


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## evansrabbitranch

Hi! Usually people say petshops only sell feeder mice they mean pews so does that mean your girls are all pink eyed whites?


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## MouseHeaven

Actually, feeder mice don't generally mean PEWs. Feeder mice are usually considered a poor quality mouse, in terms of standards. Although, if you aren't buying a "feeder" mouse from a large company who gets their animals from mills, you may sometimes find a nice variety of _okay_ mice. In the US most people think of pet shops as Pecto or Petsmart, but there are plenty of small businesses who own mice that come from other breeders. The pet shops in my town, (currently out of business  ) carried very large beautiful mice, who were kept in excellent conditions. You could tell they didn't originate from a large corperation, and weren't only used as feeder mice.


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## evansrabbitranch

MouseHeaven said:


> Actually, feeder mice don't generally mean PEWs. Feeder mice are usually considered a poor quality mouse, in terms of standards.


Huh, casue the petshops near me, feeder mice are all PEWs and if they have any color to them they are sold as Fancy Pet Mice. I live learning how things work in other areas so thanks for sharing!


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## MouseHeaven

Np! It usually varries from area to area, but there is a nice variety of colors from the pet stores near me; mostly agoutis, blacks, chocolates, PEWs, and broken blacks. Although, I did see a fawn one time, which totally surprised me (even though it had a poor coat.)


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## The Boggit keeper

Hello and Welcome!


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## kates

Hi and thanks for welcoming me! Here's the deal: I got my first two females from Pets Mart-both agouti and white( my terminology may not be that great yet...) and then a pink-eyed "champagne"( light tan?) female from another Pets Mart. Its funny because they only sell females of all rodents, and only have 2 or 3 mice for sale at a time. I was like "where have all the mice gone??". So it was around this time that I began trying to find available mice on the net( couldn't), and thus began reading more about "fancy" mice and their standards and varieties and genetics....but here in Colorado there seem to be no sources of mice other than "feeders"( which are mostly PEWs but have a lot of other colors too from what I have seen). This is a long reply LOL, sorry. I ended up going to PETCO, and indeed, they had TONS of mice for sale, although it was apparent most were intended as feeders from the overcrowded conditions. BUT, I found a really beautiful "ivory"(?) female and a sable male!!!! Very exciting! They wouldn't probably do well in a show but at least they are interesting colors and healthy and friendly. So I'm off to a good start I think...Note: I am keeping the male separate for now until I decide what to breed to what to improve color and type, etc....


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## evansrabbitranch

I have to admit, I find I get the best mice in my area at Petco. Next month is tax return time and I will be scoping their stock again. I found a petshop in Springfield I have not bought mice from before and will get a few males there (they do not sell females) for my agouti girls to see what I get and hopefully bring up the length of my mice. The mice I have now are short and thin or small and blocky. Short being about 3 inches in the body and about the same in tail, small being about 3.5 in the body but shorter in tail. Under 3 inches that is. Small, almost screams over-inbreeding. Do you have photos of your mice? They sound lovely!


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## webzdebs

hello and welcome


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## kates

Hi, thanks! I do have pictures, but I have to say they aren't very good. Mice are not easy to photograph, although they are gradually become tamer and not as scared of being handled...


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## kates

Hi, I want to attach some photos of my mice but it keeps saying the "file is too big max allowed is 256 KB" how do I get the file size smaller?


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## evansrabbitranch

You have to use a photo editing software to resize it. Google free Photo editing software, there are some good ones you can down load for free but I got mine for a buck at a thrift shop.


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## kates

ok thanks I think I did it, but the pics are now really small. I tried posting pics in the New and Existing Mice area, but I'm not sure they are showing up as big as I wanted them to. Well thanks anyway!


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## evansrabbitranch

When you resize, do it by pixels and set it to 400 or 500 that usally give a good size photo for sharing on sites like this. Also if you have photobucket linking to them from there is even easier.


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