# Black x Blue?



## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

I'm just starting out, so I'm more or less just breeding for health and type for now. But I am curious about the offspring of a black buck and blue doe? Inadvertently improving the richness of the blue and cutting make on mealy-ness would be nice, but it's really not my focus. The black buck just so happens to have really great type for a foundation mouse. This crossing is either so simple that it's obvious and no one asks, or so obscure that I cant find much information on it, probably the former!

My blue doe is due any day now, but it will probably take a week or so to figure out everyone's color. So what will I likely end up with?


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

Well... If the buck does not carry Blue, and they carry nothing else in common, you'll get 100% Black babies. Either way, all of them will carry Blue. And Black is indeed good for colour improvement on Blues  So it's a good start.


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## Amtma Mousery (Jan 29, 2015)

If you breed the babies together, you will get approximately 25% Blue mice.


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

I'll probably do just that. She had 12 and I decided to keep 6, a male and all females. She seems less stressed now. I think the runt miiiight be blue or something other than black, so I kept her around.


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

If one is a runt, it will be showing colour and fur much more slowly than the others, so it might still just be blue or black.


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

I can tell today the runt is definitely broken belted, probably black.


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

Interesting


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

I guess this means the parents are aa/btn and aa/dd/btn ?

Upon further inspection, I have a boy and a girl with headspots as well. So probably aa/nbt/nhs and aa/dd/nbt/nhs.

4.71g - the big boy
4.36g - a girl 
4.47g - a girl 
4.52g - a girl 
4.39g - a headspot girl 
3.51g - the runt boy


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

Interesting discoveries today... the headspot pups seem to have white splotches on their underbellies? The boy in particular has a white chin sort of like in the photo, and some white patches on the belly. :/ Not exactly something I want to continue, but at least it's minimal and recessive?


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

They're just Piebald


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

Is it easy to breed out or will it likely involve out-crossing? It's not a deal-breaker, but I definitely wasn't expecting 2 selfs to throw 3 piebald pups. 2 of the girls are actually self though.


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

It is recessive, so can be a bit of a pain to breed out. It means both parents carry Piebald, and there's a 50% chance for each of the Self pups to carry it too. So if you want to avoid it, you need to breed Self on Self and hope for it to disappear somewhere down the line, but recessive genes can stay hidden for a very long time.
That said, I love Piebalds and there are lots of varieties to work with if you're interested in that, so it might be worth looking into.


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

Is piebald the same as broken marked?


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

Broken is a Piebald variety. Same as Dutch, Berkshire, Even and others. It's the exact same gene, what defines them is how and where the spots are. But Piebald is the overall term, and the name of the gene.

By the way, Blue is recessive too, so since one parent is it, all babies carry it.


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## Northern Appalachian (Jun 28, 2017)

Yeah I'll probably end up breeding the bigger pie buck to two self does for that 25% blue and decide what to do with the pie factor in future generations.


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