# Tan and fox inheritance and intensity



## Kayota (Dec 29, 2013)

I picked up a black tan doe and a chocolate fox buck today. They both seem to have less "intense" white/tan on their bellies from what I've seen online. Can they be bred to have more solid undersides?

Also, if I breed them to self mice will I get mostly tans or foxes or is it recessive?


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## Serena (Dec 29, 2011)

I'm not very familiar with foxes, but tans certainly can be bred to have a more vibrant tan belly.
A common fault in tans are tan hairs behind the ears and a dark throat spot. It is possible to select against that.

a(t) is a dominant gene (one copy is enough to make a mouse tan). if you breed a tan to a self you will get around 50% tans theoretically (100% if your tan is a(t)/a(t))

A black Fox is genetically a(t)/* B/* c(ch)/c(ch) D/* P/* according to finnmouse. [the * means that it can be the same or a different allel in this place that is recessive to the one in the first place]
if you pair it up with a self you will get tans in every case. if the self carries c(ch) you might even get some foxes.
If you want to improve the foxes, you should select the best foxes you have and pair them up together.

I always say theoretically because if you do a punett square it will give you those numbers. In litters the genes aren't always distributed like the math said they should be. Punett squares are an idealised version that shows the outcome in an ideal case where the genes are distributed evenly. If you breed very large numbers of mice you will get close to the numbers, but in a single litter or two there's a possibility that the outcome is completely different. 
It's the same with gender. in an ideal case you get 50:50 male to female. In humans I think the ratio is around 106:100. so it's very close, but not perfect


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## PPVallhunds (Jul 26, 2010)

As above they can be bred to have better bellies but it takes alot of selective breeding to get them realy good. Basically it's modifiers that determines how tan or white a belly is (just like it's modifiers that decide how much white a pied mouse has). Just a case of breeding the best to the best and removing the worse.


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## Kayota (Dec 29, 2013)

Thanks for the info! I hope I can maybe get some nice bellies in a year or so


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## Serena (Dec 29, 2011)

I wish you the best of luck.
I'm trying with tans myself (first genertion after a forced break, so the quality of them isn't due to me yet but to the breeders I got the parents from)

I attached 3 pictures, each one of a different doe (sisters). You can see the throat spot quite good. It's a common fault and I'm trying to breed away from it. 
but atm it's a good marker to tell them apart. Otherwise I couldn't ^^ (one of the big problems for me in unmarked mice of the same colour ^^")


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