# orange colored hair appearing.. molt?



## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

my mouse marble (who some of you are familiar with  ) has some orange/tan fur appearing on her stomach and neck. theres just a little bit right now but it wasnt there last time i checked her so i dont know if she is molting or something? please help! thank you! (in the last pic you can see it under her tail)


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Those are classic places where tan markings would show.

The only thing that confuses me is why it wouldn't've been there before. lol

In that first picture her facial expression is so cute!


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

haha so then what is going on here if the markings werent there before?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I don't know.

Could it have been there before without you noticing, since it's so small in both places and you would normally concentrate on her markings (I know that's the first thing I look at)?


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

it definitely wasnt there before. i have pictures of her before it appeared :| . its so strange! but i love it. i hope more of it changes color :mrgreen: . haha im shocked you dont know what it is! you seem to know what everything is :lol:  . anyone else have an idea?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Haha! "I don't know" are good words to say sometimes (when you mean it). 

I have a friend in New York who bred a black mouse who had an orange spot like this one but on her back. It never reproduced and was written off as something random like chimerism, but it was there from birth.

Has she produced any tan babies, by chance?


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

she hasnt had any babies yet but she is hopefully pregnant right now so i will find out soon enough. i hope she does though cuz i like tan mice


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

You'll have to keep us updated with pics as to how the babies turn out!


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

haha i will! if she is pregnant that is :| . she was with the male from feb 24th to march 11th so its been about 4 weeks since she was first with him. but she doesnt seem to have much of a belly so im not sure. i guess i'll find out though!


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Sometimes if that happens, you can take her out for a week or so then add her again. I don't know (there I said it again!) why, but sometimes that helps. Or try her with a different male.


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

i'll wait a week and then put her back in there. just so it will be 3 weeks since i took her out of his cage so i can be sure she isnt pregnant. maybe she is just having a small amount of babies. thats happened to me before where i had a mouse that didnt look pregnant and then surprise! she had 2 babies  . of course that was like 7 years ago and i was only 11 so i dont remember too much :|


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I have noticed that my orange and red meeces look darker now that I keep the temp in there a few degrees cooler. I have also had mousies whose tan bellies didn't show until they were three or four months. It looks like a nice deep orange too; the babies should be pretty as well. Her markings in general are quite nice. She's a cutie!


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

hmm.. interesting.. so maybe she is tan? i think its so strange how simple things like temperature can change how they look. its weird how the environment does that


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## WillowDragon (Jan 7, 2009)

She may be a chinchillaed tan (fox) who's belly has gotten darker??

If her belly was whiter, you wouldn't have noticed it as much against her markings 

W xx


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

I wouldn't say her belly color is "deep." It's somewhat oranger than most washed-out tans you see in petstores, but this is what a deep orange looks like:










(picture taken at a show I went to)


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

wow that is crazy mouse! very nice  . that makes me hope that she is a tan. i think its weird though how it wasnt there before.. i would've noticed it when i bought her cuz i had to check if she was a female.. hmm.. maybe it was just very light


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## WillowDragon (Jan 7, 2009)

Thats actually an excellent tan for a chocolate


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yep, that's the color you should breed toward, I think. The line of demarcation itself has problems that would be faulted, though. It's not supposed to have those "bumps" in it that you see. I remember some mice being faulted for this whose belly color itself was good, but I can't remember if this mouse was one of them.

Sometimes colors do change a little bit with molting. Maybe the original poster's mouse is molting and before it was a paler tan. The only reason I'm pressing the tan possibility is because of the location.


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

ya there isnt any of that orange above her belly. i'll just keep checking her and see ifshe gets more color


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## WillowDragon (Jan 7, 2009)

She's definately a tan or a fox... i can tell by the line under her chin


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

WillowDragon said:


> She's definately a tan or a fox... i can tell by the line under her chin


tans and foxes have lines?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Yep. The line of demarcation (edit: which means where the orange/white meets the top color).


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## nanette37 (Feb 1, 2010)

oh i see it! and im looking at a post right now of a broken chocolate tan and it has small markings that look similar mine. this is the one im looking at: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2808

so she must be tan then! yay!


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