# introduction



## greydawnbreaking (Oct 25, 2013)

Hey, I'm greydawnbreaking, I've got a small mousery and I'm in Australia. I've just successfully raised my first litters, and I've got a happy and healthy bunch of longcoats, standards, and manx c-dilute pups who are going to be separated in a few days.

My first breeding produced 24 pups out of two mothers, born within 24 hours of each other and raised together in a giant squeaky pile.  I lost one runt, sadly, but the rest are bright and bouncy and doing extremely well. The moms are a manx himalayan fox crossed to a blue-carrying snowtiger, and a burmese fox longhair crossed to a manx lilac burmese longhair. Both of the fathers of these litters lived in stable and peaceful lifelong colonies with their brothers. That's a major breeding goal of mine, so I'm hopeful that the males from these litters will be able to match their fathers' sociability and lack of aggression.

The rest of my mousery consists of an uncle-and-nephews trio of c-dilutes (bone fox, CPB, and himi) living separately, a trio of brothers (agouti longhair, bone rex, colorpoint blue longhair) living together, and a dove girl. The dove has two companions that I bought for her from a pet shop, since she was going to face five weeks of loneliness before the moms came back from maternity leave. They're skittish of me but that's okay--they're gentle, and since I won't breed them they'll live out their lives as pampered pets and nannies. 

I'm interested primarily in breeding longcoat c-dilute and ticked varieties. Australia doesn't have a few genes--a(e) and sa in particular come to mind--but we do have outstanding manx, and I've got some excellent manx butts in my litter that I'd like to work with further. My next planned breeding will start off a agouti-based longcoat line; I'm ultimately aiming for argente and argente silver, blue agouti, and cinnamon.


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## bonsai (Oct 14, 2012)

Hello and a warm Welcome to Australia.
Probably you'd like to show pictures of your mice.
It would be great.


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## andypandy29us (Aug 10, 2012)

hello and welcome 
looking forward to pictures


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## Fantasia Mousery (Jul 16, 2011)

Hi, and welcome. 
I've never heard of 'manx' and 'snowtiger' when talking mice?


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## greydawnbreaking (Oct 25, 2013)

Fantasia Mousery said:


> Hi, and welcome.
> I've never heard of 'manx' and 'snowtiger' when talking mice?


Manx are genetically tailless, it's a recessive trait that can cause anything from very small stumpy tails to true taillessness. It's pretty common in the fancy here. It's a viable mutation, my manx are actually on the whole bolder and more active than the tailled mice. Most breeders I know prefer not to breed manx-manx as a precaution against possible spinal issues, but on the whole they don't have any health issues that I know about.

Their body shape is a bit different from tailed mice, slightly more pear-shaped than lean and racy. The rump on a perfect manx butt looks smooth with just a hairless spot where the tail should be. A male manx can look pretty funny, with the testicles sticking out behind the rump!

Snowtiger is just the local fancy's term for a c-dilute brindle. The ideal would be an evenly pale mouse, white or cream, with distinct black tiger-striping. It's pretty hard to breed a good one, as you might imagine, since the two elements tend to cancel each other out. The buck I bred from had faint tiger-striping when he was a pup that faded as an adult until he looked like a BEW. One of my pups had brindling when she was a fuzzy, but she was a himi so the color was bleached out pretty quickly. There was only about a week where you could tell, and the stripes were incredibly faint, and I never did get a good picture of it. 

If you want to see an example, try here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.509776402437012.1073741836.361261267288527&type=1 This litter was bred from my stud's brother, who had slightly better brindling as an adult. The second to last picture is a snowtiger. And you can see some great pictures of manx babies too.


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## greydawnbreaking (Oct 25, 2013)

These are 4-4.5 week old babies.










Two of my girls, a himi manx and a burmese.










This is what happens to my hand as soon as I put it into the cage--I'm swarmed with baby mice looking for a jungle gym.  This is my girls tank, 14 girls plus the moms. The nine boys are in another tank.

I'm planning to keep about four girls and three boys, with he rest going to various mouseries and pet homes in the area.










Mom Niobe (standard himalayan manx fox) and her BEW manx daughter. Daughter could be bone, but I suspect she's a A(vy) c-dilute.










My favorite boy so far--a LH marked siamese, here next to a standard female siamese. I'm really pleased with how these LH coats turned out, with a very fluffy and dense undercoat.










Ahahahaha balls.  Sorry, I couldn't resist. PEW manx boy.










Three boys in a row--the standard PEW manx, a burmese fox longhair, and a standard BEW. The marks on the BEW's tail are just sharpie, so I could tell him apart from a nearly-identical sister.


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