# breeding genetics question



## jessierose2006

Ok i bred rabbits -- you can pop colors that go as far back as 10 generations
I bred cavies-- same thing

ie: Blk x Blk -- you could pop a lilac if its in the background (I have done this and was very surprised --- it was actually my best lilac too lol)

With mice is it the same idea how far back can a color be pulled from?

Also how do you tell fur types apart ie Standard vs Satin vs Angora vs Satin Angora when they are under 5 weeks of age?

I bred Standard x Satin Angora (dont know if this was a good idea or not) but will that mean i will pop some of each or does one have superiority over another fur type?

sorry for all the ? i am tryin to learn as much as i can and everything ive searched for mouse genetics is some scientific site which confuses me even more.


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## jessilynn

Standard X satin angora will produce all standard, unless the standard parent is hiding satin or angora.


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## Rhasputin

Standard coat is dominate over angora and satin.


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## jessierose2006

darn  then i guess im stuck with all standard babies as i bought the females from the petstore...  

oh well at least maybe ill get a variety of colors (maybe...)


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## Rhasputin

Depends what colours the parents are.


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## jessierose2006

Black and Himi
Bk Gold and Himi
Blue Tan and Himi


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## Rhasputin

Black and himi will give you blacks and himis, assuming there are no recessives.
What is a bk gold?
Blue tan and himi will give you black tans and himi foxes assuming the himi doesn't carry blue.

. . . I think.
For some reason the genetics part of my brain feels like it's not working properly today. lol.


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## jessierose2006

I use BK from when i showed rabbits sorry in rabbits BK or BRK means Broken (White with colored markings)


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## Rhasputin

Oh, in mice that's called piebald, broken refers to a specific pattern of piebald markings. 

And what is gold? Probably a Recessive Yellow.
Mixed with himi would make. . . I'm not sure, because I'm not sure what the recessive yellow is covering up. Probably agouti, or black. So you'll probably get blacks/agoutis, and himis.


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## SarahY

There won't be any Himalayans unless the females carry albino or Siamese  You'll get blacks and/or agoutis from all three matings, and some will be tan in the tan does' litters.

Sarah xxx


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## Rhasputin

Okay that's what I was missing! :lol: 
I knew I was leaving something out. Yeah, no himis unless . . .what she said.


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## jessierose2006

great so im pretty much getting a bunch of maybe 2 colors :roll: :lol: o well lol.

Umm on a side note----- I noticed my Blue Tan and my Himi Doe Both have a white tipped tail maybe like a 1/4-1/2 inch on the tip. is this from breeding other colors into the line, inbreeding, or something pretty regular for the colors?


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## jessierose2006

@ Rhasputin ok sorry i have a piebald thats actually kinda funny as you can get piebalds in snakes too lol.

Gold was the color that looked most closely to what she looks like from the AFRMA site in the color standard section i guess she looks like a light fawn if that helps any


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## Rhasputin

If they have white tipped tails, they may carry piebald spotting.

Try getting a picture of your 'gold' mouse. She's most likely a recessive yellow. Black or pink eyes?


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## jessierose2006

pink eyes


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## jessierose2006

sorry here's a better pic of her and yes i was in the bathroom as thats the only room in the apartment that has decent lighting :lol: :lol:


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## Rhasputin

Almost certainly a recessive yellow. Possibly an argente if she has a grayish undercoat.


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## jessierose2006

just checked and......

her color hold true all the way to the skin soooo now what is she if she's not a gold?


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## Rhasputin

Almost certainly recessive yellow, or brindle. Brindles can be a solid yellow colour with no stripes sometimes.


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## jessierose2006

ok. so now if i take one of the babies back to mom or dad could i pop angoras and satins as the babies would have satin angora in the background?


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## jessierose2006

and im most likely going to end up with agoutis as the 2 standards had a litter prior to me getting them and at the petstore all the babies were black, gold agouti with a blue undercoat, and pieds lol so guess i should have mentioned that but i dont know wat they were bred with at the petstore.


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## bethmccallister

The best way to reproduce your a desired recessive trait (Satin, Angora, etc) with only one parent is produce a litter with your best mate (use the one with the best type). The babies from this litter will all be Heterozygous or carriers of the desired trait. You then breed the parent with the recessive trait to one of the babies and you will get about 50% of the resulting second litter displaying the trait.


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## jessierose2006

OK sorry i have tried to learn the genetics thing of mice but i have to say its mighty confusing then again im prolly trying to learn to much at one time  i haveto say mice and snakes are both similar in genetics from what i am noticing with hets and reccessives and doulble and triple hets....


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## bethmccallister

Have you found this site yet? You'll want to bookmark this specific section I've linked to since it's hard to get to otherwise. I use it about once a week just to verify my assumptions mostly now but when I started it was a bible. Here you go...

http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/genetics/index.html


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## jessierose2006

from rabbits:

black is always dominant and the recessives of black are blue, and chocolate
recessives of blue is lilac
recessives of chocolate are tortise shell and lilac, seal

agouti is dominant but a black to agouti can give both but makes the aguoti darker in the offspring

broken (pied) is dominant when breeding broken (pied) to solids you get mostly broken( pieds)
but broken (pied) to broken(pied) leads to less coloring aka charlies( 10% or less color)

normally black is used to darken too light colors (ie lilac, chocolate, blue) but can lead to sloppy black offsping if done to much
white to any other self leads to scattered white hairs

i never dealt with himis or otters (aka foxes, tans) so iam unsure if they are dom or rec. am i on the right track so far or am i totally off maybe i am trying to use rabbit genetics too much ... which seemed so much easier than mice


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## bethmccallister

Most of it is matching up, I see some differences. Piebald is recessive in mice and the spotting and amount of color is determined by the number of K factors present. Foxes/Tans are dominant a(t) to most except other A locus genes, that being said they are a recessive of A. There are several Loci present and they all interact with each other differently like rabbits.


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## jessierose2006

whew  at least im kinda on the right track i wanted to try to get the colors down then work towards the scientific genetics part of the whole thing i think whats screwing me up is how many different genes one mouse can have thanks for the website i cant wait to sit down tonite and actually start reading it.


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## jessierose2006

ok. soooo.... looking at that website do all mice use all the loci and if so would i use them in order A/B/C/D/E/P/W

and i am going to try this i have a Blue Tan Satin Angora so would her genes be 
a^t/B/C/d/go/sa/+

and my Himi Satin Angora Buck is
?/c^h/D/go/p/sa/+

i cant figure what his A gene would be... but am i doing good so far? and then how would i find out what the babies could be? from these 2 gene locisets? sorry


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## jessierose2006

oops i forgot his B gene lol

?/B/c^h/D/go/p/sa/+


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## bethmccallister

The C locus is a little more complicated then the rest of the genes after A that is. Each mouse actually has two copies of each loci so your Himi is actually a/a - c(h)/c - go/go - sa/sa. Most Himi's naturally have ruby eyes but I don't remember why at the moment so I'm not sure about the p loci being present.

If you have two copies of c(h) then you have a Siamese and not c(h)/c.


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## jessierose2006

so you dont enter the genes it doesnt have ie loci are A/B/C/D/E/P/W but the himi only uses A/C/E/P/S

so then the corrected blue tan satin angora would be
a^t/a^t/d/d/go/go/sa/sa

thanks for being so patient with me i know im being a pain


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## bethmccallister

Your fine, been there believe me, lol. I don't know everything either and I find out something new everyday. I think generally when the loci are homozygous you write it like a^t/* (but I usually don't conform there) and your assumption about not writing out all the unknown/undisplayed loci for a pedigree are correct. So a black is a/a. And a blue tan is a^t/* - d/d and then the coat variety... I like writing out the known recessives though like d/d and even like noting the carriers on the other loci. Makes record keeping simpler for me.

In otherwords I know there is a standard for writing out the loci but most people understand shorthand better.


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## jessierose2006

ok  i just felt like i was asking to much 

but so on a pedigree even though you right down type and color you still need the gene information?


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## bethmccallister

Yep, generally a pedigree lists 3 things Variety or Phenotype for example my Himalayan is Fancy / Himalayan / Beige / Standard.
Then the Date of Birth (DOB): 9/27/10 and then the Genome: a/* c^h/c


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## jessierose2006

where does Beige come from? are there different colored himis?


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## m137b

It's good to see they're doing well for you. Sorry to chime in so late here.

But I can assure you none of the 3 you got from me have pink eye dilution.

The himi buck does carry recessive spotting, and should carry blue.

The himi doe should also carry blue.

The Blue Tan doe doesn't have good color, like I mentioned before, because she's the result of a test breeding to find out what recessives the dame was carrying. She either carries c^ch or c^h, her c-dilute littermates were blue burmese splashed, so she possibly carries splashed as well..


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## SarahY

Himalayan won't have beige (stone in UK) in it because Himalayan is c/cch - one albino and one Siamese gene, and beige/stone is ce/ce - two extreme dilution genes. Incidentally, 'ce' causes the mouse to have black eyes instead of red.

Sarah xxx


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## jessierose2006

im not worried about bad color i was just trying to figure out what i might get out of my breeding and trying to understand all this mumbo jumbo about genetics but now im totally lost :lol: :lol: :lol:

Who said they had the pink eye dilution??? where would that fit in???

ohno.....  :shock: i think im just gonna give up on this for now and just hope for the best :lol: i am now totally confused

so i forget the beige all together on himi.
where does the possible spotting and blue carrier possibiliy fit in to th equation???? 
What does all this mean???    :?: :?:


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## bethmccallister

:lol: Spend about an hour on the website that I linked this thread too in the beginning and it should start to make some sense. We are always good sports for genetic questions so we will be around for more questions in the future.


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## jessierose2006

:lol:  ok i printed it out so i dont have to sit and look at the screen all night


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## SarahY

From what I can tell, it seems that:

Himalayan buck is a/a c/ch D/d go/go S/s sa/sa
Blue Tan doe is at/* C/ch or C/cch go/go sa/sa Spl/spl.
Piebald 'Gold' doe is *most likely *A/* e/e s/s or a/a e/e s/s.

So:
Himalayan buck x blue tan doe (if she is ch, not cch) = black tan, blue tan, Himalayan, blue point Himalayan, Siamese fox and blue point Siamese fox (ch). All babies will be satin angoras (assuming both parents are go/go, there are more than one longhaired genes). Some of the Himalayan and Siamese will be splashed as this is dominant but won't show up on blue tan, it only shows on 'c' locus varieties.

Himalayan buck x blue tan doe (if she is cch) = black tan, blue tan, sepia fox, 'smoke' (sepia + blue gene) burmese fox and blue burmese fox. Obviously, still all satin angoras and some of the sepias, smokes, and burmeses will be splashed.

Himalayan buck x 'gold' piebald doe = You will definitely get selfs and piebald and they will most likely be black or agouti, but as the genetic make up of the gold is unknown you may get other varieties.

Sarah xxx


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## jessierose2006

oh ok thanks but how did you set that up to determine the possibilities or is that explained on the Mouse Genetics site? or do you go to a different site for that?


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## SarahY

I did it in my head 

Each baby has one gene from the sire and one from the dam, so you just have to work out all the possible combinations. You use Punnett squares to start with, but once you're used to it you just know. I tried to write a guide on my website on how to use Punnett squares, but I'm not great at explaining things. Have a look anyway, it's here:

http://www.blackthornmice.co.uk/genetutorial.html

Sarah xxx


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## jessierose2006

thankya thankya greatly appreciate any help at all with genes. because some of the sites i was looking at was like ultra level mouse genetics.


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## SarahY

You're welcome, glad I could help 

Sarah xxx


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