# Young tricolor bucks



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

These boys are about two months old; they are from Elektra, tri doe, and Punk, tri buck.


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## Frizzle (Oct 6, 2011)

I always like seeing your tri colors, they look so good and I love the colors! The faces of the dark and white nosed ones are my favorite.


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## Tikmio (Oct 9, 2011)

Those are beautiful, moustress!

May I ask, is there any way you can make a tri-color without having the tri-color gene to use?


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks guys!

Nope; no way except the proper genes. There are meeces that can seem to be tricolor, but really aren't, and they don't breed true. The Splashed gene is a novel factor that some think occurred as a natural mutation, and some (like moi  ) who are convinced that it's the result of a transgenic manipulation in a laboratory (or the basement lab or a mad scientist, bwahaha...). Since I don't have the expertise or equipment to do an analysis of the genes involved, I have more or less agreed to drop the subject unless asked...

Splashed is dominant in the presence of two recessive genes in the C locus. The genes that controls many of the dilutions found in fancy mousies are packaged together in that location. any combination of two of those, with the exception of albino, which covers anything else that might be present in other color genes.

My theory is that there is no separate Splashed gene, except as it exists as a piece spliced onto the C locus, causing the wonderful changes in colors and patterns. It works the same, though, whether you attribute it to transgenics or not.

All you need to get started is a mousie that has the Splashed genes and the patience to breed a couple of generations in order to get the required lineup of C locus recessives which are any combo of two of these common dilutions: c^ch (chinchilla), c^h (himalayan/siamese), c^e (extreme dilution), and c (albino). Which two you have paired will affect the types of colored patches, the locations of those pathes, and the eye colors.

A mousie that is Splashed but doesn't show it has one full color dominant gene (C) and one of those dilutions as the second part of that pair (genes always come in pairs, one from mom, one from dad). If you pair that mousie with one that is diluted, like a pied beige, you will likely get a tri or splashed out of that litter. The genes cause the diluted color to revert to a darker hue in that same type of color. Beige would go to coffee, chocolate, and black, and maybe some other in between shades. If the diluted mousie you paired it with is a self (solid color) you might get splashed offspring, with the light color as the background and splashes of darker color. You can also get mousies with both splashes and solid patches of color and white markings....the possibilities seem to be endless and so much fun!!!

Of course they had to set standards for showing, which specify how a 'good' tricolor or splashed mousie should look...and that's not that easy to produce in either case. I'm wondering if anyone has thought to include this info in the lists of genetics codes posted in the breeding section...it ought to be there, though, as it's a bit complicated, but not exactly rocket science.

I started with one doe, a pied beige, who was one of those hidden Splashed who had been bred to a boldly marked tricolor buck. She gave me a litter of six, two of which had a few patches of different hue, and I've been building on that for the last four and half (or is it five and a half?) years. Nowadays a lot of folks have gotten tricolor/splashed into their hands, so it's easier to find among breeders. I drove 700 miles round trip to pick up mine which came from a breeder in NYC, dropped them off to a Wisconsin breeder who drove them to her place where I arrived from Minneapolis to collect them.


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## Tikmio (Oct 9, 2011)

Interesting... I wish I had better mice to work with! All I can get is pet store mice in typical colors.


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## Shadowrunner (Sep 26, 2011)

Lovely babies as usual, and what nice tails too.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thanks, Shadowrunner. I have had the advantage of getting a few show quality meeces over ten years ago, and ten years in which to use that and selection to improve my lines. I've been lucky and/or persistent in hunting down good pet type mousies in various local stores. The tris I got to start with had a fraction of show type background also. The thick long tail is something that I very much prefer, huge ears not so much. I like clean ears and and a curvy head shape with nice cheekbones, and I adore a nice widely fanned out set of whiskers.

My tricolors and splashed vary so widely in size and type that it's almost funny. I should take some side by side pix of my littlest adult tris next to some of the really big ones, like Lunker, a blue splashed buck, who came from a cross between my biggest tricolor doe and an immense PEW I got as a baby from reptile store.


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