# mousey ramblings



## moustress

I've had two new litters born in the past week. One was from Tangerine, a satin fawn self, and Kumquat, a marked satin fawn buck. they were born a bit too early and were very small and red. I noticed that two of them disappeared the first 24 hours, then one more, and fostered them with the other doe who had a litter. That was Honey, an oddly colored marked argente doe in my tri line. She accepted them and they were doing well last night, nice big milk bellies on them. Honey had her second litter off of Sugar, a marked cinnamon tri buck, which consisted of seven babies, so she has a lot to deal with, and I'm giving her extra stuff to support the production of all the milk that will be needed.

There wee four does put to sleep as they had tumors. I've been having difficulty with corn adulterating the wheat and oats I've been getting. I try to sort it out, but after seeing the spate of tumors, I started running all the grain through a wire sieve and found there were a lot of very fine bits of corn that would be almost impossible to get by hand sorting. Now I have two sieves with slightly different size holes, and I'm much happier with the looks of the grain. I think it will take a lot less time to sort the grain with the use of the sieves. I'm also getting rid of the dirt, dust, and whatnot. There was just too much crud in general in the grain; now I'm a lot happier with the product of my sorting. Gonna have to find a different supplier, though. I shouldn't have to go to these lengths to have a decent quality product to feed my little loves.


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## zany_toon

Would you still have the same problem if you were to try human grade oats and wheat? And hugs for the loss of your does - I've got four just now with the same problem and what's worse is poor Bitsy is only 8 months old  I will however keep my fingers crossed that Honey does a fab job (which I'm sure she will!) with her babies and the fosters!


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## moustress

As of midnight last night all four of the fostered babies were still alive. One of them still looks awfully skinny. but had a full milk belly, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

zany_toon: As far as getting food grade grain goes, i could inquire again, but when I asked the only thing close to that was seed grade grain, which was much more expensive. It may be worth it, though, since all the sieving and sorting eats up a fair chunk of time.


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## zany_toon

I'll keep my fingers crossed for the poorly baby..let me know how he/she gets on!!


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## moustress

There's a bakery in town that grinds its flour fresh every day; I just remembered them, and I should ask them how to get fod grade grain; and buy some baked stuff: their goods are out of this world!

I think Tangerine, the doe who had the problem litter, was fighting off something as I noticed that her face looked a wee bit puffy on one side. It could have been from the nasty stuff that I had not figured out was in the food and how to get rid of it. One does does what one can and one tries to improve upon that as one can. I did call some of the large corporations that wholesale grain and was told that I couldn't buy in the 'small' quantities that I get. I may also check without the coop stores here in the city.


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## moustress

Just thought I'd post an update on Honey's large brood of babies: I put down the little runty survivor last night. It had a milk belly, but had not grown at all. On top of that it was dehydrated and appeared to be having seizures. The other three are fattening up and growing nicely. Honey's own babies are doing very well.


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## zany_toon

Sorry to hear that you lost the little runty baby  As long as the other babies are okay though.


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## moustress

They are still very small for their age. I suspect they weren't getting the best of care from Tangerine. Their fur is coming in, and I suspect they will catch up as soon as they are on solid food. Honey is a really attentive mother, and that's a real plus.


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## zany_toon

Hey stranger!!

Was just reading your "mousey ramblings" thread and had a thought - would your bakery order in food grade grain for you? Our local one used to do that a few years ago even for people who home baked (of course they added a little something on top so they could make a little cash.) They viewed it as another way to bring in regular custom. I just thought that if your bakery could/would do that for you it would solve your problem with trying to get better grade food for your meece.


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## moustress

Hey yourself! And I resemble that remark, strange as that may seem.

Yes, that was my thought exactly; if it's not too freakin' expensive. I will also inquire at the feed mills, as I think they carry food quality grain as well, but it would probably be even more expensive that seed grade which is the next step up from the feed quality I've getting.

I've honed my sorting technique further and found that sieving both the oats and the wheat through the right size screen lid removes almost all the crud and is quicker. Last night I dropped the big glass bowl full or sorted and nuked grain while taking it 
out of the microwave. The bowl shattered in a gazillion pieces, but instead of starting over, me and the spouse swept it up, sorted out the glass and dust kittens and whatnot, sieved it to get rid of tiny fragments, and went to do the mousework at about 11:45 pm, about an hour later than usual. He's such a sweetheart to help me as much as he does.


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## moustress

It's been an exciting couple of weeks in the mousery as I get closer to installing the new baseboards, flooring and wire shelving with caster on them. I got the wheels on the first big unit last night and it rolls really well. I'm in the middle of scoring, cutting and bending the flashing I'm putting in as mouseproofing. The big units will serve as a place to put cages while I take out the really tall wire shelving I already have so I can take out the small amount of carpeting remaining in the mousery. Those older units of shelving will also get casters installed.

My fawn, champagne and argent meeces have surprised me with curly babies, and then there's the Enormouselette. Sweetheart suffered a relapse of his ear crud, and didn't respond to treatment and had to be pts, which was very sad. At least I had one litter off him during the 3 months he was in good health. One of the does from that litter, Songbird, is going to placed for breeding tonight with one of Adamant's boys. My first yellow tri buck died peacefully the week before. Nora and Nibbles produced a lovely blue agouti tri doe who is expecting a litter off of Oddball. It's a stab in the dark and I hope to learn something useful: why none of my yellow/red tri does have had solid blocks of color, only splashing.

(embarrassing misspelling, like I expected black to show up in a yellow line...)


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## shadowmouse

I actually have some connections with a farmer in Cannon Falls. He farms oats and they are real nice quality. I used to feed it to my horse. His wife is my best friend. If you want I can poke my head in a bag next time I'm there. If you liked it I could even pick some up and bring it to the cities for you.


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## bethmccallister

I've been making my own mix lately but I won't know how effective or uneffective it is yet. They seem to really love it and they are all very healthy so perhaps... thought I would share...I go to an exotic bird store and buy 2 lbs of their medium hookbill seeds which has some corn meal but way down on the list and I buy 1 lb of their fruit and veggie mix. I then go to the local grocery and buy a jar of unsalted shelled peanuts and a tall can of Quaker Old Fashioned oats. I mix all these together in a big plastic container that I can seal.


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## shadowmouse

That sounds real good beth. How do you store it? In the deep freeze?


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## moustress

Today we drove north to North Branch to Petersen's Feed Mill to get grain to feed the meeces for the next few months. It has been like summer the last couple of days, and today was sunny with pretty puffy clouds. The trees are at maximum fall color so it was a very nice trip overall. I got a couple hundred pounds each of oats and wheat, and a big bag each of millet and safflower seeds, and a couple of bags of my favorite kibble.

Work on the mousery is proceeding quickly, as once I get started with something I'm driven to finish ASAP. tonight I get to find out if my older wire shelving will take the casters I bought, or whether I need to exchange them for something else. Tonight I tear out carpet and tacks along the north wall, and tomorrow I start installing the flashing that will help render the mousery mouseproof. All the cages from two section of shelving are now sitting in the main part of the room on the new tall units that have casters on them. I need to adjust the spacing of on all the wire units to maximize the numbers of cages I can put on them and to make it easier to get cages tops off for feeding, etc.

I am still reluctant to tear up my flowers garden for new plantings with the weather as balmy as it will be for the next week. Maybe I'll put in a couple of dozen of bulbs tomorrow in area where there's stuff that just doesn't like the intense all day sun we have since the huge elm was taken down. I'm going to give our new boulevard tree, an American Linden, a nice long drink tomorrow. It's about eight feet tall with a diameter that maxes out at the about 2 1/2 inches. While that happens, Nate and I will go on a search and destroy mission of little bitty trees that are right by the house. Kill! KILL! Remember, only you can prevent forests!

I just quickly sorted through a night's worth feeding of the new batches of oats and wheat and they are so very nice and clean. I very pleased with the purchase.


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## moustress

The situation with the mousery is at maximum complication and inconvenience. Last night we shifted the rest of the tanks off the old shelving and moved those units out. The new units are full awaiting their return once I'm through with the cleaning and installing the flashing at the baseboard level. It's very crowded in the West Room, since all the units save one are sitting around
along with three of the old shelving units. The two units that are bare unfinished pine are going to get left outside after they get hosed down and scrubbed with hopes that Mother Nature will bleach the smell of mousemusk out of the wood.

Carpeting in a mousery is utterly wrong. It was left in their in the chaos that ensued upon moving into this place seven years ago. No amount of cleaning ever really gets installed wall-to-wall carpet clean, regardless of it's use, and no amount of Febreze can ever get the oh so special smell of wild mouse musk out. The little bit in a corner where there was a mousehole was sodden to the point that it felt like it had been smeared with soft butter. *pardon me while I grimace and groan once again* OH, yuck! Oh yuck! Oh, oh, oh YUCK!

The floor will remain covered with the old tile for now. I'm going to check an outfit that takes in unused left-over items from builders (as well as all kings of stuff ripped out of old houses-one of my favorite places to walk through and dream...). Home Depot wants too much for a remnant of linoleum. Having all the shelving on casters will make it easy for me to install new wallboard one wall at time. The metal flashing will do a good enough ob of keep out the wild meeces and and the tame ones in for now.

I have two more small units of wire shelving to put together tonight, and tomorrow I will install the flashing. I crimped it today so it will bend easily. It's so nice to have a real worktable again where I can store my tools and stuff. I am in the middle of three different proects right now, counting the work on the mousery. If I can get my dad's old power saw fixed up I'll be making sawhorses and getting ready to expand the mousery next year and add a smaller space for all the boys. I think there will be a lot less stress for the boys in their own space away from the females. Fun, fun, fun!


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## salemouse

Okay promise you wont find this question stupid-I'm new!

whats wrong with storebaught food?


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## moustress

Too much fat in it. Corn causes cancer in most pet-type meeces. Peanuts and corn used in pet food are of low quality, are often rancid and carry aflatoxins produced by mold that is common in those crops. Same with sunflower seeds. Peanuts and sunflower seeds should be purchased from supplies stocked for humans to eat, and should be used very sparingly. If at all. Frankly, my meeces go even more nuts over a small chunk of dried bread than they do over those nuts and seeds. Some of the prepared mixes have pellets in them that have a lot of sugar, often in the form of molasses. A little sugar goes a long way with meeces, and shouldn't be part of a daily diet. Even bread has enough sugar and salt in it to be bad if fed on a daily basis.

Whole grains supplemented with a high quality, corn-free dried cat or dog or kitten or puppy kibble provide everything for good nutrition. The kibble should be used sparingly, as too much protein stresses out the skin and kidneys and can cause 'hot' spots under the fur, and generally make a mousie more prone to any of a number of illnesses. Linseed, safflower, and millet are all good additions, but again, the linseed and safflower seeds are very high in fat and I only used those a couple of times a week as a very small part, say 5% of the total mix. Fresh fruits and vegetables, tuna, chicken, cooked egg, oat grass, wheat grass, dandelion greens, all these things can be given in small quantities, but are not essential to the diet. I like to surprise my darlings with this and that from time to time. Dried breakfast cereal with low sugar is always a big hit, as is the dried bread. I stay away form crackers and chips as they are too high in fat and salt.


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## moustress

I had signed in to natter about work on the mousery...and then got caught up in talk about feeding the meeces.

It is so nice to have the closet all clean and full of shelving with casters that roll smoothly. We haven't started putting in the new baseboard, etc. yet. I need to patch some gaps in the flooring first. But at least now I can get to any portion of the walls or floor with ease! It's wonderful. The only hitch was getting the tall units back through the door with the wheels on. There was a calculated clearance of 1/4 inch for the units with the wheels added, but I had measure inside the mousery, where the floor was bare, and there was still carpet and pad where the new threshold will be, so I had to get down and cut that back, then jockey the wheels over the raw edge of the carpet and padding one side at a time. The meeces managed to get 'squeaked' back into the mousery by the skin of their teeth.


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## salemouse

hahah you should post pics when its all finished.


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## shadowmouse

Hey moustress, do you know about BMO in Eagan? You might want to check them out for vinyl floor scraps.

http://www.cannonrecovery.com/Directions.html

It's real hit or miss there. It's either an unbelievable deal or a rip off.


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## moustress

I have checked them out on line; I'll get on out there this week some time. Meanwhile, I've started putting the flashing on the portions of the walls in the mousery that are regular plaster. that walk in closet used to be a bathroom, and I just can't believe how dumb someone has to be be to use the material that was in there. It's so soft your can stick a finger through it!

I'm still struggling with getting the right configuration of shelving. I'm really enjoying the improved line of sight into the tanks when I'm standing in there working. It's not good for the mousies to feel they can't be seen as it encourages running and 
hiding.

I am very, very pleased with Oddball's and Odessa's litter. The fur is coming in, and half are marked yellow and half are other including one that looks to be marked/variegated. Oddball is going to have a 'vacation' from daddy duties for a week or so while I rearrange populations to free up a 5 1/2 gal. tank for him to meet a couple of new girlies. His fur looks a bit rough, so I need to concentrating on getting back into trim so he can 'make a good impression'.

I forgot to get pix of Phantom Rider and his mates, Darling and Birdie. I'm very taken with both Birdie and Rider. He's a very affectionate boy who loves to give kisses and nosies and earsies, and he chirps quietly when I chirp at him...everything I like to see in a mousie. Birdie is a bit skittish, typical first timer, but Darling was quite brazen with the new guy.

That's all for now, time to get ready for the evening's mousework.


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## moustress

Nibbles was found dead in his tank; he was still on his feet when he passed. He had started looking old in just the last four or five days. He was in good health overall, had never been sick in his nearly two years. I had thought of moving him into a solo tank a few weeks ago, but now I'm glad I didn't. His most recent mate, Nadia, had just begun to show in the last couple of days, and I'm hoping she will do well with this litter, as it will be his last legacy. A big legacy; once I saw some of his offspring, I knew there should be more.

He was called Nibbles because he always nibbled my rings and occasion tasted my fingernails. He was a a great big shaggy boy who loved to give nosies and earsies to tickle me into a better mood when I was cross. It's been a while since the loss of a mousie affected me like his passing has.


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## bethmccallister

So sorry for your little guy...hope one of the new babies turns out just like him. My favorite mouse is a buck too and I would be very sad to loose him. He's young though and I can only hope that he lives as long a life as Nibbles.


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## moustress

Thanks, Beth. The boys are frequently the most outgoing and friendly mousies, or at least the ones with the spark of personality that set them apart.

I'm just barely awake; we keep late night hours around this house, and last night didn't end until 0 dark 30. It's hard to sleep when the wind is blowing as hard as it was. And is. Weird huge weather systems over the North American Continent are becoming more and more common. I used the term,'land hurricane' several years ago when discussing the way weather changes when things on the globe start warming. The water doesn't stay in the ocean when it melts, it get together with the warmed atmosphere and then it becomes the 800 lb. gorilla in the parlour. Wow! the news wonk on CBS used that same term in the news last night. I guess you only have to look at the huge swirl on a satellite map and see it.


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## shadowmouse

Yesterday and evening were something else! I made my son sleep in our bed because of the big half-dead elm outside his window. I was sure it would fall last night. It didn't, but this morning there were some huge branches down, though. Glad they didn't hit our house.

Sorry to hear about Nibbles. He sounded very cool.


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## moustress

I hate my laptop's OS.

My post got lost when the system decided it would have the upgrades and flushed out what I was working on.

New short version. Nibbles daddy to new litter, posthumously. Weather cold. Furnace working. Mousery work in progress. All appliances installed and working. Mercy, you don't have to read old post. Many words, moderate content: LOST!


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## bethmccallister

I hate it when that happens! The first time each new computer does that I go to the control panel and disable any auto anything update!! How many bubs? My doe just had 11 tonight!


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## moustress

The work on the mousery is coming along nicely. I found a nice new claw hammer at the hardware store, as I couldn't locate the one I already had, and my other ones are for woodworking. The roofing nails go in much easier with the right weight banging on them. Tonight I seal up that half of the room's baseboard with foam sealant. All the shelving will be rolled out so the meeces aren't exposed to fumes. It looks like I got just the right amount of flashing for the job. My father's metal cutting shears are much bigger than I need for this; they go through the flashing like it's toilet paper. I think tonight 'm going to find out if the drill bit I think is for making holes in a door or cabinet for a handle actually does that.

Some time over the winter I'm going to construct a screen door that will be mouseproof. I'd like to install a vent fan, but that'll have to wait until we reroof the house, probably a year or two in the future unless we suffer damage of some sort. The house is old, but the roofing is only about 11 years old, and the grade of shingle they used is supposed to be good for 15 yrs.

I've been having a lot of fun setting up my worktable and getting some stuff done....the mousery is only one little project that I am in the middle of.

Nibbles' last mate is a very devoted mother, and it's good to see the babies getting stronger. Today they look like healthy one day old babies. I had given the pair a plastic jar to hang out in, and the doe didn't look pregnant at that time, so I had to 'decant' the doe and the babies after pulling out as much of the bedding as I could. I usually don't give my does hides as I don't want the babies to get too used to hiding as they grow. they tumbled out as I gently shook the jar....kind of comical, really. Noma didn't seem to mind much; I gave her a treat which distracted her while I got the babies out and rearranged them in and under the bedding from the jar. Nice noisy little pinkers; I love it!

My two snakebait babies are about half grown now. The girl; Floe; has demonstrated strong will to escape and actually chewed through the screen of her cage top. That's only the third time in thirteen years I've had a mousie do that. My stoopid quat Grout 'pointed' at her for me, sitting there looking at the mousie in a corner, looking up to meow at me as if to say, "There a mouse here and it won't run around so we can play." Floe just sat there as I scooped her up. She's in heavy duty stir, max security for the wee girlie. I'm gradually replacing the lids I used to get for ones with much heavier screening. I had one 1.5 gallon plexi tank left, so she's in that until I can make other arrangement. It has a lid that is solid metal with lots of little holes in it. Her pal, Berg, has become a wheel addict.


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## moustress

I am still thinking about the wild ones we saw when we emptied and moved the composters to their winter location. they were nice and shiny, with pretty shaped heads and nice rears. I know those little buggers went right back into the contents after we covered all of it with about a half a foot of leaves...I saw one of them go into a clot of branches that didn't really belong in the composter (my mousie sense tells me there were babies in there!), and I'm tempted to go and see how old the babies are...I know I'm obsessed to be thinking about them. Maybe if I just take a look I'll be satisfied, and then I'll forget about them.


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## moustress

Wild meeces have been mostly forgotten, except in my kitchen where a wild doe tried to set up mousekeeping close to the supply lines. Someone surprised her in the kitchen, near the breadbox, and she dived into a lower cabinet, unbeknownst. I heard a whole bunch of rattling and clattering, and went to find her....dumped the breadbox in the tub...no mousie there....several days later we found her dead in a mixing bowl. Everything in the cupboard section had to be washed; no big deal as some of the bowl sit for quite awhile in between uses.

Several days later we found her nest in the stove storage drawer. She had started to shred the newspaper I keep in the bottom of the drawer to protect against scratches.

Cold weather loosens some things and tightens others. Locks stick; windows loosen. Wheels roll more freely, unless they are the kind that require grease. It's starting to get chilly outside, but I still predict 70F Thanksgiving weather. If I owned a working gun I'd be out now looking for bird for the table. If I were a scofflaw I'd just reach out and touch dinner as the Canadian geese are migrating and settling where ever there is nicely mowed grass, decorating the place with festive globs in black and white. Those confounded thing are the size of a medium size dog! And they traveling in combinations of family groups, usually forty or fifty at least. The warm November has meant that the birds are taking their time heading south.

I can hardly wait for cold weather, as then I won't have to worry so much about the outsides of the property. This winter is going to be another warmish one like the two or three before, with freezing and melting more than lots of snow. I wish it wold just get nice and cold and stay that way, but we don't get wishes for weather; just guesses for grabs


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## moustress

Wild meeces have been mostly forgotten, except in my kitchen where a wild doe tried to set up mousekeeping close to the supply lines. Someone surprised her in the kitchen, near the breadbox, and she dived into a lower cabinet, unbeknownst. I heard a whole bunch of rattling and clattering, and went to find her....dumped the breadbox in the tub...no mousie there....several days later we found her dead in a mixing bowl. Everything in the cupboard section had to be washed; no big deal as some of the bowl sit for quite awhile in between uses.

Several days later we found her nest in the stove storage drawer. She had started to shred the newspaper I keep in the bottom of the drawer to protect against scratches.


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## moustress

Today I cleaned up my live trap . It's going to be needed in the basement as weather get colder and the wildies come inside. I'm sure that some of them will move into the composters in their new locations, but that location is considerably closer to the back of the house than they were over the spring, summer, and fall. Speaking of seasons, the Meteorologists continue to push back the first really cold night, and day temps remain in the high 50's and low sixties. I still think it'll be 70F and sunny on Thanksgiving.

We have been enjoying all the organic produce we got last Thursday immensely. I discovered that one pie pumpkin makes one pumpkin pie. I still haven't got around to finding out what to due with the whole fennel. I'm working on the organic bananas; they look and taste a bit different from the organic bananas I've gotten at the market. they are not yellow on the outside, they are sort of yellowish, greenish, brownish on the peel, and very light and creamy looking on the inside. The taste and texture are creamy as well. The mousies are enjoying the abundance as well, having some fresh spinach, pumpkin seeds. Oh, those seeds smelled so good in the oven! If I had salted and/or oiled them they would have never made it to the mousery! Today I started using the bananas in my dehydrator. Most of the bread and rolls have been consumed. The sourdough loaves were awesome! The cheesy loaves and cheesy buns disappeared quickly, but not as fast as the cinnamon raisin bread. I have to guard the dates; they are going to be turned into date nut bars or I'll just remove the pits and eat them with a little glob of cream cheese and a walnut stuck in it.

Some of the bread will end up in the mousery as well. I don't give them very much at once, but oh, do they love it.

I have two new litters in the mousery; Birdie, Sweetheart's only female offspring, has a litter of what looks like six very wiggly noisy eekers; her mate is another very obsessive father. I have yet to see Birdie on the nest; it's always him. She, like most pregnant and nursing females mostly just wants one thing: food! Food FOOD! Odessa has a new litter off of Odd-eye. Odd-eye is enjoying a vacation from being a mate and father. He is looking in very good condition and will be put back to stud 
one day soon. Odessa and Odd-eyes babies are all very small, but other than that they seem very healthy.


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## moustress

Wet icky snow melting and freezing and melting and freezing for two days. Now it's going to be 40F for a couple of days. I managed to get my guys out and do the shoveling and I did the sanding; this is more than I've ever achieved in the previous seven years we've lived here.

Finally, we're ready to put the bathroom window back into place, and tomorrow the cover goes up on the basement window. Next comes the weatherizing of the upstairs room where my spouse works during the day, and then the garage. I think it's going to be a very wet winter; I don't know that I don't prefer it to just get cold, really cold, and stay that way.

Finnmouse has put the Genetics Section back together with lots of new bits of info, including a pretty comprehensive breakdown of the troublesome C locus. I note with a little bemusement that she is not talking about the tricolor/splashed phenomenon. There are even pix of all the different combinations of dilutions and colors....I'm in heaven!!..or at least no more than a mile away from it!


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## moustress

The word transgenic has been refuted by some as not applying to tricolor or splashed mousies. Now the same 'some' are using that word with reference to these same mousies. Here's a holiday wish: Can we agree on terminology in this regard? Having been multiply scorched for trying to open discussion on the basis of the tricolor and splashed mousies being a transgenic phenomenon, I am perturbed by the casual introduction of that term into a thread in this Forum.

Silly, confused, vague, ridiculous; all terms that were thrown in my face starting right around this time last year. Yes, I am still bugged by this whole phenomenon (the scorching, not the meat of the subject itself) but I have no plans to change MY plans for future breeding projects of these fascinating creatures.

If throwing out ideas for consideration is castigated, there's little I can do but shake my head sadly and carry on. Science isn't about having the right answer at the first; it's about asking questions, proposing answers, and then testing those answers in a systematic manner. Information, from whatever source, is what fuels this process. Learning is a life long process, and for new ideas to flourish they need to be heard and considered without prejudice. None of us is so above it all that we cannot learn something new as we go along. If my reading has gotten me in a little bit over my head, then I throw out the ideas and my impression, hoping for careful and considerate input from fellow forum members. This process should work; should be helpful; should not be an invitation for childish pissing and moaning.


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## moustress

My yellow/red tri harem has finally yielded a litter! Regal had been in with the girls for a few months with no success, so I switched to a younger boy that I've named Anodyne (Andy for short). The litter of six are fairly nice looking long bodied noisy little eekers. The other two does neither look really pregnant nor not pregnant. These are all fairly large mousies to start with, and I had only the slightest of signs that Annalisa might be preggers.

My wheeled cart has arrived and been put into use. It's nice to have a moveable work station for feeding and cleaning. Now I can line up all the different dishes of food, the water dispenser, and all the other supplies I may need, shortening the time and reducing the workload considerably. I've started giving a wheat-free, corn free diet to some of my meeces that show possible signs of food allergies.

All of the other babies are doing great; the Orphans of Noma are starting to show signs of growth, and are now on their own. Ishka's nipples are all healed up and Bibble is spending a lot of time with her litter. Birdie and Baby Love have it somewhat easy with Phantom Rider tending the babies most of the time. The older litter should open their eyes this weekend. My blue tri trio should have some babies in the next couple of days.

That's all for now!


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## moustress

Phantom would be nursing those babies of his if he could. He arches his body over them the same as Birdie and Baby Love do. It's a very heartwarming sight. Baby Love's litter are starting to get their fur. Odessa and Oddball's babies were separated last night, as were the Mystery Mousies. Only two boys in the M. M.'s and one in the other. Both the boys are sooty yellows like their great great great grandma, Hazel, one of the original transgenic meeces I got three and a half years ago. They have her lovely big dark eyes as well, and their color is beginning to clear to a nice bronzed satin. Odessa's boy is a marked yellow satin.

I have a small litter of blue tris and I'm hoping for the second one any hour now. The babies in the first litter all appear to have
red eyes. Can't tell yet if there's any kind of marking; they look very, very light. I won't be surprised if they are pointed and/or splashed.

My feedings of the meeces have settled into a new routine with more varied selections including a wheat free diet for meeces that have eye, ear, or skin problems that don't respond to treatment. As I've been using milk replacer for the Orphans of Noma, I have it available to all pregnant and nursing females as well. The boys seem to like it just as well. then there's a little dish with two or three treats; last night the cooked rice went with the wheat free diet and as a treat here and there, as well as some dried bread chunks and crumbs. I made a mix last night of crushed kibble (I checked; it's wheat free!), milk, and bread crumbs for the Orphans and gave the rest of it to the tanks with pregnant and nursing does. The left overs went to a tank of old does. The new wheeled cart makes it possible to have the whole menu laid out and ready to feed as I go around the units of shelving.

The cart also gives me room to have at hand the more common treatments I use for ear, eye, and skin problems. As I had hoped, there have been few problems with mites now that I have wire shelving.

One little mousie managed to get loose last night; it's been awhile since a baby escaped unseen, only to be spotted by my cat and my cat-like hubby. I, of course, become a cat when I hunt down and capture meeces. The dear little thing was shivering with cold from being on the floor and didn't try to run from me. As usual, the moving of things in the West Room was taken as an opportunity to do a little cleaning in corners not visited in quite some time.

A little wildie showed up in the dust cup of my little Quick-Up stick vac (it has a carpet brush, a removable stick handle and a hand-hold for using it as a hand-held, two different setting, oh, how I love that little vac!) when I went to empty it. the little thing was released near the composters, and Nate reported that it hesitated briefly and then ran quickly through into the relative safety and warmth. there's used bedding with bits of food still in it, so it'll have a chance...

ps i have two of those little Quick-Up vacs, one for upstairs and one for downstairs


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## moustress

It appears that I have no more mites in my mousery! I'm so pleased not to have to handle and distribute toxic products in my mousery. I have quite an armory of products at hand should the problem pop up again. I've discovered that a Swiffer with a dry cleaning cloth goes under all the shelves with great ease. I still haven't managed to find casters for the little three shelf units, but since I have mostly plastic Kritter Karrier tanks on them, they are easily enough moved without wheels.

The curly meeces are now getting a wheat free diet as are any that show signs of eye, ear, or skin problems. Next payday I plan on trying a different kind of litter in those tanks as well. The preggers, nursing, and breeding meeces are all enjoying a bit of milk replacer in various forms in their diets. James said my feeding cart now looks like a buffet with so many little dishes on it.

The Orphans are all doing fairly well. I'm very proud to have gotten them all through that last week when they should have had Noma to care for them. One of them is a runt, and probably won't last too much longer; I may have to pts. One little buck has been dubbed Niblet, as he tastes my fingernails and rings when ever I have him in my hand. The whole group get gathered up into my hands for mass snugglefest at least once every night. Some of them evade The Hand, but then some don't want to let go when I'm ready to let go of them. They all climb on when I have crushed kibble in the palm.

The rest of the litters are all doing great as well; I[m still waiting for that second blue litter. It appears that I may have a great big fat blue doe.


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## moustress

You've probably noticed by now that I change names with no notice, mostly because I forget that I named a mousie before I record the name in my book. So, with apologies, Anodyne has been renamed Brightlee...

Things are going well in the mousery; my orphans are in separate quarters now. Birdie has a litter of four very large babies that are three days old now. My pairing of two satin argent tans should produce babies within the next week. Oddeye has definitely impregnated one of the two yellow tri/splashed girls he's been with for a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to more blue tris after getting only two babies out of the trio that have been together for a while. I'm ready to pick some new candidates for blue tri breeding any day if I don't see anything developing. Of, course, as soon as I do that the two does will start to show.

It was a mistake to put expectant does in with the Orphans of Noma; only one of them survived...oh, well...now I know better. The little survivor is black and white, and liked to bite. I hope it's getting over the bitey thing. It wasn't big enough to break the skin, so I just got pinched with it's tiny teeth, and I don't let biters get away from me as it teaches them that they can get away by biting. Last night I calmed down and learned to play with The Hand. Much nicer!

I was a bit premature in declaring the war on mites over with me the winner. I found mites in three tanks, and of course, they are being treated. I'm preparing for the nest phase of remodeling in the mousery which will see real wall-board installed to replace the cruddy fiberboard. I got a new blade for my power saw; the old one managed to do the first job, but it was a bit difficult... now all I have to do is figure out how to get the old blade out which in turn will teach me how to put a new one in, hopefully.


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## moustress

And a few hours later all my plans flew out the window. OK, maybe not ALL my plans.

Going through the mousery, finding the survivors, pulling out dead bodies by the handful, filling gallon ziplocs...trying not to lose it completely. Stone-faced, doing what needed to be done. Getting fresh cold water for the remaining mousies. Emptying tank after tank of bedding, stacking emptying tanks, putting bottles, wheels, tubes, etc. etc. in bins.

Bedtime; unable to sleep; unable to stop thinking about the suffering, wondering how long it took...finally thinking about the indiividual mousies, the babies, the orphans...all gone. All my best; all my breeding stock. ll the little buddies.

Enough, already. There's no more to say.


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## The Village Mousery

whats happened moustress?


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## countrygall721

I'm very sorry mousetress. It was not your fault though


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## moustress

Fault finding is pretty senseless, it's true. I'm still just emotionally gutted by the whole mess. Dead meeces aren't the horror, it's the suffering. And when I start thinking about individual mousies and babies...I can feel the grief rising just thinking about now. It's sickening.

But I will (I am) picking up the pieces, like I said and making plans. I still have mousies that I love, and they will see me through.


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## moustress

And we go forward with plans for a bumper crop of little eekers for the New Year. The first week of January should see the arrival of at least a few dozen babies as I try to combine what I have left in an attempt to extract the remains of genotypes and reconstruct the genotypes of stuff like my champagne/silver/fawn line. that's the main one that I'm working on. The tris are no problem as far as that goes, I just have to restart improving the size and appearance back so they look more like Birdie and Phantom Rider and Nibbles and Noma. The splashed fawns and tri fawns are represented by two bucks and one doe, and I have a pair of them set up together. The other buck has a marked black doe from a tri line which should give more fawn and yellow and reds down the line, including new kinds of tricolors and splashed mousies.

It'll be a challenge to get the right genes allocated in the right pairings, but, hey, that's what breeding is, isn't it? I've also made a few pairings of tricolours, and one of a marked champagne buck from a tri litter with an marked agouti doe from a tri litter. Those two are, I'm pretty sure, heterozygous in the C locus, with the doe hetero in the A locus, B locus, and P locus.

I did briefly consider giving up the mousing life, but when I realized how many meeces had survived I knew I was meant to go on. The alternative would be like a form of death of something that has become such a huge and important part of my life.


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## moustress

My spouse told me he opened the door to the room that has the big walk in closet that houses the meeces. He noticed that it was arm and that it smelled like dead mouse, and he didn't say or do anything until hours later, when he told me that the hallway upstairs smelled awful. He never said anything about the West Room. I'm so fed up with his head in the clouds way of going about the house and not seeing what's there, or what needs to be done. Ultimately I'm am the one responsible for the health and safety of my mousies, and yes, I should check them once or twice during the day instead of just going up in the evening, but, dammit, the arthritis in my hips is really bad. Maybe that's a good reason to stop keeping meeces. Maybe I shold just give it up if I'm too decrepit to give it the attention it deserves.

Between his lack of focus and my health, I guess there's cause enough. I'm up in the air, feeling not so good about myself. Not so good about my marriage. Not so good about anything. I'm sorry. I'll stop now.


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## moustress

It's been a rough couple of weeks since the accident in the mousery. I could still get emotional about the losses as the drop of a hat. My very last surviving fawn satin died yesterday; I don't think the accident had much to do with it except maybe hastening it a little. Little Napoleon was eating, taking bread crumbs and soymilk when I held them up for him, and he drank and ate a little, and had some water in the morning before he expired. I spent a lot of extra time yesterday warming him in my hands against the flannel shirt I was wearing. He had a heating pad under part of his tank and a young doe to warm him as well. I'm so glad to have had a couple more weeks to get used to the idea of not having fawn meeces at all.

But that won't last! Gudenov's girls, Shotzky and Suki are showing! Which means that the two does with the little marked red/gold buck should be showing too! then it'll just be a matter of breeding those back either to him or to one of their uncles, and I should have my most favorite color of mousie back!

I'm looking at the last post before this; geez louise and all her bees! I have been trucking around my own private black cloud, and that's a heavy load, and I should not have shared so liberally. I'll try better to not be such a bummer for anyone who might read this. Moodiness happens; I've got to try not to give into the extremes, and find the middle way when I'm having contact of whatever sort with other people.

Everyone who knows me though this forum that I don't leave folks wondering what's on my mind. It's a character thing, and I should be a little more careful some of the time. *shrug*


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## moustress

It's so good to see does fattening up with expected litters. I think several more does are showing a bit, and I'm very pleased. All in all, things are slowly normalizing in my mousery. I'm going to have a lot of the 'painted' tris, that's what I call the meeces in my tri lines who look to be wildly splashed but also have some white on them. They are quite beautiful and fit neither standard for splashed and tri. So be it.

The young marked satin buck I put in with a couple of does has grown a lot, but I don't think he's delivered by getting the does preggers. I may take him out and put in one of his brothers who are a bit bigger than he is. Berg, my snake bait mousie is becoming fat! I hope he gets the job done soon, as he looks to be heading towards extreme obesity. Guess he must be hiding yellow or brindled genes. Too bad.


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## moustress

New mousies! It's a big step for me, at this point, in getting back to just enjoying my little darlings. this last three weeks has brought me back to where I started, mousewise; enjoying all the different personalities, playing and petting, watching and learning. I really enjoy the breeding too, and I plan to continue indefinitely. but I also promise to spend more time enjoying my mousies.

I got really lucky and found a really lovely banded/rumpwhite at Petco a cojuple of days ago. I got two others as well; i never buy one doe, I always pick a companion so she doesn't have to be alone during quarantine. None are show quality, but they are considerably more typey than the average pet store mousie. Nice long bodies, decent tails.... a couple of them take treats from the Hand already. I need to take pix up Dudley, who is my newest favorite cuddlebuddy. He's a longhaired tri who is two or three shades of muddy brown/beige. Not much to look at, although he does have a nice marking on his face.

I'm looking forward to getting up the the mousery these days, as I should have piles of pinkies arriving regularily for the next week or so. Five or six does were big enough last night be well into the waddling stage. It's been exactly three weeks since I made the first pairings....


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## zany_toon

You are getting closer to having oodles of pinkies moustress! Not long now!!


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## moustress

Geez, I hope not! I can barely stand the waiting!

And do you realize how important the support from folks like you has been to me in the last few weeks? Bless your hearts; I don't know how I would have kept my (supposed) sanity without you guys!


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## moustress

The last week has been joyous! I have a couple dozen babies so far. The oldest is one week old today, and the fur is beginning to show the tri markings. Breeding from sisters and brothers of the deceased, I am getting individuals with what look to be quite similar to what I had before, so I am quite pleased so far. A couple of the girls, Shotzky and Suki are becoming quite large with what I hope are big litters and not just fat. Kama Dibble is unbelievably huge. Some of the litters were quite small, none of them more than seven, so that's good. The babies are all nice and chubby and I love teh sound of their little eekings when I turn on the light.


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## moustress

Well, so it hasn't been all fun and games in the mousery this week. One more litter born to the Dibbles, and one litter and doe lost. Shotzky failed at labor, and had to be pts, poor dear. I hate it when I lose both a litter and the doe. Suki appears to be fine, but I'm beginning to wonder if she's just gotten fat.

The rest of the litters are all doing very well. they all have their fur and markings and their eyes should be opening in the next four or five days. I tried taking pix of all of them a couple of days ago, and I have to ask how do breeders get the babies to stay in a nice line while you get photos? Mine are all over the place.

I'm seeing a nice assortment of markings in the tri litters born this month. There are about a half a dozen babies who have nice bold markings, and as always, a few surprises and several puzzles. Penuche, the very young marked yellow buck, has produced a marked yellow baby off of a marked black doe from a tri litter. I have two more does expecting, including a marked agouti doe from a tri litter who was bred to a marked champagne buck. She carries red eyes, so I'm hoping to get some argents and champagnes from that pairing.


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## zany_toon

Sorry for the lose of Shotzky and her babies moustress  Not a nice thing to happen ever but even worse when she was helping you rebuild your lines.


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## moustress

Yeah, it was sad; her sister is with a standard marked champagne buck, and is due to pop any second. I'm not sure, but I think she is a tan, so I'm hopeful...

Penuche's brother, and unmarked satin yellow/red, is showing a nicely marked line showing his tan belly, a totatlly different shade of yellow/orange than on his back. I'm going to try to get a photo that shows this as I think it is really neat! I'm calling him TWJ, for Toast With Jam, TJ for short. He's a nice big boy for his age , and his sire was from a tri litter, and the dam may have been a tri as well...it's a mixed blessing to have accidentally mixed those genes in with this line. He now paired with my only surviving yellow tri doe. She had been paired with one of the two surviving yellow tri bucks, but I don't think he's fertile anymore. His testes are retracted, and he doesn't smell like a boy anymore. He never showed any signs of interest in his lady. and he never marked his water bottle. TJ was on her like white on rice as soon as she arrived, so I'm very hopeful.

A few minutes later:

I just checked and TJ and Marmalady have a litter of eight lovely babies! Better yet; three quarters of them have red eyes! so I'll have argents, and maybe champagne, and maybe even fawn! I'm so pleased!


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## moustress

I've been having tons of fun in the mousery with all the babies growing and showing their colors. Some time last night Roxie popped and had ten little skweekers. I could tell she had delivered as she was very slim again, but it took about a half a minute to find the babies as she had put them in a nest that was flush with the top of the litter. this is only the second or third time I've seen a doe puild her nest down unstead of up. They look like nice long bodied babies. Foxie is showing, as well as my marked blue doe. the blue doe is paried with an marked blue buck, and they both come from tri liters, so there may be tris in the litter.


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## moustress

A pairing that might have a blue tri litter is going to try again, as the doe seems to have miscarried. Spots of blood on the bedding but no babies; it was way too early in the pregnancy. I've had two more small litters born in the last five days. The shelves are filling up with tanks as bucks get moved to their own tanks and the older litters get separated into his and hers tanks. I'm having a lot of fun handling the babies; spending more time in the mousery and loving it!


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## geordiesmice

Moustress when you seperate the litters into his and hers how many say bucks from the litter do you keep together or do they live singly.


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## moustress

My young bucks live in groups, careful monitored, and trouble makers are removed as soon as I notice any fighting or harassment. Sometimes brothers live peaceably together with no trouble, sometimes I have to separate a couple or singles tanks, and sometimes they all end up in different tanks. It just depends on the individuals. I even had a couple of bucks who were taken out of tanks they shared with their sons, used for stud, then went back to the groups tanks with their sons with no trouble. That is rare, unfortunately. Before the accident, I had some tanks with two to five adult brothers together. Trouble makers will occasionally get pts if I don't have room for any more single tanks.

I can't euthanize pinkies since I'm breeding for colors and markings in lines that are not 'purebred', so if I do put down males it's usually as young adults, and then only if I just don't have room, or if they have some other problem, like Gudenov, who went insane and attacked my hand every time I put it near him. I think some of the survivors of that accident suffered brain damage, as even a few of the does are acting a bit over aggressive. I'm pretty sure there will be shortened lifespans for many of the survivors after undergoing that stress. I am amazed that breeding has as trouble free as it has, with the exception of that one doe who failed in labor.


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## geordiesmice

Yes I wait to see what markings they have before I cull any and do keep my bucks together till I have to part them.Most are in with does at the moment with litters.I have 10 litters at the moment, some of those will need splitting up into seperate tanks soon.


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## moustress

So many babies and young meeces; I love it! The last couple of litters from the pairings made in mid-December have been born, so now I'm waiting on later pairings to produce. My last surviving yellow tri doe should be pregnant by now, but the girls in that line often don't show until the day before they give birth, which is a bit frustrating. I'm not counting on getting a litter from her. I had already decided, even before the accident, that I had to start over from scratch and make new pairings, as the yellow tris were not improving the way I wanted them to; that is to say I wanted more dark orange patches and greater contrast. I'm waiting now for some of the new litters to mature so I can get on with it.

The noise about the shows in the US is interesting; I am glad I'm not involved in showing my meeces at this point in time. the American mouse fancy community seems to be rife with inconsistency as far as enforcing health measures at shows. It's sad that things haven't improved much, apparently, in the last ten years. I'm sure there are organizations that do an adequate job of monitoring incoming mousies at show, but that just isn't good enough. The breeders need to follow quarantine procedures before and after shows or at-show measures will be meaningless.

Then there are the folks who do 'mouse train' swapping; I wonder how quarantine is managed in those cases. And then there are the trans Atlantic interactions....scary!

Once again, I think I've eliminated mites from my mousery. I have found any in well over five weeks now, and it would appear that the wildies are not getting onto the cage tops on my nice new shelving as I haven't found any signs of them for weeks. I know they are there, as I've caught a couple in my live trap in the last couple of weeks.


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## moustress

Last night I started trying to sort out all the mousewares that have been just sitting around since the accident. It's cluttered and messy. I'm tossing out a bunch of miscellaneous junk I haven't used in a couple of years, getting rid of things that aren't in good shape, and, of course, all that shifting of stuff offers opportunity to do some cleaning. The mousery itself is very easy to keep in top-top shape since the re-do. Everything moves on wheels so I can sweep every night so there's not so much as a crumb left on the floor to attract the wildies. I like it!


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## geordiesmice

I have a G tech cordless hoover for the floor had it some years now and its fantastic, also a dust pan and brush with a long handle both invaluable in the mouse room


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## moustress

geordiesmice:

I have a lovely little stick vac called a QuickUp that has a HEPA filter and a detachable handle so that it can be used as a stick vac. It's the best vacuum cleaner I've ever had including all the supposedly powerful upright vacs. I like it so much that I actually have two of them, one for upstairs and one for downstairs.

It's a waiting game now in the mousery as I watch all the babies mature and wait for them to old enough to make new pairings. I've had two new litters born this week. As bucks get moved to solo tanks and babies get sexed and split into his and hers my shelves are filling up. Right after the accident I only had about 20 tanks and now I'm up to 43. I felt weird when there were only 20ish tanks as I finished so quickly; it was offputting. Now I have plenty of hard work to do each night; handling all those babies and young meeces (oh, Gawd, the suffering, the humanity!) so they grow up tame enough to handle easily. Only 10 tanks now have nursing does that require special feeding. I also spend extra time handling all the bucks who live alone so they don't get depressed from being kept alone.

My cuddlebuddy Ferguson has learned to be continent while riding my shoulder, for which I am very grateful. He loves to peer into all the other tanks from my shoulder as I do the rounds. I now have another cuddlebuddy, Ghiradelli, a marked chocolate boy who has ended up living alone, so Ferguson gets passed over if he plays run-and-hide for too long when I open his tank at the beginning of the mousework period.


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## zany_toon

moustress said:


> Now I have plenty of hard work to do each night; handling all those babies and young meeces* (oh, Gawd, the suffering, the humanity!)* so they grow up tame enough to handle easily. Only 10 tanks now have nursing does that require special feeding. I also spend extra time handling all the bucks who live alone so they don't get depressed from being kept alone.


What a horrible punishment :lol: If only you could get paid for it :lol: Sounds like you are loving every minute of it moustress, and rightly so!


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## moustress




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## moustress

Ever since someone posted about 'The Rainbow Bridge' in the last week or so I've shuddered and quaked at thought of ,"What if..."

I don't want to calculate the number of meeces that have bought the farm in the 13 yrs. since I started keeping meeces. The first time I ever heard of it I thought it was a very touching idea, but after about 5 or 6 years I realized what it would be like for me meeting hundreds of little mousies all scrambling to me or on me or over me....AUUGHHHHHHH!!! Help me! I'm being overrun by little mousey bodies!

By now it would be thousands. :shock:

Yeah, well...there you go...I got that out of my system..Phew!


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## moustress

No, but seriously....it's always sad to loose one of the little buddies.

It's been a wild couple of months in the mousery. All the pairs, preggo does and babies all needing extra feedings or special feedings have kept me hopping, and now I have twice as many tanks full of mousies than I did in December. It's nice to be more or less back to normal; it felt just wrong to be done with my mousework in a half an hour to forty five minutes. Now I take about an hour and a half from food prep to cleaning up and closing the mousery for the night.

It's very rewarding to see the little mousies that are coming up and nearing maturity; I was right about still having good material to breed from after losing every single breeding mousie and all nearly all the babies in the accident. I soon hope to be at the point where I no longer even mention that horror.

My litter off Gull is not doing well; I've tried feeding them by hand a couple of times and they don't seem to be hungry, so I have to assume that they are just small for whatever reason, and hope that they start showing more signs of normal growth when they are old enough to eat solid food. There were problems with the brindled line that produced Gull, but that was with the does, who all got mammary tumors...so I'm not sure if this is another failing of that line or what.

Berg's offspring are nice and big! Just what I was aiming for. the marking gene of the girls that were paired with him must be recessive, as they've produced nothing but splashed and self mousies. I am chomping at the bit to get going on restoring the self fawn and proceeding on the new yellow/red tris.


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## moustress

My hopes for boldly marked blue tris has been spoiled again; my blue pied doe, who destroyed her first litter munched the second bunch as well. These were full term, so she's not going to be bred again. I'll go the roundabout way and breed the pied blue buck to a nice black/beige tri female or two. I needs to take a good look at my records and see if any of my current adult oes of breeding age have thrown blue babies.

The litter by Rhea and Spirit is doing better. Their eyes have opened and they are visibly bigger each of the last two days. they are probably going to be small meeces, but that's okay, as long as I have the genes to carry on. And small meeces don't always produce small meeces.

Darkly died unexpectedly; any of the survivors of the horror are likely to have shortened life spans and other odd problems, so it was a total surprise. She had such gorgeous dark eyes and I'll miss seeing her there. Her only daughter, Sonata, is about 10 weeks old, and I decided to put her in with a very nice large tricolor buck that I've not previously bred, and who has a nice personality besides being a looker.


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## moustress

I'm getting closer to the day I can pair some of the black/yellow tri crosses off of Spirit and hopefully see some new yellow/red tris and splashed mousies. It was no contest at all having to choose a most memorable mousie; Oddeye the oddeyed yellow tricolor was the most unusual and notable mousie I have ever bred. Gone in the horror. I'm grateful to have pix of all the ones I lost. Since then,in the new litters, I have a number of oddeyed individual, but mostly so dark that there's not much contrast. It seems to still be there in the mix, though, so I hope to see some more like him soon. And I'm endlessly eager to get on with restoring my fawn/argente/champagne self population.

I'll need to start using a few more ten gallon tanks soon, and I'm thinking about reassembling one the the large shelving units that I removed to the basement after the accident.


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## moustress

It's in the works now; I paired two of my babies off Spirit and a couple of beige/black tris with two of the red/bronze satin bucks. It's been a few days, but I 'm pretty sure I'll have pinkers from them before the month is out, as the boyz 'got busy' right away. the third of those boys is in with my last remaining yellow splashed doe; they are so affectionate with each other that I don't want to split them up! I probably will, though, at least for a few days, so he can impregnate another tri doe. the old yellow tri doe doesn't seem to be fertile, as I've had her with three different bucks with no results.

I'm excited about seeing the assortment that'll come out of these litters; this is the first time I've gone for mixed colors on purpose in a tri litter.

I've made a new pairing for blue tris as well. Same buck, different doe. The first blue doe I tried this with munched two litter, so she's out of breeding. She's a little old for breeding anyway; just passed the eight month old mark. The new doe has a visible dilution, so that should work well. Johnny Deep the buck has the darkest blue I've seen in my mousery in years and years.


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## moustress

Just when you think Spring has sprung it all breaks loose. Rain turning to freezing rain turning to sleet...and waking up to a blanket of snow is enough to keep me at home for the day. I checked the traffic reports online and saw 12 crashes in the last hour. Snow on top of ice with temps near freezing makes driving crazy; it's like driving on ice with a coating of grease .

And then there's the atmosphere here in the Forum turning cold and precipitate. One does not apologize; one does not backpedal. One simply speaks one's mind, and hopes the cold front passes. One does what one can to smooth and warm the difficulty. One picks up and moves on.

I'm so impatient for the next round of babies to happen! Most of my work lately has been separating litters into his and hers tanks and dealing with the conflicts that occur when young bucks mature. I have only one doe at the moment that's showing. Sonata was put in with a nice big tri buck who survived the accident. He's in a separate tank now, and has developed a hot spot on his back. Could be too much protein in the enriched diet that was given for Sonata's benefit, at least, that's what I'm hoping.

The cavalcade of pinkie pictures has ended for now, but there's always more to come!


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## moustress

'Tension, apprehension and dissension have begun.'

Aiyee chihuahua! So, my little pictorial has led to a successive airing of almost all the sore points present in mousedom; really didn't want THAT, but there it is, 'like a blowfish writhing quietly on the rug'.

Sorry, two song cues, one after the other...some days are like that for a musician. It's a way to pigeonhole and process thought provoking situations that will not easily resolve. Reducing the mental clutter and damping the negativity, leveling the minds path so one can, eventually get on with it all. I hope someone benefits from all the rehashing and repeating things that have been said before.

'All I want to do is have some fun...' but 'it's not easy having a good time. Just smiling makes my face ache .'


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## moustress

It's been a busy week in the mousery as I've had three more litters born. I gues I pushed the limit a bit on my young does, but it appears to have worked out alright. they were 12 to 13 weeks old when they threw their litters. I feel under the gun to let my mousies breed when I think they are big enough because the bucks I'm using are all survivors of the accident, and I feel that their life-span is uncertain because of the stress from that. the babies have all been pretty big, and in a coupe of cases just plain big.

I hesitate to say if my yellow splashed doe is pregnant. She looked a bit more plump last night. *shrug*

Sonata appears have to produced a blue tri with a fairy dark hue in one discrete spot. Her three babies are really good sized. there is only one red eyed baby in the two litters off my red satins. One of those pairs has the buck left in, so they will have another litter in a few weeks. There could well be yellow and red tris in those litters, so I['m eagerly awaiting the furriness.

The mousery is getting very full, and I have to make up my mind on a number of things before I figure how I want to proceed.


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## maisymouse

You mention accident and horrors, what happened?? :shock:


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## moustress

Space heater problem. Much too hot; many mousies dead.


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## geordiesmice

Its good too see your getting your stock built up again moustress  I have a long hair fawn Doe and She is massive like a furry big bear when she stands up on her back legs much bigger than the Buck lol


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## moustress

Thanks, gm. I still miss my satin fawns; I hope to extract the right genes for that in the course of the nest half a year. I've got the satins, with recessive yelow, and I've got meeces with pink eyes, so it'll happen.


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## moustress

I'm very happy to have a litter off of Licorice, my main tricolor breeding doe and Spirit, my only yellow tri/splashed buck. This will be the last litter for Licorice, being her third. It's not impossible that I may choose be breed her once more down the line, but no time soon. She had six babies, five of which are doing very well. They looked a tad premature, but, at that, they are nice and big regardless. Licorice is a very devoted mother. They are just pink, and I'll post photos in a few days.

It looks like I have at least one yellow tricolor in the two F2 litters. There are a half a dozen yellow and red babies in those two litters. One of them has pink eyes; at least it looked like that early on. I've got a couple of interesting looking tri/splashed babies in an accidental litter that need to be photographed and posted.


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## moustress

Licorice's and Spirit's litter has only three left; I'm not sure if they are going to be used for breeding, as they are rather small. Meeces grow at different paces, though, so we'll just have to wait and see. The stress caused when my mousesitter let the cat in, who knocked that tank on the floor resulting in the escape of Licorice and four of the six babies, three of which were never revcovered, may have stunted their growth a bit. In the meanwhile, I've paired good old Spirit, who is starting to show his age, with one of my best young tri does.

I may have my first new yellow tri in a litter that is almost two weeks old now. It may actually be a marked brindle, it's so hard to see when they're still so tiny. Sonata should start to show soon; I'm eager to see more blue tricolors and splashed. Sonata's daughter is about eight weeks old now, and she will probably be bred in about a month, as some of my blues have had health problems and breeding probables due to obesity. Two of my older blue does developed tumors later in life which makes me wonder if there isn't some kind of problem in general with blues.

Between Berg's offspring and the lovely white albinos I was given, I now have the mousery basics once again! The agoutis from Berg and my Petco does are pretty nice looking, and both the boys and the girls are quite friendly. I should do a side by side comparision of Berg's albino offspring and the ones I got from ndm. I haven't quite made up my mind what to do with the albino buck in terms of breeding.

I'm sure it was all the fault of lack of sleep that I didn't realize that I had a buck in with the two albino does and a doe in with the assorted other bucks. (of the meeces delivered here by the Mousery on Wheels). Those meeces come out of quarantine in about a week.

I haven't been posting a lot of pix recently; it seemed as if folks had become overloaded by me posting on litter after litter after litter....or maybe it's just ME who was overloaded trying to keep up. After all I did promise to keep folks updated in that department.


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## The Village Mousery

Funny you mension health problems with blues... Ive had a blue line now for 9 months and still havn't got very far due to illness's and fertility problems.. i really do think the blue gene is flawed... the only time i've had any success is using outcross's. I've had tumours, obesity and infertile mice all from the line.


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## Cait

My previous line of blues didn't have any extra problems than any other mice really, and neither does the current one. I have noticed over the years that like blacks they seem extra prone to the snuffles though.


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## SarahC

i never had any issues with blue.My abbys are blue now and fit and strong.


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## Cait

New pictures?  Or is the camera still AWOL?


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## SarahC

it's gone with out trace.I do it all the time with numerous stuff.I'm extra dismayed because it had all my dogs pictures from puppyhood on.I only made the short trip from house to shed and back :!: :?:


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## Cait

I still have some of the puppies when they were tiny that I can send you. I know it's not much but better than nothing?


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## moustress

Sonata is showing; I didn't mark the date I put her in with Deep Blue, but then who knows how long it took for her to get caught. I'm cautiously optimistic. Her first litter off another buck was very, very nice, and big as well. Trixie, a tricolor doe bred to Spirit, a yellow tri, is also showing. Spirit is such a good papa that of course he stays with her through delivery, at least. I'm not sure if it's age or that he just gets so involved with the babies, but he has never re-impregnated his mate right away. typically he spends more time in the nest than the doe does. At least that's what I see; it could just be that he stays because the doe comes out to demand food when I'm in the mousery.

Ever notice how does that were shy about taking treats from The Hand become much less so when pregnant or nursing?

My oldest mousie, a splashed doe, died a couple of days ago. She was 3 1/2 years old, and was looking so shriveled and frail that I was planning to pts, but nature caught up with her first. Always, until the last couple of weeks, she would climb the water bottle to take a treat from my hand.

Nothing much else to report. I've stopped making pairings for the time being, as I'll be away for several nights i June, and I like to be around when my does are due to deliver. My son does an adequate job of feeding and watering, so that won't be a problem.


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## moustress

As I posted, Sonata has delivered a healthy looking litter of about eight or ten. The other doe didn't throw her litter yet, so I have to keep an eye on Sonata to see if she starts nibbling. Trixie and Spirit will have a new litter very soon as well.

I want to clarify or maybe correct something I may have misstated when I first joined this Forum. the topic was genetic identity shared by mus mus domesticus and **** sapiens. I may have said that we have the same number of chromosomes, when what I meant to say is that we share almost identical major markers on 20 of our chromosomes. Mice only have 20 pairs; humans have 23.Somewhere in the dim past, however, mousies and people share an ancestor, a small shrew like mammal, back about a million or so years ago.

Good; glad to have taken care of that!


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## moustress

Trixie and Spirit have a new litter of eight very nice long pinkies! He has been a marvel in action these past four months. He looks his age, which is about 18 mo., with a bit of condition problem in his coat, thin around the eyes and such, but his disposition is just so mellow and laid back. I'm very pleased overall with him and his new babies.

Sonata is a bit bitey about her new litter but she backs off when I give her her little dish with kibble, bread and milk. Since shes has such a big litter, I'm goin to give her a supplemental feeding early in the day in addition to the regular feeding. My meeces usually have extra grain and seeds around to munch, but the last thing I want at this point is for her to feel hungry for extra protein....especially since the doe I had pegged as a potential foster mother hasn't delivered yet.

I'm shifting populations to make room for new pairings aimed at getting me my fawns back. I've learned my lesson about mother and daughter groupings. Mixing two mothers with young does in one cage does not work well at all. Gotta separate the moms and then I can combine the young does, otherwise there is a lot of territorial squabbling and sometimes actual fighting with injuries.


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## moustress

After thinking over the situation as regards Sonata, and I realize now that I can't cull this litter, at least not yet, as I'm just in the development stage of my blue tri line. I'll want to see the darkest blue as well as the best distribution of colored patches.

Sonata is doing a great job with her babies thus far, and they are gaining visible fat on a daily basis.


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## moustress

All of the truck mousies have delivered their litters and I now have about nine nice albino babies and two litters of Heinz babies. Butterscotch and Penuche have a litter of about eight babies. I'm being patient and haven't taken a close look to see eye color. Sonata's little ones are doing just great, getting fatter and starting to show hints of fur.

I've halted making any new pairings for the next month or so as we will be away for a few days in June. James does an adequate job mousesitting, but I like to be home when I have litters due.


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## moustress

Ah, jeez! Several of Butterscotch's babies have red eyes, now I have to wait for them to fur up! Could be an albino or two in there....


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## moustress

What a night! Lots of commotion in the mousery last night; the albino doe who had a litter was looking very poorly, and her sister looked pretty unhappy as well. the babies, starting to fur up now, were looking dehydrated and were cooling to the touch. One baby was found half eaten. I decided to treat them all for mites, seeing a couple of little red spots on a couple of the babies. Later, seeing the mother was still looking a bit peaked, I decided to foster six of the babies to the brindle doe.

I guess I made the right choices, as those six babies are doing fine this morning, and the three that I left with the PEW doe are doing OK too. Nine out of ten ain't bad.

Penuche's and Butterscotch's babies are getting their fur, and I definitely have yellow babies....wish I'd have marked the red eyed ones so I know which they were...something to consider for the future. I'll know soon enough, I guess. *grumble*

All the other litters are doing well enough. Oh, yeah, another thing got taken care of last night. The bitey doe is no more. Her behavior was escalating and she nearly got me last night, and one of the other girls was starting to act like that too. This was the same cage with the other young doe who has the tail problem. I removed her night before last, thinking part of the problem might be over grooming, or perhaps the big biter had actually nipped her tail and aggravated the problem. So, with the three girls in that tank out of the original five, none of them show any inclination to perforate my hand.

Edit: Forgot to mention Spirit; I thought I might lose him last night. He had his penis stuck out too far for anything good and I could feel little hard lumps in it near the outlet. He got a but of petroleum jelly rubbed and after a bit the color of it was back normal, he ejected a bit of darkish lumpy stuff, and this morning he seems to be fine. I had him isolation for a few hours last night but put him back upon seeing how well he was coming along. He's back to guarding his babies. He had a few choice words for me last night, repeated again this morning...but he never once looked like he was going to bite me. Such a sweet boy! And he gave me nosies this morning, too!


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## moustress

Spirit seems to have recovered from his problem with his willie. He's looking older and older every day; losing weight just a tiny bit as days go by. I'll be glad to see him as long as he lasts. He eats well enough, has a good appetite, and is utterly devoted to his babies.

I think I figured out why some of my does are getting bitey, and I also think I know how to fix things so they won't be like that. Redoing housing arrangements so that mother are not left with their grownup daughter should do the trick. I think it's a learned behavior, so it's probably a bit too late for the ones who are like that now...just going to have to be careful with those girls. So far they haven't hurt me, just kind of worried me with glancing nips. I'm sure not going to send any of them off to other breeders, that's for sure!

The satin doe with the red icky looking tail has improved considerably. I think she may have been nipped on the tail by one or two of those bitey little girlies. She had what looked like might be bites on the tail...she's not going back into that tank, in any case.

Even with all this I'm having a lot of fun!

The albino does are managed to take relatively good care of the two babies that I left with them. The mother is not doing well, and I'm hoping she lasts until the babies have their eyes open. The six that were fostered with a brindle doe have fared pretty well. One is gone and the other five look well enough. this is the first time I've pts pinkies to make room for fostering other babies. I don't like to think of any of my mousies as expendable; there are times when it's the only sane attitude to adopt.


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## moustress

I'm posting this here so I can drag it out whenever the question about tri/splashed mousies arise.

You need to have three things in order to produce tricolors. The essence of appearance of tris and splashed lies in the color reversions that occur such as black reverting to brown, beige, bone, etc. in patches or splashes, depending also on the presence of a white markings gene of some sort. Splashed means diluted color in the background, darker shades of the same color appearing in the splashes. Tricolor means patches of color mixed with white patches. Every different combination can give wildly different types of appearance, though it is possible to predict, to some extent, the types of appearances you might get with any known combination.

1) One mousie that has the tricolor or splashed genes; getting one that has two alleles is better, increases the number of tris/splashed offspring.

2) C locus dilutions such as c^h (himalayan or siamese), c^ch (chinchilla), c^e (extreme dilution), c (albino), plus a few others c locus dilutions that are pretty rare. Again, if one of the bred pair has two of the recessive dilutions, it increases the odds of getting tris/splashed. Unless you get c^e c^e, in which case you may get BEWs. BEWs are a common by-product of many good tricolor pairings, and non-albino PEW's may also be produced (some call these REWs) when trying to produce tricolors or splashed in the red/pink eyed hues.

3) If you want tricolors, you need to have a marking gene of some sort in order to produce a mousie with two or more shades of color plus the white spots. The white markings seem to cause pooling of color in solid patches. The only exception to this is when you have a single allele for albino dilution plus another different dilution, in which case you may not need the additional markings genes.

There are other things that happen when breeding these types that are not easily defined, such as the presence of ruby eyes, odd eyes, assorted appearances of things that look like silvering, variegation, roan like coat, and all the odd things that occur in brindle/tri crosses.

There are also some health problems that may occur most notably a seizure disorder due to a piece of the genes involved that cause that. (shaker)

I have tried to stay away from the more controversial aspects of tricolor/splashed origins. I will say that I still firmly believe that these mousies are the result of genetic tinkering/alteration performed in a laboratory, and that they are something like chimeras or mosaics in that there has been a piece of genetic material added that is attached to the C locus, where much of the changing comes from.

What happens is what folks want to know about, so briefly; a few examples of what you actually see:

A pair of mousies are chosen to breed in an attempt to produce tricolor mousies.

Parent #1- black self (a/a b/b C/c^e D P E Spl/spl)
Parent #2- pied black (a/a b/b C/c D* P* E* Spl/spl)

Without the splashed gene (Spl) the offspring of these mousies would all be black or pied black. The same would be true if neither carried a c locus dilution (c^h, c^ch, c^e, c). One allele for full color in the c locus (C) will not show tri; no Spl also will not show tri. I have argued that the splashed gene and the c locus are really one and the same, but many of these genes that produce color and marking are in the same region anyway, so it's kind of a moot point. It could be argued that the C locus should be be disbanded and broken down in order to make it easier to describe what going on, but that would make the list of loci longer, so it comes out in the wash, I guess.

Then there is the matter of where these novel genes came from to start out with. I don't for one minute think that it was a spontaneous mutation that someone just happened to discover one day in a new litter of fuzzies. Many of the varieties of mousies we have in the fancy mousing world came about because of laboratory experiments. This tricolor phenomenon almost certainly is not of natural or spontaneous origin.


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## tinyhartmouseries

This is great Moustress! I have a big black pied male with no Spl in his lineage. Would he be better suited with your black splash or your black tri? I have both and would ideally like more Black tri. I have little interest in splash except to make tri, lol. Thanks for the thought and help!


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## moustress

You got the name almost right....were you brought up to be excruciatingly correct so that your brain won't allow you to spell a 'proper' name starting with a lower case letter? For me it's a small rebellion against conformity.

(You know, the first part of getting better is admitting you have a problem... )

(...ye-e-e-esss I do have a problem)

(oh, really, only one? lucky you/me!)

Conversations with myself in the forum; this is new!


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## moustress

I would change the bedding, remove corn, wheat, peanuts and sunflower seeds form the diet, and be sure that the environment is not too noisy, too bright, and especially, too dusty. This includes dust from excess clutter such as clothing or books and papers, carpeting, other pets and any other source. I used to have problems with icky ears in my mousery, and I tried everything I mentioned here, plus the Benadryl, antibiotics, cortisone ointment, and while I did get about half of the meeces through it well enough, I suspect it was just that those meeces were able to fight it off better.

When I made over the walk in closet I use for my mousery, I was mostly trying to make it easier for me to clean and to reduce odor. I replaced wood shelving with steel wire shelving. I ripped out the carpeting (should have done that from the first) Now I'm taking even more measures to eliminate clutter and reduce sources of dust. The floor gets swept every night. The cage tops get dusted every night. Ultimately, I had to admit to myself that I was not doing a good enough job keeping the space clean. I have not had a case of ear crud in months!

Ventilation is important both for the individual cage and for the mousery area, especially if you have a couple of dozen meeces in a small area. Both dust and ammonia build up can cause problems, not just with ears. My wish list for a shed if I ever could afford to build one would include a ventilation fan with a HEPA filter. I run a large room size air cleaner in the doorway between the room and the closet as that room still has carpet in it. I hang bags of zeolite to reduce ammonia. I vacuum the carpet in that room weekly, at least, and spot vacuum when feed or litter, clean or used, is spilled.

All of these measures also reduce the chances of mite infestation. Wild meeces are the source of this problem, usually, although bedding and feed can also be a problem. It's ultimately better for both the mousies and for you if you can avoid having to treat them for mites. I freeze my aspen bedding for a couple of days, and sometimes freeze the straight grain as well. The extra measures are well worth the time spent, and take very little time in comparision to having to deal with infestations.

I bought my new shelving on sale a unit at a time, so it wasn't a huge outlay of money, and I opted for units that could take casters so I could roll them out for easy cleaning.


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## tinyhartmouseries

....  Is everything ok? I see here you've answered my question about ear crud, do you have any input on the tri pairing i'd like to make?


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## moustress

I'm OK, are you OK?

Yes, I know I used the same paagraph in two location; I wrote it all out, then decided that your question didn't really ask for an extended lecture/confession, and decided not to waste it, which is why I put it here.

(I know I explain too much, but here's why...  )


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## Laigaie

Why? Because you'll use it again next time. The same questions over and over, in slight variation, all the time. If you have all your preferred answers written out already, you save yourself the time later! Plus, it means you don't get frustrated at newbies, not that you'd ever get frustrated, moustress.  But I know I would, were I you!


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## moustress

The mousery is in a pretty steady state at the moment. Lots of very young mousies past fuzzy stage. I have two pairs that might yield litters in the nest couple of weeks. One pair is the surviving albino doe of the trio I got in April who is paired with my best tricolor buck. She apparently never conceived when in with the albino buck, so I'm kind of doubtful of the outcome. The couple seem to have bonded well enough. I bred Painter to a sister who has similar markings; they have three little ones whose eyes just opened, and Im hoping for a few more off of them. They are both wildly marked pied tris with lots of swatches of splashing and so forth.

Spirit is still hanging on; losing weight slowly, so I know he'll be gone any day now. He has had the same problem with his willie once or twice, but I keep doing the same thing, because it works, but eventually he's going to expire. He's so patient with all the 'handling' I've had to do in the last month. A sweet, sweet boy.


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## moustress

Spirit was pts Sunday night. He looked really out of it and wasn't interested in food. That along with loss of weight tipped the scales, so..that's that. He's left behind a lot of his offspring, including the seven boys he was in with up to the end. He was a rare case of a buck who never became territorial with his sons, and was very affectionate throughout his whole life. He seemed to spend more time in the nest with his babies than his mates did. He's being sorely missed!


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## moustress

Frustration is the key word I'd apply to my mousery at the moment. I'm fed up with the lack of success recreating the hot orange fawns with the red eyes that I love so much. In the last week I've paired five red eyed does with two red eyed bucks, and plan to set up one more group of thee or four tonight. I think I've suffered enough Instant Karma and deserve a break any day now.

I'm having some success getting better blue tricolors, but that is by accident. Weird. Painter and Roxie have a pretty little blue tricolor doe that is about four weeks old now. I love seeing the recessives show up like that, especially when it's something that I want to breed.

I'm, pleased with the curly mousies off the truck mousies. They seem to be very healthy, so maybe I so want to do some breeding of them in the future. The blue ones are especially nice and they all seem to be very friendly and eager to be handled.


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## moustress

Tonight I took some new pix of my young blue doe, Atlanta, in whom I am greatly pleased! Her blue is nice and dark, and the lilac is very good, I think.

Unfortunately, I had to pts Deep Blue, as he had a skin problem that had started to spread onto his head. Gull may be next, as he also has a skin problem recently, and has been losing weight for the last month, shrinking up like really old mousies do close to the end. I am still surprised that so many of them have lived this long after being exposed to such high temps for many hours. I consider myself lucky to have recovered as much as I have from the 'leftovers' after losing every single one of my chosen breeders and all the babies.

My success with blue tricolors, though, are enough all by itself to make me feel really happy about the state of things in the mousery.


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## moustress

All the young bucks seem to be coming into 'fust' at the same time. It's enough to drive me crazy and that can be a really short trip some days. Oh, well....

I have eight does paired, all red eyes, with red-eyed bucks. It's red-eyed fawn or bust!

Old Gull is starting to seriously go downhill; like all the surviving bucks after the accident he's developing bald patches with sores, which may be a good reason to for him to be pts in the next couple of days. He still comes to my hand and sits in it with his little treat.


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## moustress

The waiting game has begun; two of my breeding does are showing. It'll be a flurry of red eyed meeces in the nest couple of weeks!


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## moustress

The flurries of pink have begun! I'll wait for pix until the colors and markings start to show. The first litter is about five days old today....

Gull was pts a couple of nights ago. He had a very gradual decline with lots of affection and attention; he was the very last of my yellow tricolors and splashed mousies.

I've for a pair together for blue tricolors, and another for beige/brown, black, neither of which are showing yet.

Caught a wildie in the live trap; it's been a couple of months since that happened. It was very young, so I hope I don't have a breeding colony upstairs. My measures to prevent access to my cagetops has paid off. The last measure I introduced was freezing both bedding and grain/seeds. It's good not to find wild droppings on my cage tops, and very little in corners wither in the mousery or the adjoining room.

I've made my semi-annual large order of mousewares; some new tanks and water bottles, and a gallon of my favorite mite spray. Yeah, I know, order in large quantity and then have no mites....I'm NOT going to complain!


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## jadeguppy

Glad to hear some things are working out for you. I look forward to seeing the ry babies. I just paired up two ry (I think they are ry) and added a poorly colored black tan doe. The buck is in girlie heaven. There is some griping going on, but that happened when I added the first doe and I think she is the cause. They are settling down though.


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## moustress

Another good thing is that all my pairings seem to result in bonding. I love it when I see a pair snuggled up together, grooming each other. One of the tricolor pairings is from a line that also carries ry, so it should be interesting to see if I get a litter with both beige and yellow tricolors splashed. When I first bred Gull, the sire of both tricolors in that pair, I wasn't sure if he was from brindled/tri or yellow tri stock. Didn't take any head scratching; if he was brindled I'd be swimming in brindles by now.

I appreciate you reading and responding in this thread. Most of the time the only way I know folks are reading it is by the numbers.


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## Laigaie

I always read this thread (along with almost all threads except show and transport threads), but rarely comment. If buying a gallon of mite spray is what it takes to never see a mite, it's probably worth it. That said, I *knock on wood* haven't seen a mite yet. My small numbers make it easier to keep out pests.


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## moustress

Living in an old house makes it darn near impossible to keep the wild meeces out. I was unhappy a couple of nights ago when I was finding little 'calling cards' on the cage tops on a bottom shelf, but then Nate pulled out a tank for feeding and there was Penuche, having a bit of a lark. Still haven't figured out how he got out, but glad to know it wasn't a wild mousie. I've become a fanatic for not leaving a crumb or grain of food out anywhere in the mousery or the adjoining room, leaving the live trap more attractive to any wildies.


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## Laigaie

What do you bait your trap with, that it can stay baited for so long? When we had trouble at the old house (drop ceilings ugh), we used peanut butter. I imagine it doesn't do well left out for weeks, though.


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## moustress

Dried bread and kibble (usually puppy chow). Sometimes chocolate, if I think of it before I eat it all.


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## moustress

Vexed and puzzled are the words for today. How do you get black eyed babies from a pair that both have red eyes? Well, obviously you don't. The young bucks were removed from the tank with their mother and sisters on July 10. That's 31 days; then there was another week before the doe was paired to a buck. Obviously, she got together with a black eyed buck on about July 19. At no time was she out of the tank for more than five minutes, in my hand. So...guesses for grabs.


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## Laigaie

Was it your wildies? Or is it the slim chance that she actually held onto them for 31 days, somehow? But, then, her brothers would've also been pink-eyed, right? These are the things that keep me up at night. When this happened to me (except all pink-eyed in what should've been a black-eyed litter), I determined that the lhs dove tan sold to me as female had finally decided she had testes, impregnated her cage mate, and kept right on pretending to be a doe.


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## moustress

There is that chance, as I did find the cage top just a tad ajar once...more likely to be one of my boys, though, as it was on a top shelf. It doesn't matter, as four of them died, and the rest looked like their abdomens were filling with something dark, and they looked oddly dehydrated in the head and neck and limbs. I pts'ed them. They were also too small and looked premature. Jimmy Dean was on the job, so I'm resetting her due date for the end of August. The other doe in with them is starting to show now as well.

The ones that are not correctly sexed or seem to change are really annoying! I haven't had that happen now in months. I obsessively check under tails every time a tank is cleaned, and with the young ones at about 3 to 8 weeks I check all the time, especially the tris and splashed.


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## moustress

It looks like I finally have a couple of pied fawns in the latest litters. It took about the as long I thought it would, so I'm pleased with the results. Now I'm going to concentrate on reestablishing my yellow/red tricolors. There's no lack of good material for that project. Of course, it would be nice to have another odd eyed mousie like Oddball, but that's not essential. My progress with blue tris has been quite good, and I'm looking forward to Atlanta's and Neptune's litter, which should come in about a week or so.


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## jadeguppy

Sweet! I can't wait to see the results.


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## moustress

The 'sausage with whiskers' is a father! GG. (Great Grits), a pied champagne has a litter of six some time yesterday. I moved JD and AJ into separate quarters, as it looked like AJ was stealing babies. I found her set on two babies, one of which was dead, the other of which was in bad shape and died over night. :x GG was staying in the nest today, just stuck her nose out to see what was going on when I checked them this morning. The four that remain look like nice big well developed babies. And all of them are red eyed, as they should be.


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## Laigaie

You go JD!


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## jadeguppy

It is amazing how powerful the nurturing drive is in some does.


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## moustress

Good news! The runt that I though had died and been 'cuisined' survived. Must have been under some of the aspen bedding. Very wiggly and just a little skinnier than it's litter mates. Now I'm waiting on a pied champagne doe, poor thing, who I hope pops by tonight.


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## moustress

The last of the five does placed for breeding last month has thrown her litter. She's a pied champagne who was paired with Penuche, one of the four ry satin bucks that were instrumental in the effort to recover my fawn line. She has ten lovely long bodied eekers.

I think I have a fawn self in one of the other litters; we'll see what shows when the belly fur grows in a bit more. One of the litters started to open it's eyes last night.


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## moustress

:x Ooh! Gaaah! Outwitted by a critter with a brain the size of half a split pea!

Last Friday evening a young pied cinnamon doe got loose. I failed in my first attempt to capture her. Put out the live trap and found her trapped two days ago, unfortunately with her tail stuck in the works, but otherwise OK. I managed to free her without getting bit, gave her first aid and got her into a tank. she ate and dranks voraciously and went to sleep. Late night I took her out to check on her tail...and her tail is the last thing I saw as she scrambled and flew away. Clearly, she's picked up those 'wild' moves, except that really isn't afraid of me.

I say she isn't afraid of me because, last night, as I lay on the floor waiting to get her into position for capture, she crawled right up to me, close enough to sniff me, dashed off, came back, and so on for fifteen minutes....Ooh! Mad! By the time I get her back she may be knocked up by some wild buck....Gah!


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## jadeguppy

LOL, that is too funny.


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## moustress

*slink* *slinkslink* crouch* GOT HER!

*prrrrr..*

Box, board, stick, and string, just like when I was a little girl in the granary, catching and releasing wild meeces. A little bit of bread and milk, and water, were more than she could resist. She kept coming out to nab a drop of water or a speck of food off the floor, with me following and wiping up what I wouldn't have seen if she hadn't located them for me. She came out and actually stepped up on my sandal several times, cheeky little bugger...but it only took about 15 minutes to spring the trap. Now she's living in a ten gallon tank for a month or so, in quarantine.

My kitty, Grout, notified me of her presence by going into lurking mode in front of a section of shelving. Good kitty!


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## moustress

*bump*


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## jadeguppy

LOL, love it.


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## moustress

Last night was a occasion when I had to take the good along with the bad. I was thrilled to see that I had a fawn self among the babies born in the last couple of weeks. I have five fawns babies now. Pix have been posted. 

Then, my heart fell as I saw my pretty tricolor doe glassy eyed and unmoving as I took off the cage top.  She was due to give birth in the last day or so. She looked like she just laid down and died. Sophie was the prettiest tri doe I've had, but she had two sisters, who are now in with the same buck, Tracker, that Sophie had been paired with. I'm marking my calendar, as Tracker got right down to business.

I was not really surprised as Sophie's death. Licorice, her dam, had problems conceiving and had small litters, and I had another doe with the same sort of markings that also had problems and had to be removed prom the breeding program. The sisters don't have the big rounded areas of color that span the dorsal midline; I don't know if it will make a difference, but I tend to think that sisters ought to throw similar litters....I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.


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## jadeguppy

Bummer. Best wishes on the sisters litters.


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## moustress

Thanks.


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## moustress

What a week! We capped it off with the trip to North Branch to get several hundred pounds of grain to feed the meeces for the nest four months or so. The young lady tending the counter at the feed elevator asked to see pix of my meeces. She's been taking our orders for about eight years now, and I showed her some pix a few years ago. This time she got into this Forum and started looking at my Mousies du Jour thread, which as you know go on and on and on and on....

then she let me go back into the oldest parts of the elevator to look for the guy I always think of as their 'dogsbody; kinda like the sidekick to the Black Adder; name of Maddie or Mattie....sly looking fella with a couple of broken teeth, poorly trimmed longish hair, clothes that look like he sleeps in the back of the grain storage buildings...I can't quite put my finger on why I like him except he always has a smile and a laugh,, and most important, he used to keep mousies himself. He's into miniature goats at the moment, breeds and sells them. He always asks about my meeces. and chats with me for a bit...I guess we are kindred spirits, having both rejected mainstream life and fashions and stuff like that....anyway, it was a nice time. I never did find Maddie, which was a bit disappointing, as he often manages to find extra premium or fresh seed quality grain. Maybe he was turned into a bat and taking an afternoon snooze in the rafter. That old part of the mill always takes me back to days in my uncle's grainary; the smell of very old timbers cut from single treed a foot thick, the mixed odors of fresh and residues of very, very old grain, the weight of the air inside heavy and full of past memories and future potential...I like it a lot. I stuck my head out the doors onto the rail line, met several qats I hadn't seen before. I found a qitten...nearly too big to be one, but I brought it Nate, which could have been a real mistake....he loves qats and wants to collect the whole set. (q=c)

A fun time was had by all; I snagged my birthday present a couple of weeks early at the local liquor superstore. One and a half liters of dark Jamaican rum, so dark it's opaque...ahhh....Meyers!! should last me until solstice 2012. I'm not a very dedicated drinker, I'm afraid.(Though I do try to work on it when times allow. 

And in all the tale I never mentioned the grain, the purpose for the trip. I got about 350 pounds of oats, wheat, barley and millet. I had run out of everything but oats the night before. I like to give them a little more variety than that, and had been adding breadcrumbs to the mix instead of the other grain, so I'm sure they didn't miss the barley and millet.

My little spate of illness has run it's course with only a couple of older meeces needing to be pts. My blue tricolor couple still hasn't shown yet...I think I'm going to have to try a different buck or maybe another of Atlanta's sister. Both of Gull's two girls are showing after being paired with their brother...Gull was a BEW from a yellow tri litter.

I'm thrilled with my little fawn babies, still sad about losing my pregnant Sophie. Truth is the cup is that is half full is always half empty as well. Breeding tricolors is always a bit random as you never quite know exactly what you are going to get. Aunt Jemima and Jimmy Dean should have a litter any day now...tonight would be good. She's made a nice nest ball and was snuggled into it when I closed up the mousery for the night.


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## jadeguppy

Sounds like an interesting trip. What is a qat?


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## Laigaie

A cat or kitten, I'd assumed?


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## moustress

Yupper.


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## moustress

It's turning out to be an interesting week in the mousery. Aunt Jemima has a litter of eight with all black eyes...which means she's himalayan or something...and my little Weezer, the doe that was on the loose, then caught, then on the loosed and then caught again has had a litter of four really nice big looking babies. they can't be half wild because they are different colors, all dark. It hasn't been long onough for her to have gotten caught by a wild mouse, so I guess I'm going to keep them. I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how she got knocked up.

All the other litters as doing well, and, have I made it clear just how happy I am to have satin fawn mousies again?!!

Oh, yeah, I was looking at my little blue tricolor mousie that got pulled from the tank with it's mother and sisters because it looked like there were external gonads....now he/she has nipples and no testes...so she got a young pied blue doe to keep her company. Some of you you may know that I've had a number of tris that seemed sexually indeterminate. It's frustrating!


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## jadeguppy

There is a breeder in DC that has a hermaphrodite mouse. It has testicles and nipples.


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## moustress

Yes. I have tweeners. They change their appearance. It's maddening, and it happens mostly, if not entirely with the tris. Can't think of this ever happening before I got the tris.


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## Laigaie

I wonder if they're moasaic mousies, two or more embryos that fuse in the womb. Then again, you're not getting two-headed or five-legged mousies, so probably not.


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## moustress

What about the oddeyes? I have a bunch of them....damn me!


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## brainiac7

Hello Moustress, I got a couple of satin fawn does from you a while back for pets, if you remember me and my children coming to your abode and mousery? I have been wanting to update you on them for some time now.... we still have them and they are doing fine. One of them did develop a tumor on its abdomen a couple of months ago and we brought it to the vet not Knowing if it was a abscess or tumor, and the vet confirmed that it was a tumor but said she could not feel it conected to anything, which was a good thing, and we had her remove it and she has been just fine ever since. I will get some pictures uploaded soon.


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## moustress

Thanks so much for getting back to me! I have wondered about the little beauties from time to time. I'm so glad you have taken such exceptionally good care of them. Many people wouldn't have gone whole distance and taken the little dear to a vet. If you have any question or concerns at any time, feel free to contact me.

And I wold absolutely love to see pix of them; I wondered if they would get as chubby as their mother.


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## moustress

The three mousies that came from Gull's last litter have produced two large litters in the last couple of days. One litter is eleven, the other I haven't counted yet as the mother didn't want to leave the nest, but I was able to see that one of them has the red eyes that I hope mean it's a yellow/orange/cream mousie. It's almost too much to hope that it's a yellow tri when it could be any of a number of pp colors. Waiting is hard....

On another front, another fawn has appeared in a litter that is mostly champagne and argent. It's frustrating waiting for the two recessives, pp and cc, to line up and stand together as they should.

I removed Atlanta from the tank with the blue tri buck Neptune, as not only was she not showing after a couple of months, I saw her grooming him on a spot where the fur is missing, and I think it's from her compulsively grooming him. I hope he grows his fur back. It's funny that it only happens with does being bred licking the fur off their mates. I'm going to try using a couple of different mousies to further the blue tricolor line. Atlanta is such a good tricolor, but I don't want to breed any more meeces that do that kind of thing.

It's easy for me to blow an extra hour each night in the mousery taming down all the little ones. *how i suffer!*

Neptune is now bunking with a big satin pied cinnamon buck. They scrapped a little bit at first, but they are getting along just fine now.

I had to pts a little satin pintail; it was three weeks old and was shrinking. Looked like premature aging. Had that tiny thin tail with the segments clearly visible, as if it was missing a layer of skin or membrane. I'm so glad I don't have that happen too often any more.


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## jadeguppy

Sounds like you are busy. I hope you do get a fawn based tricolor.


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## moustress

It'll happen again. It took three generations for the first of them to show when I first established that line. It should only take one or two when I'm working with a grandsire (Gull) who was a BEW with yellow tri background.


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## moustress

A doe with a young litter was found dead in her tank last night. She hadn't been sick that I had noticed. The babies eyes just opened the day before so I was sure they would take solid food. I made them some cream of rice with milk and some mush with breadcrumbs and pulverized kibble. They sure as heck weren't going to take food from my hand, as they were already quite fleaish. One of the litter was the latest fawn to show in these litters. Itried feeding him in my hand, but the only food he got was when lunged at the finger with the blob of pablum on it. He tried to bite me,proving that his teeth were well developed.

I stayed up for an extra hour and a half to see if they would eat, and went to sleep thinking that they looked dehydrated and hunched, and resigned myself to the 'fact' that they were probably not going to make it. this morning I was was pleased to see they'd finished most of the bread crumb/ground kibble mush and all of the formula. I gave them more food this morning and then left them in the dark.

They have a heating pad set on low at one end of the tank with a piece of polar fleece to snuggle under, so guess they'll doo okay if the they continue to eat. I'm especially hoping for the little fawn one to make it.


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## jadeguppy

How disappointing. I hope they make it. I'm surprised the one tried to bite you. HOpefully he thought he was getting the food and not your finger.


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## moustress

No, he was very, very cranky, and still doesn't like me today. The others are mostly flea as well, but I'm getting them used to my finger as I stroke them to get them to wake up and go for food. They need the physical contact and stimulation, and I'm the only thing available to them. them are eating crunched up kibble, grain, and the other mushy mixes I have been making. There's onloy one who doesn't look good, but If I lise only one, Ill be content with that.

The little fawn boy scrambles like mad to get away from my finger. Hope he settles down a bit..


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## Batesy05

Hi all I'm new here I recently brought 2 mice for my son but I think I like them more than he dose lol they was sold to me as to females but the over day I found them mating so just a waiting game I can't wait to see the out come!


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## moustress

Hi, Batesy; I think you mistook this for the Introduction Section, but hello and welcome!

My little orphans have made marvelous recovery. I was watching them last night before I turned out the light (they are in a small tank on my nightstand) and saw that most of them were no longer hunched, has nice erect ears, and most of them have actually grown since yesterday. I've been using my index finger to sort of herd them into a nest area, then I start pushing bedding up over them like a mother doe would. They are eating very well. I'll keep giving them formula and mush along with grain and kibble, as I think they're too little to work the eater bottle. I could tell one of them was thirsty last night, so I herded it over to the waer bottle and demonstrated how it worked with my finger. It got the picture, and licked the moisture off the ball, but couldn't get it so let down any more H2O. I'm especially happy to see the little pied fawn boy looking well.


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## jadeguppy

That is great news!


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## moustress

The orphaned litter growing like mad, eating everything in sight, and so fleaish it's like popcorn popping when I put The Hand in the tank. I am having flashbacks to the orphaned litter that was lost in the horrible accident. I'm trying to stop it there, cuz I think it would kill me to lose this little guys. That other litter was a week old when the mom died, and it was a lot of work fedding them by hand for a week and a half until they were well able to eat on their own.


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## moustress

Another week in the mousery; two more litters born, one in the same group intended to give me back my fawns, another is a tricolor pairing that uses Ghiradelli, pied chocolate (MMMmmm...chocolate pie) from a tri litter to a lovely little beige based tri, and the other to Big Bertha, a large pied argente doe mated to Big Bert, a large pied champagne.

Many of my litters born last month are needing to be separated into his and hers accommodations. The orphans are three weeks old, nearly, and are back in the mousery for good. *sigh* I am eagerly awaiting the arrivals of two tricolor litters from Gull's litters, all are beige based, though I would be disappointed not to see a yellow or two in those litters.

I have some odd results in the other litters that hale back to good old Gull; a few of them are yellow, and they seem to have some sort of odd thing going on with the coat colors where the front half of the body is deep, bright orange and the rear half is a sooty yellow. One is so frequently puzzled by things that show up in tri/splashed litters.


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## moustress

Ghiradelli and Cassie have produced a litter that look to have some wonderfully boldly marked tris! He's a very deep warm pied chcolate, she a pretty good tricolor. I'll get pix tonight. I'm so eager to see what comes of Big Bertha and Big Bart's litter. They are all pink eyed, and light colors take longer to show distinctly. I have a new litter off Tracker and one of his sisters, with another set to be thrown any time now. Tracker had impregnated Sophie, sister to these two, but she failed at labor and was found dead.

The orphans have spent several days back in the mousery, and are doing great, I'm happy to say


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## jadeguppy

Sorry to hear about Sophie, but glad the orphans are doing well.


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## moustress

Hip deep in little mousies and loving it!!!

I am also very pleased to say that I was able to take two bucks (brothers) and get them to live with three other bucks (brothers). The sire of all five was Gull, who was an absolute sweetie pot pie of a mousie. First I switched them into each others cages to make them smell even more like brothers than they did already. I was amazed to see them all together in the corner of the cage the next morning draped all over each other and grooming. Not a sign of any fighting; and that's not something I took for granted...one always fears finding a gory scene in these instances...but, nope, no blood, no squeaking...just wonderful harmony!

I'm going to try this same thing with two other small groupings of bucks this weekend sometime. I've been excluding agressive bucks from breeding in 80% of my pairings for over ten years now, and it has really paid off. I don't like euthanizing bucks or any mousie for that matter, but I can't have too many tanks with just one boy in them...there just isn't room for much of that.

The latest litter to show color are from Big Bertha and Bart, and there are fawns in that litter! They are nice long babies, and I so pleased with them. Bertha is a pied argente, Bart a pied champagne. This is the mix I needed to have restored, in order to feel back on track in my mousery. 

The orphans are almost old enough now to go to his and hers tanks.


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## jadeguppy

How old are the boys you put together?


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## moustress

They are from two litters, two are about six months old, the other three are about eight months old.


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## jadeguppy

Wow, I'm surprised they are getting along. Mine started fighting at about 2-3 months old. I hear that part of the key is having 5-10 together.


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## moustress

I'm not sure that there is any one answer to what works, though crowding them does seem to work some of the time. I 've tried not to breed bucks that were prone to fighting, and I've had specific lines in which the bucks were able to bred and then placed back together with no fighting. I do know that bucks will fight over any furnishing that can be climbed in, on or run on, like wheels. It's sad that they have to be deprived of that, but it's sadder still to have a buck all alone, especially when you have as many as I do.

Older bucks who are placed together in large groups or six or more sometimes do well. I just go for what has worked in the past, with any new things that I can think up. zi think it helps to remove troublemakers right away in order to prevent the behavior from being copied by the other bucks.


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## jadeguppy

So you keep the tank bare? I wonder if that might be what triggered mine to start fighting. What size container are you keeping them? My bins have a little more floor space than a 10g.


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## moustress

They are in a variety of tanks, actually I have four brothers in a 10g, two and three in medium size ( equivalent to 5.5) Kritter Karriers; five in a 5.5g......


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## moustress

I have a mycoplasma infestation on my violet aster plants! Yellow stuff on the stems that is powdery to the touch. I was weirded out until I read up on the stuff, and was pleased to find out there was no way for that species to infect me or my mousies. It seems that species of this bacterium tend to stick with one type of organism. Fascinating!


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## moustress

Now we come to the challenge of being a responsible breeder in the form of deciding which lines to continue and which ones to terminate. Yes. Terminate. It's not good to have too many mousies; when you have more mousies than you can enjoy, handle, love, whatever you want to call it, it's time to seriously consider culling.

Look; I have produced about 15 litters since the middle of last December, so you know that's a lot of mousies. Now that they are mostly grown up, and I've accomplished my main goal (fawns), I have to take a serious look at the others that came along in that attempt.

I've started with matching up bucks in tanks, after providing the opportunity for them to gain each others smell by reversing the populations into the others tank for a few hours. It has worked with does, and it has worked with the first group of bucks I have put together. After trading tanks, I remove all the boys and make a mix of beding from the two tanks, and put the boys in. there was some barbering going on, so I took them out of the 10 gallon and put them and the old mixed litter in a 5 1/2 gallon tank, and there has been sweet peace at last! They now all bed down in a heap, grooming one another, and getting along famously. Of course, they still get a good hairy eyeball on them, and I play no music so I can hear any squabbling from any cages.

Ultimately, it's my love of meeces that guide my hand in pts'ing the ones that I can't keep in the way I would like. I have limitations; arthritis in my hands being the chief complaint, so I realistically need to keep only the mousies that I can give the best care and sufficient attention to. I wish there were more breeders near me that I could place my darlings with.

Now that I have gotten on the road with multiple fawns that are maturing, I will not be breeding nearly as many litters. The pace I'd been setting is unsustainable, so I'm going to concentrate on the blue and yellow tris, with a litter or two each year of the fawns. I also will have a couple of litters of my other non-tri meeces. The curly mousies are wonderful and I will do a couple of litters in that line, as well as the petstore/snakebait mousies. I want to limit the total number of litters to about 10 per year, the thought being that the attrition rate should allow a stable population. And of course, there is always the option of culling, which I have already begun with a few of the more recent litters.


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## moustress

Gull's grandkids off Tracker include at least three yellow/red tris! I'm extremely pleased and excited! I need to figure out how to breed them to get better and deeper coverage of color, as they are probably all c^e/c. I've produced way too many BEW's as it is already. Breeding back to a nice deep red will probably be the way to go. I'm also planning to breed one, if I have a female in that group, to Tracker, so there will be be BEW's in that case...Tracker's just too good not to use again.

There appears to be one fawn, and I think there's an oddeye. I'm really tickled to have my first litter of mixed yellow and beige tris.


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## jadeguppy

Have you considered donating your "extra" mice to a wildlife rescue? My local one can't afford to breed their own mice, but need some to be sure the wild critters can catch food to survive when released. I try not to think of the results, but it is mother natures way and doesn't waste the life like disposal does.

Glad to hear about the tris.


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## moustress

That's something I had already thought of; I really should find out about setting up a CO2 chamber. I don't have the grit to do the cervical snap, which is the quickest way. I worry about someone else doing the job in a sloppy or careless manner and causing more pain and fear than is necessary.


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## moustress

I've transferred some of my pix from a thread at the PetRodents site to give folks an idea of what I've done with yellow tris in the last couple of years and also to show what I'm trying to recreate with breeding yellow tris today.



moustress said:


> I am very pleased to show pix of my first unequivocal yellow tris!!
> 
> These two young bucks are about 3 1/2 months old now. I was very pleased to see a red-eyed tri; now I'm thrilled to see the clear demarcation between shades of fawn on the same marvelous mousie! The other buck is a marked splashed yellow tri. The parents of these two were two splashed marked yellow tris, and, by golly, you betcha, I'm gonna pair those two up again right away!!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When I first thought I saw two different shades of fawn on the red-eyed buck, I told myself that it was just a trick of the light and the shininess of the satin fur, but now I think you can clearly see the two shades of fawn on the face. there are other patches of deeper fawn on the left side of his neck, and other areas as well. These two boys are both very nice mousies; but y'all know my preference for the red-eyed dilutes! :lurv: arty: :cloud9: :nod: :mouse: :mouse:





moustress said:


> I couldn't help taking a few better shots of Sunburst (I choose a name, finally). Oh, and his mate Dandelion shows up in one of these.





moustress said:


> Here's a peek at a litter of yellow tris; the parents are both splashed satin yellow tris.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A shot of the parents.
> 
> 
> 
> And, from an earlier yellow tri litter, here's another bee-yoo-tee-full BFM!





moustress said:


> I've decided to start a new thread for the second half of 2009. I have updated pix of a yellow/tri litter first; they are nine days old now.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here are my babies off of S.P., satin red-eyed fawn buck and Babette, standard champagne tan doe.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And a shot of S.P. and Babs:
> 
> 
> 
> I am scratching my head over this litter off of mice that are from yellow/tri litters:





moustress said:


> Here are some more pix of my pretty little ones:
> 
> First are S.P. and Babbette and their tykes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Next are Sparks and Curry and little ones:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah; we are the cutest ever...
> 
> 
> 
> Hey. wait a sec, what about me!!?
> 
> 
> 
> Me cute too!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here's a first peek at my latest brindle/tri litters. they are from one buck, Sammy, marked brindle/ tri, Tammy, a doe, marked brindled/tri, and Pixie, marked brindle/tri doe. Pix is the dark marked one of the three.Sam and Tam actually show full color and patches of diluted tri color along with the white. These guys are about a week old now. the upside down baby was fostered from a yellow/tri litter and is a few days younger.





moustress said:


> Looking at some of my yellow/tri meeces, I'm thinking that maybe I don't have to start a separate line in order to develop a nice deep red color. It seems as if I am already seeing deeper shades occuring. Here are some new pix of Cerry and Spark's litter at four weeks old:
> 
> This little boy already has a distinct tri marking on his face with two shades of fawn on either side of a streak of light yellow:
> 
> 
> 
> And some pix of the rest of the litter:





moustress said:


> The photo host was slow:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's a matter for serious consideration as to whether or not the recessive for pink or red eyes alters the way the tri gene plays out in any individual mouse. With my preference for pink-eyed dilutes you can be sure that I will be investigating the matter very thoroughly! The pink eyed baby is in the first picture.





moustress said:


> I just couldn't help taking a couple more pix of this young buck, now named Royal. His color is deepening as he grows, and he really knocks my socks off!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here's a look at Moonglow's little ones at one week old:
> 
> 
> 
> This bunch are Dandelion, Trinket, Sunburst, and their offspring:


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## tinyhartmouseries

Honestly madam, if you can bring yourself to dislocate, it is SO quick...I am always comforted that they pass in a second. As selfish and smarmy as it may sound, there's no mechanisms or machinery for me to mess with or mess up. If I was good with stuff like that I wouldn't mind a CO2, but I do take comfort in the FAST passing of the dislocate.


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## moustress

Time to get back to posting mousie stuff in this thread where it belongs.

The work upstairs has been completed! I have a new light fixture in the mousery that is more compact and flourescently efficient. It's a 13W bulb, so it doesn't blast my poor head with too much UV. The guys that did the owrk wee just great. For the most part I wouldn't have known they were here except for the drilling holes and the vacuuming up after. My hallway upstairs is cleaner now than it was before they came. And there's a new outlet close to the door of the west room so now my vacuum will reach all the way down the hall to the east room without unplugging and replugging in that room.

We'll be back to eating beans and rice until payday, but we managed to pay for the new electrical circuits out of the household budget. *shriek* That's the sound of me pinching a penny untell it yells out loud.

Tracker has been entertaining two lovely pied yellow does for about a 10 days now. He's a model of breeding efficiency; they are already showing just a little. One is a BE pied yellow tri carrying pink eyes, the other pied red, carrying pink eyes. They are the only meeces expecting new litters right now. There are no other pairings I'd care to make until my younger mousies grow up a little.
They are being rehoused as they grow older, so there is no space to spare. My oldest mousies are just hanging on, there's one tank of old does who are well over 2 years old that I've been pts'ing as they get frail enough to no longer look like they are enjoying living.

Ghiradelli's litters are turning out to be very lovely tris; I need to take some new pix of them tonight. I seperated the boys last night; one of the young does had a wee bit of vaginal prolapse, but it has disappeared as of a couple of hours ago. I wonder what caused that? It was just a tiny bit of pink ruffle outside the vagina.


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## moustress

We got a new lighting fixture in the 'closet' that houses the mousery; it's the only compact florescent light in the house, as the UV from those generally give me eyestrain and migraines. This new fixture is only 13W, though, and I find it doesn't bother me at all. It's low profile, only protruding about two and a half inches from the ceiling/wall/roof angle. This is good as we were always in danger of running into the light that hung there before. We had removed the globe fixture, which was about nine inches in diameter, leaving only the bare bulb. I bet the meeces like the new light better as well.

I'm puzzled to the point of confoundment by my little blue/blue agouti tris. Last night I thought that several of the ones I thought were blue agouti were actually blue. I could see no trace of agouti in the darker patches, just nice dark blue. I suppose this sort of thing happens with babies as they grow and molt and get new coats...I took pix and looked at them last night, and the pix still show agouti. I wonder if the colors look different in part because of the new type of lighting in there.

The bucks from the litter that yielded my one and only fawn self are such little sweethearts; they climb into my hand even without a treat there. The fawn self buck is going to get paired up sometime this week.


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## moustress

My blue and blue agouti tri/splashed litter is big enough that I had to look up their birthdate. I was afraid I had spaced out and left the little boys stay too long, but they are not even four weeks old yet! They look big enough to go to town, though, which means I'll be separating them this weekend. The tank they are in is too small, in any case, for all of them.

Tracker and his two yellowed does still have not produced any definite results or reason to expect results. I had thought the girls were showing more than a week and a half ago, but I was obviously wrong. Bah!

I'm doing a little more work in the mousery to make it more mouseproof, more easy to clean, and more convenient to move around in. I was going to fill some gaps with spray foam sealant, but the dang can doesn't work! On second thought, I should probably move the meeces out of there so they don't get too much exposure to the fumes. I think it's toxic; don't really know, so I'll err on the side of caution.


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## Laigaie

Usually spray foam thingies say that you should use them in "well-ventilated areas". I suspect that means it's bad to breathe, and could therefore hurt the mice.


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## moustress

My thought exactly. Me, I'll just hold my breath and run like crazy. It's not a very confined space, though, and I can open the window to dilute whatever fumes there are. The shelving units have wheels, so they can be put in the hall while I do the work.


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## moustress

Wow, it's been weeks since I talked about that's happening in my mousery. Maybe that's on account of the fact that there has been very little happening in there. My second litter of blue/blue agouti tris are starting to open their eyes. I think there are a few blue tricolors in this bunch. I have been looking, and looking, and looking some more for signs of brownishness, and I think that three or four of them, at least, are true blue tris, though a couple of them have more than two shades in the blue family.

I hesitate to say that I think at least one of the yellow does who have been living companionably with Tracker looks to finally have buns in the oven. *crosses fingers, legs, toes, and eyes*


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## jadeguppy

I wish you the best of the yellows. I hope to put together my first possible tri producing pair this weekend and some more next weekend. Hopefully between the four does I'll manage to get some tris.

Do you have any pics of your tris?

And yes, light bulb colors can really impact the looks of mice. I had a black tht looked fox until I took a picture and then took her outside to confirm. Definate brown tinge that wasn't visible inside.


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## moustress

Oh, golly. I stayed out of the thread involving whether or not to house males together. Some folks you just can't help.

I DO believe that mousies can be selectively bred to be more docile; I've been routinely culling the most aggressive violent bucks for about ten years...with limited progress in getting the boys to live together. Any buck that displays violent or harassing behavior gets 'the treatment', which mostly consists of time outs (in a boring, empty kritter karrier) of increasing length from 10 to 30 minutes. this doesn't always work, and i sometimes keep nasty boys who are essential to a breeding project. I pay close attention, though, to the condition of the bucks that live in groups. There are behaviors that can lead to death of a cagemate without showing a single sign of physical injury.

I would NOT recommend this method to anyone else. My results would be hard to duplicate, and I consider myself to be more observant and somewhat more knowledgeable than many other folks who breed mousies. It's a risk, yes, and there have been injuries, but I monitor them closely enough that there have been no fatalities from injuries in at least four or five years. Males that do get injured get treated and then live by themselves for the rest of their lifespan.

Does can be quite aggressive, something that still surprises me. It happens when related groups of females are kept together, with one of them becoming dominant, and showing behavior like glancing nipping motions at my hand. I've had to hone my social engineering techniques when I need to consolidate populations of a couple of tanks. I've learned to swap the populations for and hour or two, then combine the bedding and the meeces in one tank.

With the bucks, I only change half of the litter at any one time. Males who have lived together peaceably can erupt into violence immediately upon being place together on clean bedding. It's an instinctual response based on territorial defense. This is also why it's important to have a buck in his own space before introducing a doe, so that he won't mistake her for an enemy and attack her.

As to the discord over the subject, I can only say once again that I don't recommend this as a general practice. Its a risk that shouldn't be taken by most folks. I haven't had much in the way of new blood in my mousery for years, with the exception of the truck mousies, and I have not bred any of them. Ten years of somewhat selective breeding may be the entire difference, but I really can't say for sure.

As to the person who keeps clamoring for agreement when it's not there, what is there to say really!!? Get over it and drive on.


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## moustress

My blue tricolor litter are about three weeks old now. I'm kind of pining for new mousie babies, but I need to have room before I do any more breeding. I have empty tanks, but I think I'm going to slowly lower the population of my mousery by selective culling and just not breeding much for the next half year now that I've restored my fawn population.

I've got to be realistic about my arthritis. I hate the thought of not being able to do everything I can for their welfare, and sometimes I find myself thinking about waiting to do some of the cleaning measures I started doing in the last year. It's so obvious that a clean mousery is essential to their health, especially when it's in a small space like mine is.


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## moustress

Geez! What a whiner! Gpotta remind myself that the way to become truly disabled is to stop doing the things that I love. Being active is good for osteoarthritis. I changed six 5 1/2 gal. tanks and four 10 gal. tanks last night, along with several medium critter carriers. That's a few more than I do in one evening most of the time, but I feel good about it.

Not feeling too sorry for myself today. My blue and blue agouti tris are coming along and I think I have more than one that is a blue tri, at least one that is a lilac tri. The lilac on these babies is really pretty with hints of blue and lavender, especially on the satins. Of the older litter, the best tri is a SH satin curly. She's thin as a whippet, and I'm going to fatten her up in a tank of her own before pairing with with an older lilac tri buck. I'm still tempted to try to reed one of Atlanta's girls. These bad behaviors (grooming the mate until the hair falls out) may not run in all of them....and one of the girls is such a nice deep blue.


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## moustress

So, I've had my toes stomped on again by a Mister Big Guy Show Mouse Breeder. Yeah, I thought I'd keep him around as he sometimes has useful information to impart to the rest of us poor clodhoppers. I've had enough, though, of his pointless meaness. It's not a matter of feeling insecure (which I DON'T) about the quality of my mouies. It's more a matter of just not taking the time or spending the energy. It's a waste time. He's a waste of time.

You may be very well educated, Mr. Big Shot, but you're not very smart. You may know a lot about science, you may have really great show meeces. You are the very nadir of good manners, the zero sum in the equation human kindness, and the sucking black hole in the starscape of human spirit.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My newest litter off of Elektra and E-Boy are looking good. I handled them for the first time today. They have nice little rolls of fat! And they are long bodied, and I can see markings starting to show in the skin.

It's almost exactly a year since the mishap, but I feel like things are back to normal. My mousies are a constant source of relaxation and happiness, which is good, because Real Life is really sucking in my household right now. It's a hard time, but it's also work to be done, problems to be solved, obstacles to be overcome. I try to just just keep looking forward, and taking things one step at a time.


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## SarahY

Don't let it bother you moustress, beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder and unfortunately some people don't get that :roll: Your mice may be different to others' but nearly everyone here, including myself, admire the perpetual shine of vitality and health which they display xxxxx


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## BlackCat99

I adore the mice you have especially coyote he is so fluffy I have been trying to find mice just like him lol


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## moustress

*purrr-r-r-r*


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## Gill

Your post about arthritis struck a chord with me - I have it in my spine, and, as it's combined with osteoporosis, isn't going to improve. I have only just started breeding, but have to be quite ruthless and cull anything unsuited to my programme (unless I manage to rehome). Cleaning cages, and keeping the meeces room clean is getting to be a real pain, in more ways than one.

Tell Mr Big Shot what he can do with himself - preferably something painful - your mice are beautiful.


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## jadeguppy

Honestly, I'd advise against you trying to contact him. He has made it very clear on another forum that he has no respect for you as a breeder or as a person.


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## moustress

Yeah, I hit the Ignore button. If MBS (Mister Big Shot) is slandering me I wish him all the joy that he deserves. Nuf said.


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## BlackCat99

wow. Some people forget that saying "if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all!"


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## SarahY

Ah, my mum's favourite saying when we were kids


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## sys15

i don't know what message you are discussing said, but i think it is ridiculous that there is one type standard for all "show" mice.

where would dog showing be as a hobby if they had never allowed for different breed standards?


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## BlackCat99

I agree Sys15 I am kind of surprised there aren't multiple types of show mice.... "breeds" if you will lol


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## moustress

I really don't care about the standards; I value my half wild and petstore mousies almost as much as the lines I've worked on for over a decade. I certainly give them the same care and consideration as any of the others.

I'm really pleased with my new black tricolor litter; they are very fat and very noisy. they all appear to have some nice bold markings and a fair amount of white. The Petsy and Hissself litter were highly anticipated, as her first litter had serious probloems, none of them survived, but Hissself was left in with her, and she delivered her second litter with clockwork precision, the day after I removed the buck to bachelor's quarters.

My blue tris are doing very very well. I'll take new pix tonight.

I seem to have a possible outbreak of ringworm; I've isolated the affected mousies and will be vigilant in the tanks in that general vicinity for any further outbreaks. I had one doe who had it starting a couple of weeks ago; she is recovering nicely after about ten days of treatment. I'k pretty sure it won't spread any farther; I've got both the first doe and the new ones isolated in the other end of the house. These things tend to be opportunistic, showing up in a susceptible individual, and incubating and proliferating in quantities enough to be infectious to the general population if contact is allowed. I've a half a gallon bottle of sanitizer that I've been using a lot. I wish it really moisturized like the label advertises....


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## moustress

I decided to move the affflicted does down to the floor where it stays cooler, on the theory that they would be better able to withstand the crud that is causing their hair to fall out. It appears to have worked, the doe that had a puffy face with one eye almost swollen shut looks much better, and the other one that look like she had some patches of thin hair also looks no worse, and may be getting better. Can't expect hair to grow back instantly, but the earlier doe that had been loosing hair has it mostly grown back in, so I expect these girls will be OK. It's not really workable to put powder or ointment on the face of a mousie. Tinea is just one of those things that can reduced as a threat by simple cleanliness, but can never re completely eradicated in a household situation. Oh, sure you can sanitize the bejeebers out of everything, but you can't eliminate the bug without radical and extreme measures.

Another thing that I'm changing; I have too many mousies in too small a space, so I'm moving all the boys out into the main part of the room. I have already been keeping a few tanks there for a few weeks, and they seem to be fine at the approximately 60F temp the room typically achieves during the heating season. It does down to about 55 on really cold nights, and so far it hasn't caused any illness that I can see. They seem really happy to see me, though, any I think they may need a few extra calories to compensate for the cooler conditions. The other mousies are fine except for a barely noticeable problem with what I see as eye irritation; the margins of skin/eyelids of a couple of tanks of does looks a bit enlarged without being red or swollen, sort of like the thing you see on very old meeces. Not hair loss, exactly...I should show a picture in the health thread so y'alls can see what I'm talking about. I see it as a sign of stress from too much dander, ammonia, and other dust in the air. And I hate it when my meees don't look their best. :evil:

There just isn't anything I can do to improve the ventilation in the mousery proper that doesn't involve some serious remodeling. And ventilation is very essential to the health of any stock kept in large quantity in small spaces. I'll see what happens in the next few weeks, as the weather should get genuinely frigid. We keep making bits of improvement in our energy efficiency with each passing year, adding a bit more insulation and suchlike, so it's a LOT warmer up there now when it's cold outside than it used to be. Replacing a rotten old woodframe window made a big, big difference. I'm going to replace the cheap flexible heat ducting that snakes around the outside of the mousery in the eaves, as right now I suspect it is largely used as a funway by the wildies, if not an actual nesting area...some of the things people do to old houses are just plain sad.

As far as breeding goes, I made another pairing a few days ago; I thought I had posted about it already, but now I think I blathered on in a pm...sorry about that  . I get very loquacious when I've had a drink and a half. My pied fawn boy, who I've decided to call Lordy Lordy had been mated with a splashed red/yellow that I call Little Lady. She looks like a BEW from the front; typical large dark eyes and she's half again as big as he is, bulk wise...I'm sure they'll manage some how. He's a little firecracker that has been by himself for the past ten days or so for being a pest to him brothers. Better for all concerned that he be in his own space. This is a prime example of a mousie, that were he not the typiest specimen of exactly what I want for my yellow tricolors...he'd be an ex-mousie. But he's just too dang pretty to die.

All the younger generation of boys are coming of age *sigh* so choices have to be made and carried out forthwith.


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## moustress

Can it only be three days since I posted here last?

Petco called to me and drew me in....there were three nice boys,two champagne or dove, and a nice argente with the proper light peach and silver bands. They were looking very sore and harried...I suspect someone breeds feeders and got into breeding some colored meeces kind of accidentally. They are tractable and healthy looking boys. I'll post a pic or two after they have had a chance to settle in. For now they will be together and Ill see how they get along this evening. My mousery is in the process of being rearranged once again. I'm never completely satisfied with that sort of thing; always want to do better.

I hope everyone has a peaceful or fun New Year's celebration, as you like, and all good things for the next year!


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## moustress

I looked up this book for which the 2 Sarahs have made a deal. It is available in the Free Library online. I read it. It's short and sweet and has a lot of good stuff in it, and a few things that will make a modern mouser chuckle and scratch his head. Having grown up under a rock in the hinterlands, I got used to figuring out stuff on my own, and it's interesting to see some things I 'discovered' on my own in a book pubbed in the early twentieth century.

A fascinating and quick read.

We (my spouse and I) and I are trying to convince ourselves that we no longer need the romance of keeping thousands of books printed on paper. It's romantic, though to have the smell of old paper permeate one's abode; I think we are moving towards keeping them in labelled boxes to cut down on dust, and for ease in moving if we get to that point. This little double bungalow has been , in some ways, perfect. It certainly has the right space for the meeces and all the humans involved, but I can't keep up with the work involved, and I won't slack off on the care due the living things (including the flower gardens).

I've finally made a pairing of one of the humongous blue splashed boys from my cross of Kama and the Jumbo White Boy from the reptile shop. I also plan on putting Nance with him after she's sorted out from the rsts of her offspring. That will be her third and last litter, most likely. Lordy Lordy and Little Lady are getting along famously, and I think I see a swelling in her belly. She's young enough to not have gotten too fat...I hope.


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## jadeguppy

What book are you talking about?


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## moustress

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=9485


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## moustress

I was unhappy that I cold not get this forum to load yesterday. Could have freaked out; decided I oculd get by for a bit without you all.

Dang '404 will not load'. anyone have any idea what the deal was?

I suspect Comcast has been squeezing my bandwidth again. Did I already post about this?


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## Frizzle

^^^
I had the same problem, I was worried my computer had messed itself up. Was gonna post about it, but I see you already did. Lol.


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## jadeguppy

Must have been a forum problem. Other forums were loading for me.


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## moustress

I'm waiting on several does to start showing; two pair of yellow/red that I hope will yield tris and splashed, and a trio of blue tris and splashed.

Little Lady looks like she might be preggers. Lordy Lordy is such a fine looking little buck, he reminds me of a bantam rooster. It would be nice to see some yellow tris by spring.

My young bucks have been maturing and requiring sorting out as to who stays and who goes. I am astounded that my recent blue tri litter is all female! I'd kind of been hoping to get a good blue tri stud out of that litter. Oh, well...

I've paired two of the roan/merle looking meeces, a pied cinnamon and a pied red. That will be really interesting; I think it's really a form of splashing.

I've got a buck who looks like he's a brindled; I wondered when that would show up again.n When I tried breeded brindled and tris together, I got meeces that looked like the roan/merles. I might try putting him with my best pied roan/merle (the pied black that tinyhart wanted...don't want to waste the opportunity to see what's what there.)


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## moustress

Little Lady is puffing up like a lovely satin dumpling. I had thought Nance would be the first in this round of pairings to show as Lunkhead got busy right away; Nance didn't really show, though the first time she had a litter, until a few days before she threw the litter. Rhoda, odd-eyed splashed blue, is a BIG girl, and she may not show until a day or two before hers comes.


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## moustress

Little Lady is puffing up like a lovely satin dumpling!


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## jadeguppy

I love the swallowed golf ball look.


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## moustress

One of those posts was supposed to not be there; sometimes things load weirdly in this forum. I didn't think that first post had gone throurgh, and decided to remake it, butkeep it short and sweet.


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## moustress

Fooling me, Nance is getting very, very round in the hindquarters! She's looking way more preggers than Little Lady. I'm still not sure about Oddy Doddy, the odd eyed doe. She is a big doe, and may not show much...


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## moustress

Little Lady should throw her litter anytime now. She swelled up very quickly in the last couple of days, has been eating everything she can get, and looks so nice and big and shiny. Lordy Lordy looks very possessive and protective; he's such a little pistol!

Nance is also very large and spends most of her time in the large nest ball she's made for herself. This will be her third and last litter.

Lunker and Doddy seem to be OK, but no signs of pregnancy as of yet.

It's been weeks since I had a new litter; I'm excited and hopeful! I never know just what is going to come out of these tri/splashed pairings.


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## moustress

Heaven help them! They are so big now it hurts to look. They have each built up a huge nest ball, and when I take the lid off the tank they each give me that look that says,"If you stick that hand in here, it better have some FOOD in it!"

Meantime, I have made one more pairing. The satin fawn self buck, Sun Bear, and a standard pied fawn doe, Tipsy, are getting to know each other, with much eekage and skweekage. I think it may take a couple of estrus cycles for them to accomplish anything.


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## candycorn

Aww! I can't wait for baby pictures!


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## jadeguppy

Sounds like they area about to explode. I'm consistently amazed at how big some does get.


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## moustress

They are still looking very large and impatient...checked on them about an hour ago, gave each a bit of a snack...unbelievable that they could still be getting bigger. I hope they don't have humongous litters.


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## jadeguppy

For your sake I wish you six very large bubs.


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## moustress

Little Lady threw an even dozen; after about three days, I have culled four of them. they weren't growing as I'd like them to, and, while they didn't look dehydrated, they did not looked fully fleshed out. LL looked much more relaxed by the time I left the mousery last night, having just the right number to nurse all at once.

I would appear that I have tricolors in this litter! I still don't know quite what the colors are going to be, as Little Lady has only a wee splash of color on her. She carries yellow, but one of the babies appears to a darker shade. I can hope that it's a sooty yellow tricolor...

Another doe is showing; I paired a couple of the pied merle/silvered/splashed just to see what's really going on with those types. I may pair another two if I like the results from this pairing. I'm impatient with Doddy and Lunker and may get her with a different buck if I don't see results in the next week or so. Tracker and his new doe seem to be getting along famously, but no signs of pregnancy as of yet.

I was handling the young bucks from Elektra's and Punk's litter last night; I have chosen my new stud! I had thought that the markings of the parents, combined, would give me an exceptional boldy marked mousie, and I was right! And I do SO like to be
right!


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## moustress

Weird times in the mousery; I had thought a few days ago, that there were no yellows in Little Lady's brood. They looked grayish to me. Now I can see that there are yellows there, but they are sooty. If they take after their grandpas the sootiness will clear as they age, and they will be a nice bronze shade of yellow/red. I'm not sure if any of them are tri or not as of yet. I'm thinking that I may need to breed brindle into the line to get the tris like the ones I had before.

I'll be trying a number of different pairings over the next year. The ones I had before took three generations of crosses between bold black based tris and yellows and reds.

These current two litters have been somewhat problematic; Nance's babies grew like crazy the first week or so, and then they seemed to just sort of stall out. The fur came in, but they haven't been growing much at all. One baby died for no apparent reason. I've been trying to supplement her diet as much as possible. The babies are adorable and I love the markings, but I'm still concerned at the slow development. Little Lady's batch got culled to eight, then I culled a few more when it became obvious they were defective, and LL munched another that may have died on it's own. So I am left five babies who look to be doing OK.

My merlish pairing was premature, I think. I found little bits and pieces...*sigh*...and I'm hoping for better results from the next litter. It just has not been going as well as I'd like. I suppose I got a bit spoiled by all the successful breeding that took place over the last year with my trying to restore my fawn line. Shouldn't take that for granted, ever.

I just haven't felt that I had much to show to take pix of lately.


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## tinyhartmouseries

Coming from a fellow member of the Hard Litter Times, this too shall pass....I am sorry for the losses and I bet the next litters will be awesome!


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## moustress

We all get our turn, don't we? :roll:

Thanks for the sympathy, hon.


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## moustress

Well, out of the 20 babies born to Little Lady and Nance two weeks ago I have 8 survivors.

Nance's litter was so sad; the babies seemed to be fine up to about one week. Then their bellies started to look swollen, a few died, then a few days later a couple more were found to have bloody discharge from the vent. Couldn't tell whether the bladder was blocked or whether it was the colon, or both. I got one to release a surprising amount of urine with a cotton swab dipped in warm water. I wonder if Nance has been failing to provide the necessary stimulation for excretion. This is her last litter, in any case. Still, it's a little sad. The one I thought wouldn't make it overnight appeared bright eyed and scampering around today. It appears that the survivors are all bucks.

I didn't even mention a litter that happened and was hidden in a nest under the surface of the bedding. I found two babies already starting to show signs of markings in the skin; they seemed to be doing OK, then I found one tiny skeleton splayed out full length intact, with almost all the flesh stripped off of it. The second one died the next day. Puzzling and disturbing.

I have a young standard pied fawn doe who is looking very much ready to throw her litter. I removed her satin self fawn mate last night, and he'll get another partner in a day or two. The fawn doe I had wanted to breed from has a bad case of something on the tail that has gone on forever, hasn't responded to treatments. It doesn't appear to be infectious as her litter mate sisters show no sign of catching it. I should find another partner for Lordy Lordy. Maybe I'll breed him back to his mother.


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## moustress

Dainty, standard pied fawn and Putz, satin fawn self buck have produced a healthy litter of eight little wigglers. After all the problems with the other litters lately, I am guardedly optimistic. Putz is the darkest fawn I've ever had, with deep ruby eyes and a very wide build from the skull on back to his rump. It'll be very interesting to see how these little ones turn out, as both parents come from litters that produced tris.


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## moustress

This a chopped down version of a post from another thread of mine about tricolors.

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!!!


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## moustress

Update on Nance and her babies; the little one who was having problems is still alive. It's not growing well, but it's poor bottom appears to be healing, and there's no more signs of impaction. Other than being small, it's healthy enough, bright shiny red eyes. The only sign of it's problem other than small stature are little scabs that are around the top of the anus that are dry and look to be healing.

Dainty's babies look just great!

Tonight I will take many baby pix!


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## moustress

Dainty's babies are showing signs of pigment; won't be surprised if I have a champagne, silver, or dove, or a REW for that matter. They are pretty big for four days, but I know from past experience that their size at this stage doesn't necessarily mean that much other than the fact that they are healthy and thriving.

This litter is an important milestone for me, personally. The loss of so many of my mousies in the accident in December 2010 was devastating to the point that I thought of giving up the fancy entirely. Losing every single of my fawn mousies was the worst, as that was the first of the lines I worked so hard to establish. I spent the year after the accident extracting the fawn from related mousies that survived. The irony was sweet, as my main sources were four red satin bucks born of a mousery goof up in which a young male got into a tank of females for about 18 hours. The boys were on a lower shelf, and survived the malfunction of a space heater, along with about 75 others.

Many of my heterogenic agouti girlies survived as well, giving me all I needed to recreate the fawns. We'll see if this litter measures up in stature and type to the ones I used to have. I always have worked on long term goals, though, with a fair record of success. My other goal is to restore my yellow/red tricolors.


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## MoonfallTheFox

It sounds like your pups from Nance's litter could have had wet tail, if there was scabbing. I'm glad that everyone seems to be doing better though!


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## Shadowrunner

I'm so glad for you moustress. 
Cute little babies they are. Crossing my fingers your luck gets better.


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## moustress

Thanks for your kind thoughts, Shadowrunner and Moonfall.

The problems with Nance's babies looked like the opposite of dry tail, as there was serious impaction. I'll know more as the little survivor grows. She appears to have some sort of spinal defect that is apparent in her tail.

Tic-tac and Tracker presented me with a nice litter of five or six yesterday afternoon. Tracker is my best tricolor stud presently, and Tic-tac is his daughter. They are both black tricolors. He's getting on a bit, but I'm trying to fill his days with the joys of fatherhood, which he embraces wholeheartedly. He's the best mate a first time breeding doe could ever want, always covering the nest when she steps out for a nibble. He's so involved with the babies that he rarely produces another litter right away.

I've already picked out a new mate for him, but I'm going to wait until the babies eyes are open to transfer them out and bring in the new girlie.


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## MoonfallTheFox

He sounds wonderful!

Hmm, maybe the spinal issue blocked the colon/mom couldn't get them to potty. Or something.


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## moustress

Yeah, with congenital deformities in that area, it usually trains on through the body. The skinny tail is a ivery common sign of this sort of thing. In satin mousies, it usually means problems with the entire gastrointestinal tract, along with anemia and probably other things of which I'm not aware.

I just checked on the mousery and fed my little mamas their extra goodies, and I'm just thrilled to see how Dainty's and Putz's are growing! They are showing hints of color and markings in fawn and champagne. they are well over an inch in length, and I wish I had taken a camera up with me so I can pore over the pix, enlarge them, and anticipate what is to be.


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## moustress

That little red eyed blue is actually beginning to catch up with her littermates in general size. She's built a lot slimmer than they are, but I think that she is short haired, and the others are not. In any case, I'm glad she's dong well.

Everything else in the mousery seems to be going well. I hate when I have babies dying; it's too sad.

The pied black merle/roan/splashed girlie is very, very pregnant by a pied merle/roan/splashed whose color is hard to determine. He could be agouti, or chocolate...in any case, this litter is just plain curiousity on my part. I want to know what they are, really, and perhaps the outcome of this litter will shed some light on the matter. I have a feeling there may be brindling in the mix as I've seen this type of marking back when I first crossed brindles with tricolors. So...we'll see what will will see. I have another pairing with the same weird coat that are not showing as of yet.

Looking at my fawn litter, I see now that there is one self in the group, which I like a lot. I know I won't be able to see if there are any tricolors until they get older, as the hues will change as they mature. I wanna know now, dagnabbit!! Now!

Lunker, my big splashed blue, is going to get a new mate tonight; another blue tricolor doe, I think, or maybe a blue rex...I'm not sure if tri will look good on curly hair, but I can always breed the curls back out. It's dominant rex, though, so I'll have to think that over carefully. Oddy Doddy, the splashed blue that was in with him for a couple of months, does not seem to be carrying babies; she has lost her whiskers and some of the hair on her face, so she's in quarantine just in case it's something infectious. I'm wondering if Lunker may have overgroomed her. I'm going to keep a close watch on what happens with him in any new pairing.

I've been working on rehousing some of my small groups of does together to make room for the baby boom.

Tomorrow we go to the feed mill for grain, again, too soon, as the barley I got was very musty smelling. I wouldn't feed that to my meeces. I'm also taking a sample of the oats I got that were supposed to be seed quality, which should be a lot cleaner than the stuff I got. I've had to resort to hand sorting the stuff to remove the bits of corn, pebbles, etc. I saw a few really awful partial kernels that were dark grayish brown....eeeyuck!! I was sorry to have to even touch the stuff.

Last night I fed my breeders oatmeal and cream of rice cooked together with milk along with the rest of their food. The ones that didn't like the cream of rice got dried bread soaked with milk.


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## moustress

This trip to the feed mill, I got the right grade of oats; this means I have a partial refund due on the stuff I got in January. I got 300 lbs. of the seed oats, and they are so clean I don't need to sort it at all.They also had the 50 lb. bags of white millet this time around. I returned the stinky barley for credit.

I had one of those sad shocks night before last; a big beautiful pied satin red doe who was due to deliver was fond dead in her tank. She was on her back spread eagle, and I suppose she was trying to deliver and failed. She was the only doe of that color that I wanted to breed. Her brother, however, is almost identical to her, and he got a new tank to settle into before I find him a nice tricolor doe to pair off with.

Dainty's baies are looking good, the eyes are starting to open/ I still thrilled with them, but a little annoyed that there's only one doe in the eight. I'll have my choice of studs, that's for sure. I'm going to put her back to Putz some time after these babies are weaned.

Tracker's and Trix's babies are growing nicely. I seem to have some with no black on them at all....kinda weird, but they do have shades of beige, coffee, and maybe chocolate?

Tweed and Roth are doing well with their litter; some of them are showing pigment in their skin. I got them all in a handful tonight, and I'm intrigued to see there are three with red eyes. I don't remember ever having PEW's in that line. I wonder what they are?


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## moustress

It's been several weeks since I posted in this thread. It's been a busy time in the mousery with all the babies and pregnant does with which to keep up. I have lots of young meeces now, which is great fun, getting them tamed to the hand and all.

Dainty's bunch are doing marvelously. Of all the young meeces that are past hopper stage, they are by far the friendliest, climbing onto my hand and up the arm, bypassing treats in the palm in favor of playtime with moustress. On a recheck of genders, I was very pleased to conclude that I have not one, but two does out of the eight of them.

Lordy Lordy is papa again, this time with a standard pied fawn doe called Damsel. I got him out of the tank just in time, I hope, as she gave birth sooner than expected. She wasn't really very big, and gave birth to three really large pinkies, all of which are doing very well.

Lunker has produced two more litters off a couple of blue does, one a SH standard curly self, the other a pied blue. Both does come from litters that have produced tricolors and splashed. The girls surprised me by both giving birth last night, but I should have no problem knowing which are whose babies, as the curliness is dominant and homozygous with that doe. I didn't get a good count, but they appear to have about a dozen babies total.

Tweed and Roth will be separated soon, as she is due to throw her second litter in about four of five days. Their first litter of eleven are all doing well.


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## Shadowrunner

Sounds like great happenings in all :3
Can't wait for pictures. Rex is dominant in your guys right?
Is there also a recessive rex then?


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## moustress

I have two different curly genes, one of which is recessive and produces ill formed offspring with buffalo heads and weepy ears and eyes; when they show up they usaully get pts. The newer type is dominant and produces lovely healthy meeces with very friendly dispositions. They were brought to Minneapolis by mousie train almost a year ago. This is the first time I've bred outside that line. the blue from those is really nice and even, none of the mealiness so common with blues. My blues have a streak of behavioral issues involving several types of extreme barbering, so an outcross will do them good. The one from that line has a blue so rich it almost looks purplish in satin, which she is. Lunker, the sire, is from a cross between of my biggest ever tricolor does and a jumbo white I rescued from a reptile store. As the name would indicate, he is a really big boy. Odd eyes have come from his line, so it will be interesting to see if that shows up in any of these babies.


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## moustress

My two litters off of blue does have several black babies, and what look like black tricolors, which is perplexing, as I was pretty sure Lunker was blue splashed. His dam was a black tricolor, so I can see where it would have come from, but I didn't think he inherited it. All very interesting, as is the litter itself. The babies also include an albino which is no surprise as Lunker's sire was the jumbo white boy rescued from a reptile store. As for the black, I guess one litter does not provide enough of a sample to judge genotype from, eh?

It's a very happy time in the mousery these days, with lots of babies and young mousies. Tweed has her second litter of very skweeky little bubs, which include a couple with red eyes; yay!


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## Shadowrunner

Sounds like fun <3
As frustrating as they can be you have to love the odd litters. 
So much insight in one pack. What were you hoping for?


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## moustress

I thought Lunker was blue splashed :? , so I was expecting nothing but blue (pied, splashed, tri, self) off of two blue does.


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## moustress

Last night it was clear that Lunker is not a blue splashed or anything near that. The two litters off the blue does also include a couple of agoutis.

Oh, well, at least I've got some nice blues in the litter to work with on future attempts at getting more blue tris.


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## moustress

My mousery is filling up to near capacity, which means I have to try to make room for the babies when they are a bit older. I've consolidated a couple of tanks of older does, and I'm going to have pts some of my single bucks that I don't need for breeding. Not my favorite thing, but it's necessary. I need to have room to continue my drive to recreate my yellow/red tricolor line.

One of my fawn boys off Dainty and Lordy Lordy is showing subtle marbling in patches of orange which I'm pretty sure is tricolor coming through. I've paired two humongous pied red mousies, one buck and one doe, each with one of my best black tricolors. One of them is definitely pregnant. she's so big I wondered if I'd be able to tell when she was carrying, but it's so obvious now that I think she must be close to throwing the litter.

Tracker is still keeping busy; I put him to a very large satin pied black girlie. He's such a good mate and father, and has by far the best markings of any tri I've ever produced, and I'm not going to waste time housing him alone except for a week or so in between 'jobs' for him to rest and restore his zest for mating. He's getting on in age, which he barely shows except in a little thinning of the fur around his eyes.

I have some very pretty splashy blues in the two litters that were supposed to be all blue. I think both litters are kind of funny; those little curly agoutis are a hoot!

Damsels humongous three little ones opened their eyes, and they are already cruising the tank looking for solid food. It'll be interesting to see if they continue to grow at the pace they have started.

One of my young tricolors appears to have both nipples and scrotum...I left him/her in with the boys when I separated the litter last night as I don't want several accidental litters in the girls tank. It could just be a swollen vulva, but I like to minimize what ever error I may be making.


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## moustress

I've been looking at these pix of this young buck, and thinking about what the genetics are doing. There appear to be areas where the black splashing/roaning are diluted to a background of gray, so it's pretty obvious that this mousie is a merle tricolor or something equally odd. there's another mousie from this liter that is is coffee tri with merle or roan patches in a couple of different background colors. I have lain awake thinking about the possibilities of what could be done with different colors of tricolor and merle/roan varieties. I think I'd like to see something like this in a blue tricolor and also a yellow/red tricolor.





I am frustrated at my attempts to get another litter going in my yellow/red tricolor pairings. The couples are getting along famously, and one pied red doe has been getting so fat, but there are no little baby bumps to be felt in the wide expanse of her belly. I think she's just getting even fatter with each passing day...and then there's Tracker and his pied black satin mate...they are very sweet together but no issue from that quarter. I think I'm going pair off a couple of my fawn mousies with tricolors of the opposite sex...then they will no doubt all get preggers and cause a total population explosion


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## moustress

In case folks were wondering why I haven't posted lately, I've been chewing on the problem of figuring out what's going on with those roanish/merlish looking mousies that I've paired, and who produced two large litters. Turning over the question in my ind, I realized that I was TOTALLY WRONG!!

I've been scribbling Punnetts and realized that I was thinking backwards. If my roanish/merlish mousies were recessive roan, then both parents would be homozygous and all the babies would show roan/merle. So, back to the Punnetts.

Things in the mousery are ok, but a bit frustrating, as my pairings are not showing any expected litters as of yet. I'm enjoying the young mousies, taming them to The Hand. there's considerable rehousing going on as the youngsters get to the age of needing separate quarters. I have very few meeces left from before the accident, but one old doe, who appeared to be ready to bite the dust, has perked up and is looking good; that girlie is Kama, one of my wildly marked tricolors with tons of marbling. She is much slimmer than when she was being bred. She verged on being a fattie back in the day, though it didn't get in the way of producing a couple of litters.

I've finally started culling some of the does produced in my effort to bring back my fawn line back. I guess I've matured as a breeder, recognizing that there is no special virtue in maintaining a huge very large population of mousies that I have no interest in other than seeing them kept healthy and relatively happy. I'm still feeling a little weird about it, it's a new state of mind, but I think it's the right thing to do if I want to proceed with breeding projects.


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## SiamMeece

moustress said:


> I've finally started culling some of the does produced in my effort to bring back my fawn line back. I guess I've matured as a breeder, recognizing that there is no special virtue in maintaining a huge very large population of mousies that I have no interest in other than seeing them kept healthy and relatively happy. I'm still feeling a little weird about it, it's a new state of mind, but I think it's the right thing to do if I want to proceed with breeding projects.


I know exactly what you mean, I'm going through the same 'phase' at this very moment. I'm still very busy with bringing numbers down. It's not easy but I know in the long run it will do my mousehobby a lot of good.


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## moustress

It can't be dominant roan with the parents being heterozygous....but I can't feature where that would have come from, as I never had a roan or merle in my mousery that I remember before I posted a couple of does sometime last year. So I'm back to being completely puzzled or thinking that it's a form of splashing.

I just don't know...unless...it IS recessive roan and the ones that are showing solid patches are showing a reversion of the roan components caused by the tri/splashed genes. If the parents of the ones I bred are heterozygous full color (C/c*) and heterozygous splashed (Spl/spl) that might explain it....back to the Punnett squares for me, I guess! this seems like a promising avenue to explore.


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## moustress

It's got to be a type of splashing or marbling; I've looked at it and looked at it...it doesn't act like either dominant or recessive roan; I've got individuals that have patches of the mixed white with color and the color creates a dark border where the patches meet the white markings; to me that smacks of tricolor reversion to the solid color. Some of the mousies from these two litters are just plain gorgeous.

On another front, I'm pretty sure my two couples are expecting litters; one for yellow/red tris and the other assorted tricolors off of good old Tracker and Serenity, a big beautiful satin pied black doe.


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## moustress

Okay...here I go...wobba wobba hop wobba turn step step wiggle waggle fist pump fist pump wobba wobba hop. 

Didn't want you all to miss my little victory dance.


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## moustress

...well, that was fun.

Rhonda and Red Rider have their litter. It was only the last few days that I was even sure she was expecting, and it's a small litter. There are four very nice sized little eekers in the nest.

All my young males are coming of age so I've been busy rehousing as they start to fight. It's amazing how some groups of boys can live together so peacefully and others just keep mixing it up. *sigh*


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## moustress

After a request for pix of blue and red/yellow tricolors I've produced, I started looking through old photos from the last few years. I was surprised to see how different my mousies looked three years ago.

You know, I didn't take it for granted when I was told a few months ago that my meeces have improved. I didn't think the difference was as dramatic as it apparently is, though. And it's not just that they are bigger or more typey, either. I guess I've changed the way I care for them enough that it shows in the form of better condition. This forum has taught me a lot in the two and a half years I've been a member.

Some of my mousies looked really rough coated, bleary in the eye, and just plain out of condition. Nowadays I'd be up in arms looking for the problem so I could fix it. Weird, but good to see all the same. Some of the improvement may be due to more diligence in treating for mites, and part due removing a lot of the clutter from the tanks. That results in better ventilation and less transfer of soil to surfaces and then back to coats, I guess. The newer wire shelving probably makes a difference as well. I've changed their diet just a little, mostly for pregnant and nursing does.

Some of the difference may be due to controlling the types of meeces I breed so that the long haired genes don't mix with the long haired genes redsulting in the remnants of long guard hairs causing the coat to look a little messy. that's something I would have never have thought of on my own...just another reason why I love you guys!


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## MojoMouse

Your last post piqued my interest, so I poured myself a wee drop of a delicious cheeky little wine, put my feet up and read about your journey in all things mousie... What an unexpected treat! I love that you document the challenges as well as the successes in your breeding program - this is how we learn. It was also fascinating to read about your goals, given that you are following your particular interests.

Once I discovered the parallel mousie of the day piccie thread, I could see the progress more clearly. You should be very proud! You can certainly see the improvement in your mice! There's a pic you posted (July 01, 10) of a a really beautiful tri boy. That would have been about the middle of this documented breeding history? Well, what a stunner he is/was. I was also interested in some of the little oddballs that have popped up, and your thoughts about what they could be.

You also write well, by the way.  Looking forward to more!


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## moustress

Wow; you read all that stuff!? Only the mod and one or two others have done that. I'm glad you enjoyed my writings. Sometimes I've just got to let go. A drop or three of vino works as a good primer for my verbal side, indeed it do!

I sometimes look through my Mousies du Jour thread just for fun.


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## MojoMouse

Ha! Love your comment about the primer! 

There's so much hard work in keeping a mousery and following a breeding program, so it's extra nice to be able to enjoy the results. Your "blog" means that others can share what you've been doing. And the amount of pageviews for this thread shows that LOTS of people are following!


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## moustress

I appreciate that you recognize the benefit. It's important, I think, for folks to know that stuff like ventilation and cage cleanliness is really essential if you want your meeces in the best condition. I removed one third of my cages to a different area, all males, as I figured they'd fight less when kept away from the does. It does make a difference; doesn't stop the dominance game completely, but there are less fights resulting in injuries.

I'm all out of wine, cheeky or otherwise...gonna have to do something about that. Sometimes I go for weeks without having a drink of anything alcoholic. It's a failing that I know I need to work on...


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## moustress

What a fabulous day for a shortish road trip! We scampered up the pike to North Branch for a few months worth of feed for the mooskies; I also got my annuals to fill in around my perennials. I'm being adventurous this year and planting one new variety that I've never used before. I usually stick with what I know will grow well in the usual spots, but since out elm tree was taken down, things have changed a lot as far as what grows well in the front yard. I've never planted moss roses at this house, but I think they will like the heat off the street in the boulevard garden. Everything I stuck in there last fall not only survived but thrived and multiplied over our very warm winter.

Now, all I need to do today is put the lawnmower back together so Nate can deal with the incipient jungle in the back yard. With all the composting, the weeds back there are leaping up by inches a day.

In the front yard, my rose bush, my irises, and my peonies are all starting to crack their buds. If you think I'm happy, you're right  ! And the clematis is just plain *WOW!!!*

I'm going to go out and recline in the grass and pretend to weed the garden a little later; the sky is such a deep clear blue; the kind of sky you can just get lost in for a time. My next door neighbors eliminated their grass, installing shrubs, bushes, wood chips and a stone pathway. I feel sorry for their little boy, who now has no level area of grass to play on. It's just not barefoot friendly anymore in their front yard. Very sad. They are a little bit into 'eco-extremeism'. I think a nice short lawn of mostly grass is so inviting to the feet and the rest of the bod...but that's OK, I guess. I'll have to invite little Soren, who is four years old, to come and play in my front yard. Nate and I both really like the little guy.

Nate and I are already close to our tenth anniversary. I've made it clear that I expect a diamond as a gift....and also made it clear that tickets to a baseball game wouldn't quite do it. White diamonds are unappealing to me, I'm indifferent to pink and chocolate diamonds, so sterling silver with marcasite is what he'll be looking for. Gold is vulgar in multiples, I have a gold wedding ring, and it's the only gold I'll wear, though I've lost enough weight in the last five years that I wear it on my right hand now. One of these years when I reach my target weight I'll have the ring sized to go back on my ring finger. If I keep losing weight at the current rate, I'll disappear entirely by the time I'm 100. 

I'm enjoying my first deluxe iced coffee of the season; the deluxe entails a drizzle of vanilla and a large shot of Meyer's Dark Jamaican Rum. Yummy! And anyone who reads this thread probably knows that alcohol tends to loosen up and expand my verbal output. It's a good thing, I hope...


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## moustress

I'm chuckling over the length of the 'Importing etc....) thread; we US breeders seem to like to talk about acquiring the Euro mousies just as much as we like having and breeding them.  Compared to the English breeders, which are very short and brief and concise in their posts... many of them rarely showing photos much less talking about nitty gritty mousery and mousing issues.

I'm glad this symphony of cooperation has ended with the climax and resolution after the horn sections injecting the challenge and discord and other phooferfol. All happy; all the mousies home with their mousekeepers, all the little birdies getting along in the big, big nest of American mousing.

I'll look to maybe getting some of the offspring in the nest year or so if it becomes convenient for me to do so. No big deal, just a general interest in nice big mooskies. some of the ones that have been seen in pix posted after arrival here in the US are just plain weird looking to my eye. Especially the ears an eyes on the Euro reds...I do like the size and the nice tails on the purebreds, though.

I've given up on Tracker and Serenity; he's alone for a few more days, then he's going to be paired with a couple of young black tricolor does. Red Rider may get a go at Serenity....we'll see. I am impatient for my yellow/red tri carriers to mature. I have put a new pair together for blue tris. I've chosen a SH curly blue self doe and a young blue tricolor buck.

Oh, and a first for me! I looked two nights in a row at the blue does' vent, and saw a mucus plug on one of my does for the first time! So I can mark her date on the calendar, I guess!


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## moustress

I've successfully implemented my CO2 chamber; I had problems with the cartridges, so I decide to build one that used baking soda and vinegar. It worked just like I wanted. The meeces picnicked on bread crumbs as the CO2 built up, and they gradually slowed down and fell asleep. I think I'll get better at calculating how much of the two ingredients I need to put in the bottle at any given time.

I have had three young does from the merlish/roanish litters develop tumors. That's disturbing to the point that I plan on breeding my favorite from that those litters to help suppress the growths. I was planning on using her for breeding in any case, so this is the time.

I've made four pairings this week; two are fawn on fawn, two are black tricolor to pied red. I have only one doe expecting right now; I'm hoping for some better blue tricolors and splashed.


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## moustress

I didn't mention in my last post that I had an obvious problem in the 'mystery' litters. Three of the young does in those roanish/ merlish litters developed mammary tumors just about overnight. They were the subjects of my first successful use of my homemade vinegar/baking soda experiment. I'm still learning how to mix the stuff but it was nice to see a peaceful end to those poor young does.

Now I'm wondering if writing about this is going to upset some of the others Forum members. Oh, well, all I can say is that it's a good thing; certainly better than wringing your hands while a mousie gets sicker and sicker. That's inhumane, plain and simple.


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## jadeguppy

Interesting happenings for you lately. Sorry to hear about the tumors.


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## moustress

jg: Yeah, the mousing is always interesting, in one way or another. Euthanizing is just one of those things; I've done it for a long time, but the CO2 set-up is new. I'm already tweaking my set-up to make it easier to use. I had thought I was going to put Kama, a wildly marked tricolor who was over 3 yrs. old, to sleep, but she had died. She was shrinking like old mammals do, but still scampered around, grabbing her treat and heading to a quiet corner to enjoy it, or ate her treat sitting in my hand. While I don't mind doing the pts, I still have a bit of sorrow for the ones to whom I've gotten attached. I'm glad she died on her own.


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## moustress

My SH curly blue doe, Arabesque, and a blue tri buck named Twizzler had a litter of seven overnight. I thought she might pop last night, as Twizzler was sticking to her like glue, and the young bucks in the tank above where they are starting scrapping for the first time ever. Those young boys were moved out to the main room where most of the boys are, and where almost all the other group tanks with bucks are kept. I still have a tank of six mature bucks in the mousery proper, and they have little spats on occasion, but settle down as soon as they are fed.

The babies are a bit undeveloped, and I think they were born a little sooner than is best. I had calculated that she would throw her litter on June 2 or 3. They are a little on the small side, and one can see the entire orbit of the eye. Six have black eyes, one has pink eyes. Could be a PEW, or might be a red eyed tri.

Later: I looked at the babies while feeding etc., and found that she threw eleven. How much more mellow can a doe be than to let me handle her in the middle of throwing the litter...or had she hidden them? In any case, they all looked nice and full with milk.


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## jadeguppy

That is good news. I've been thrilled that the doe we raised in my classroom doesn't seem to mind the kids handling her babies. The smells don't phase her.

Are you going to foster out some of the babies? I don't recall if you are limiting litter size.


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## moustress

jg: There is no other doe to foster babies with right now; it's been a couple of months with no litters from the pairings I've made. Some of those twosomes have been broken up and new pairings made, so I have to keep an eye out for little wiggly bits of pink in some of the group tanks. Sometimes a doe will end up having been just a 'little' pregnant after all.

Arabesque had a litter of eleven the first time round a few months ago, and had no trouble with them. When I'm breeding for tris and splashed, I usually don't cull, especially in a line that's very much still under construction. I'll just make sure she is well fed and gets lots of good protein and calcium, etc. while she's raising this litter, just as I did first time around when she was bred to Lunker.


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## moustress

The babies are showing their colors and markings a little bit. Looks like I have a few boldly marked pied blues, a couple of blue selfs, and others that I am eager to see just what they turn out like. I didn't take pix yet, but I will tonight. They look like they are fattening up nicely. Twizzler is a very attentive papa, something I always like to see.

I've been busy playing musical air conditioners; we installed the two big ones, which are the same size, one in the West Room,, where the mousery is, and the other in the LR/DR downstairs, without cleaning them. Now we have to take them out and clean them and put them back. I chose to take the one downstairs out to clean and then take down the one in the West Room. then I'd have a clean unit immediately to put in the window; the health and comfort of my mousies usually comes first providing there's no emergency in the household. The temp in the mousery only got up to 78F, which is marginally okay for the mousies, but not good for me.


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## moustress

It's so nice to see all of my pairs starting to show results! I have two fawn to fawn pairings, one fawn to ? (maybe champagne?), Tracker has a black tricolor and a pied satin fawn. Rhonda and Red Rider are still trying for another litter. So, I have about five litters for which to look forward to seeing in the next weeks. I like to do multiple litters, as that gives me options for fostering if someone has too many, or if a doe takes ill.

My blue litter is looking really good. The parents have funny little teddy bear ears, but the litter is producing nice clear blue, lilac and silver, includes a few splashed or splashy tris, and seem to be quite healthy and free of behavioral problems. My first few attempts at creating a blue line were halted when it became apparent that the does had barbering issues seere enough that the fur was licked off their mates, and one buck actually developed a chronic problem with an infection at the site and had to be pts.


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## moustress

Tracker is a papa again! The young satin pied fawn doe he's been with had a litter of 10 yesterday. They look very small and red, so I expect they were born a few days earlier than is usual, not uncommon for first litters. the other doe in the tank doesn't look like she's pregnant, though she is a much heftier mousie to start with, so it's hard to say for sure.

I'm thrilled to have gotten this litter from my best tri stud; I had worried that he didn't have it in him anymore after being with Serenity for two months without producing a litter. The odd thing is that he never produced any fawn or champagne, or any other pink-eyed dilutes, before this liter, and now I see that about half of the babies appear to be pink eyed.

If course, I'm very pleased about that! It gives me more choices down the road when I do my next round towards making yellow tricolors.


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## moustress

The new litter already look like normal newborns. They have Tracker and Toots as well as mama to tend them. I don't think Toots has gotten pregnant, but that part of the threesome was a bit of an afterthought. I'm thrilled to have the litter off Tansy and Tracker; he's such an old sweetie, and makes beautiful babies, and is an awesome papa. There's a chance that some of the litter will be tri or splashed... :!:

He'll get every chance I can give him to make more babies; I have a couple of really nice young does I plan to introduce him to very soon.


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## moustress

Another litter! Putz and Penny have about ten little pink and skweeky wigglers. I'm hoping Shimmer delivers soon as she's reached that "Oh, gawd, I can't stand to look.." stage.


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## moustress

Oy, it's too...too...arh! She's about to blow!! 

I checked on my little mamas an mamas to be a bit ago, and Shimmer is so big that the pregnancy now bulges up on either side or her spine in the rear quarters. She's mellow, though. When I offered her food she didn't lunge at me, and she let me stroke her gently.

Now, just you wait and see if she doesn't produce a small litter anyway. Those mouskers sure keep a person guessing.


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## moustress

Taking a break from the mousework; need hubby to fill the oat bin, as I will need more to finish for the night.

I spent some time with the bluish babies; they are at that incredibly cute stage where the ears are starting to come up, and they scramble all over the place. I let them have my hand for awhile to crawl under, on, and one of them crawled behind my hand and fell asleep. (insert big chorus of *awww* here). Mom and Dad wanted The Hand to go away, kept nipping at my fingernails and sniffing, and then trying to bury it. The babies are testing out everything they can with their teeth, which is good. I gave them some partially crunched up kibble to encourage them to eat solid food as much as possible to minimize the impact on her as she should be pregnant again, and tends to have large litters...as soon as she's showing for sure Twizzler goes back to bachelor's
digs.


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## moustress

Shimmer must have just been bloated or something; when I was giving the breeding does their midday snack I saw seven babies looking very newborn, quite deep in color. I'm relieved that she didn't throw a dozen and thrilled to have the seven.

I am hopefully looking at the litters from Tracker and this one for another fawn tricolor or two. I'm hopeful and happy in general that most of my recent pairings have paid off in pink.

I'm thinking of doing a pairing or two of those mystery meeces and one of my Just Meeces boys. Those are the only ones that I can be sure don't produce tricolors. Cuz, dangitall, I want to know what's going on!


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## moustress

I've been dragging my feet about posting pix of my fawn litters. They are looking a bit skinny, and I suspect the mothers may not have been in peak condition due to the heat before we moved the mousery to the basement, affecting how they ate and how well they were able to nurse to babies. they don't look sick, just not as fat as I'd like. the temp in the basement is good enough, though it does get up to 78F when the outside is at 90F or more. Tomorrow the temp will be mid 90's with high humidity making it feel like 100F plus. Lovely, eh?

Rhonda had a new litter; one was pts as it was oddly bloated in the abdomen and gasping for breath. One more looks a bit poorly, with dark matter in the abdomen. I'll decide later what to do with that one. 

Shimmer is champagne; her babies have furred up so there are a mix of pied fawn and pied champagne. I had thought that Shimmer may have been some kind of diluted yellow, as her coat has a light golden cast; maybe my show champagne from so long ago is showing through a bit, who knows? When I had those mousies shipped to me I thought the breeder had sent me the wrong mousies, as I didn't know there was a modifier that caused that pale golden cast. Like with the fawn genes that I had to extract after the mishap, I knew this gene had to be in there somewhere as well.

I'm going to breed her to my little argente boy I bought a half a year ago. He has a good proper argente coat and I think it would be nice to have more of those. I also want to breed her to something that hasn't been darkened like all my other champagne and argentes. Most of my champagnes look dove, and my argentes look like pink eyed cinnamons.

I am very pleased with Tracker's new litter. They are a bit skinny but are nice long bodied babies with nice strong tails.


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## moustress

I'm starting to feel settled in down in the basement mousery. The storage room used to be for coal many years ago, and I see a little bit of grainy black stuff sifting out along the floor when I sweep each night. It's only in one spot that I can see, so I don't think it's likely to be a problem.

The space is comparable to what I have upstairs, though I've gone back to housing all the shelving in the new room. It feels a little cramped. I'm moving the shelving around from night to night until I find the 'just right' configuration.

It's nice to have running water on the same floor, that's for sure.


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## moustress

My mousies were very obviously uncomfortable with the temps at about 80F for a few days in the basement. I don't think it's affecting their health, but it's hard to know for sure. Penny's litter has had three deaths among the 2 week old babies, one each day for three days in a row. It's so sad to find their tiny still badies still and unmoving, without any sign of illness or injury. they are taking solid food at this age, so maybe they will do better now. I suspect the heat may cause problems with lactation.

In any case, I have bred enough fawns that I don't need to worry about loosing a few here and there. It's nice to have such abundance again in my favorite color.

The blue tris that are about six weeks old are very pleasing to me; they are good sized youngsters and have very calm dispositions. One of the little girls begs for attention every time I come into the room, climbing the water bottle and crawling onto my hand when I open the tank. I love it! Arabesque is due to have her second litter any day now'; maybe I'll get the standard coated pied blue I need to breed blue tricolors.


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## moustress

Preparations for breeding yellow/red tricolors have moved into a new phase. Last night I choose two bucks from my first yellow/red crossing with black tricolor. They get a couple of days to stink up their tanks so they feel at home; this is supposed to lessen the chance that the buck will feel challenged when the doe(s) are introduced, thus less likely to attack his intended mate(s). This doesn't happen all the time when a couple are plunked down with each other in a clean cage, but it does happen, and I wish to avoid that if possible. Mousie behavior is largely ruled by smell and the boys like to mark their territory; their version of 'feng shui' or maybe it should be 'feng pewie'.

I have three different sets of nontri/tri youngsters that will be employed in the next couple of months. I'll be devoting a lot of space to this purpose over the next year. I'm very excited to have started! Red Rover, my big pied satin red boy is father to two of litters involved, Tracker is father to another set. I have a few individual mousies from other litters that may be yellow splashed or tri, and I may give them a chance to see what is really going on there. They have small, very faint yellow or red splashing, I think...we'lll have to wait to see, I guess.


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## moustress

I'm flummoxed; I can't edit an old post. It's one of those little things that comprises a straw, and I'm running short of straws.

Yesterday I wrote a longish post about the recent flap that occurred, an OT flap that had nothing to do with the substance of the thread...and now that thread has been deleted, as if we can just pretend we weren't being cranky and childish. I try to be polite, but at the same time, I do feel I need to speak my mind. I saved my rant...it makes me feel unduly hobbled when I have to make that decision not to speak out, and that in turn makes me feel like going home and taking my 'toys' with me.

This is supposed to be fun. We are not supposed to gore one another over terminology. What happened to cordiality and tolerance? What happened to respect for one another's opinions? what happened to thinking before posting?

I try to be good without being null and vapid.

Now I feel like this is not fun any more, as the folks who make substantial comments appear to have withdrawn.

I may be next.

 Life is difficult enough without feeling like I have to tiptoe around in this forum.


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## besty74

don't leave i will miss your mousey ramblings.


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## moustress

This will be the fourth of fifth time I've felt like I'd made a friend or two, and then everything goes kablooey and no more friend. Why can't one be treated as the real person one instead of being completely abandoned? There's no resort; gone, gone gone...

It hurts!

I love that people like to look at my mousey pictures and read what I write, but I honestly thought I'd made a few real connections with with folks on this forum, and now I don't even get a response to my pm's.

Maybe I'm just too old for this medium. I can't take the callousness that seems to come along with contact on the Internet.

*tinkle of fragile heart breaking*


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## moustress

...and I STILL can't edit my posts!


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## SarahC

I've pointed Dom in the direction of your editing query.Forum life certainly has some rubbish moments.One person has decided not to participate anymore taking the view that they are in a minority regarding their reasons for having mice and can't post their opinions freely.Another has stepped down from moderating.If it's either of these that you have pm'd then they won't have logged in to receive your message.The forum has a very heavy hobby breeder presence which is great and fine for it to keep evolving that way.I'll continue to help with the admin side .If anyone needs specific help with showing they can pm me for help and hopefully the recent conflicts will die down.Sorry you are feeling hurt by things.If the conflicts do continue some members will have to have their posts moderated before going live which is quite drastic when the majority of us are adults.


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## besty74

It is difficult dealing with people over the internet, i think this site is great and has helped me to learn many new things about my mice. I enjoy the stories and the pictures, the ups and the downs of each persons mousery. There will always be disagreements in any walk of life, try not to take it too personally, easier said than done i know.
I am sure that the people who have left did not intend to hurt you, but if this site has become more about hobbies and pets then it is not what they want. Plenty of people read your posts and like me may not have told you they enjoy them yet.


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## MojoMouse

In relation to your previous comment, moustress, terminology became a side issue to the discussion. Reasonable questions were asked, and sensible suggestions made. These were rejected as if a potential solution was irrelevant. The real problem, it emerged, was deceptive behaviour associated with the terminology. That's something that you can't really address by wanting people to change their use of terms - you address it by identifying and dealing with the issue.

The thread would still exist, but is invisible, so what I'm saying can be verified.

The main problem, the heart of the issue imo, that emerged in the discussion was the postition of "them versus us" from one NMC member. It came to light that NMC members see hobby breeders as "pet traders" with no reason to breed to the standards of the BMC. The comments were made rudely, and were disparaging, dismissive and patronising, imo. Only one NMC member pulled the poster up for these comments, but then withdrew the remarks that were supportive of non NMC breeders. The view that "hobby breeders" had no business trying to breed to standards, but should only concern themselves with pretty coloured pets, was then left unchallenged. No other NMC member spoke up on this issue.

To me, it felt personal, and was very disappointing. I genuinely try to breed to standards, as do some other forum members who are not in the NMC. It's unfortunate, though, that in this part of the world we can't import mice, so we can only work with what we have available. It's not a lack of effort, time or willingness to invest money that stops me having access to the best mice for my breeding. Nor is it any unwillingness to read, research and get guidance in relation to both basic and more advanced information about genetics and how these impact on the breeding.

In spite of this, what came through in that thread was that I was a substandard breeder, and shouldn't presume to even aspire to the mouse standards of the BMC. This thread came on top of a lack of response to a previous enquiry I had made about becoming a member (overseas) of the BMC. I posted that I was disappointed, and said why in what I had hoped was a reasonable way. I also expressed disappointment that the BMC members would hold such a view of breeders who didn't show mice, and weren't in the club, for whatever reason. I had previously thought that the BMC was an organisation that would promote to the wider community the joy and challenge of mouse breeding to standards. I was wrong - that's not their charter and not what they feel they should do. That's absolutely fair enough, btw. Just not what I had believed.

I was criticised for "always" making NMC members defend their club. That was unjustified, as I've been a vocal supporter of their strict, high standards and professionalism. In my time on this forum I have never made a disparaging remark about the NMC, until I expressed disappointment in the last post I made.

The poster who had been pointedly rude and dismissive of hobby breeders then went back through the thread and removed all their posts. Imo that is an abuse of the ability to edit posts, and should NEVER be allowed. It's unfair, and makes comments that respond directly to the removed posts look totally out of context.

I haven't withdrawn from the forum, ie spat the dummy. However, my reason for being as active as I was no longer exists. I valued the input of NMC members, but they've packed up and left. I'm saddened by this, as I'm sure many other forum members are. The forum needed their input, because this is what differentiated this forum from the countless other hobby breeder/pet forums. Such a shame!

I hope you don't mind this long post in your thread, moustress, but I felt the need to clarify a what you said about the recent situation. If you wish, though, I'm happy for you to get a moderator to delete this from your thread.  I think you just have to click the report button.


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## Cordane

On a similar topic, I found it funny that it was said that unless you show your mice, you cannot call them show mice or show type mice. Does that mean I can call my mice that since I show them? Haha.
Moustress, I love reading your threads by the way.


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## SarahC

MojoMouse said:


> I haven't withdrawn from the forum, ie spat the dummy.


my comment wasn't referring to you,I assumed you were still active.I don't actually know who Moustress has messaged.


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## SarahC

Cordane said:


> On a similar topic, I found it funny that it was said that unless you show your mice, you cannot call them show mice or show type mice. Does that mean I can call my mice that since I show them? Haha.
> Moustress, I love reading your threads by the way.


if only it were that simple.There are of course people that show with inferior animals not just in terms of the written standard but in terms of all round health and vigour,some really poor specimans and there are hobby and feeder breeders with animals that are a credit.This whole sorry episode has been brewing for a number of months stemming from a minority of less than honest people.I personally have no direct contact with any of them and I'm not going to allow them to taint my hobby or online friendships.


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## Cordane

I meant that as a joke though thank you for a response. It's kind of hard for people in New Zealand, (and Australia, though they have had serious breeders longer than us). There is only one mousery in New Zealand and from what I can tell, yea, health is important to them but it can seem as though they are just another "pet shop". They keep a mouse because the mum is being retired or something, it appears that type/structure and colour plays no part in it. 
I, however, do wish that I could change that. Have one focus variety and do it justice. Maybe, in my lifetime, we may organize some sort of mouse shows but because the standards of mice over seas is currently.. Not an option and currently unobtainable, means that we have to essentially try make or own standards, change them as the better mice are produced and go from there.
Showing mice is.. Unheard of here. It's a shame.


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## SarahC

:lol: none of those people are even active on here regularly if ever :roll: as it happens.Shall endeavor to lighten up.


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## Gill

Moustress, your post struck a chord with me. You, being nearly my age, like me, were no doubt taught to reply promptly to correspondance, although it was all snail mail back then. Unfortunately some nowadays don't know what good manners are.

Please keep posting - some of your comments make my day. And your meeces are beautiful.


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## moustress

My eyes are crossing as I read the recapitulation of the deleted thread here in MY thread. :roll:

Honor be damned; can't we all just get along? (apologies to Rodney King; I didn't have to get stuffing knocked out of me to say that). Yeah, it's weird when it sounds like ponying up your money and bringing any skanky mouse into a show venue somehow elevate it to the status of Show Mouse. It's miracle! :!:

But, of course, that's not what was meant. Let's step back and take a few deep cleansing breaths and remind ourselves that these things we are arguing about so vehemently are JUST MICE!! They are just mice....just...mice...'k?

Show breeders are big fish in a small pond; if us little guys keep getting snapped at when we try to enter the pool from some tiny stream or another, we will learn to stay away in whole schools.


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## MojoMouse

moustress said:


> My eyes are crossing as I read the recapitulation of the deleted thread here in MY thread. :roll:


I just reported my own post, with the explanation "I thought it would be ok as the op referred to the topic, but clearly she's not happy with her comment being followed up."
I assume the procedure is that a mod will delete it. Or ban me. Or something.


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## moustress

Mojo: It's OK, I really don't mind, and I guess I expected it, or should have. the problem with disputes like this is that a lot of folks post without thinking; and that's not at all what you did here. You obviously have thought long and hard about the whole flap. If I have given someone an outlet to vent, it's all good. 'k?


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## MojoMouse

That's a really nice response, moustress - one that I didn't deserve, so thanks. 

Btw the edit function would be handy, considering the amount of time I wrote BMC in that post instead of NMC. BMC is British Mouse Club, non existent of course, but I keep thinking of it as that.  Mostly I correct myself in time.


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## MojoMouse

ETA to the previous post - yes, I have thought about the issue. One of the reasons is that intially it was another member being attacked. I hate seeing that, and like an idiot I stepped in, only to find myself under attack as well. It's such a shame that issues brew for so long until things explode. It would be far more helpful if people just dealt with them at the time, before they get out of hand and feathers all get fluffed. But - that's in an ideal world...


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## besty74

sorry moustress i hope it was not my post that brought this to your thread.


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## moustress

Neither of you have done anything to be sorry about; I have been a lightning rod for a few years now in this forum. I have always been outspoken in my support for non-show breeders, whether they are trying to breed to show standards a or just have a few meeces from whereever. Or a lot of meeces with a lot of interest in breeding, genetics, care, feeding. I have learned a lot from ALL of the different types of mousekeepers, and I have been outspoken in an attempt to increase acceptance and sharing of simple information.

A forum is supposed to be a place where one can stand up, be heard with respect, be treated with courtesy, be accepted as an equal. Those who try to turn this into a clique for NMC or any other club are doing themselves a disservice, as I have learned neat stuff from all the types of mousey people. I clashed with a couple of people who wanted to be seen as equals only with the show breeders, and constantly used deprecating language, insulting, really, when you come right down to it, and dangit, when I'm pushed, I push back!

People with a couple of pet meeces of no particular breed have a right to enjoy their exchanges in this forum without being put down. I sometimes comment negatively when I see meeces that are not in good condition, but I try no to put down the person I'm addressing. And I try not to be patronizing. People are not easy, though, and sometimes it's hard to strike the right tone. One can only try. I have flown off the handle at times, and taken my moment of being told I was out of line. None of us are perfect. But that whole thread was full of stuff that, had one stopped and really thought, realizing that all of the messages were written by Real Live People, not just some wraith living in the electrons of the internet.

So, now, if something offends me, I wait a day or so before responding. I wrote a substantial rant yesterday morning, and stored it in Wordpad. There was nothing new in it. I left it in Wordpad. There need be no more flaming and hand waving.


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## Seafolly

I tried to avoid posting because it's so off topic but I just wanted to say how nice it is that a place like this can exist - show breeders to feeder breeders mingling in one place to share knowledge and support. I missed what happened but admire how brief the "incident" was. So brief I didn't notice. On a rat forum it would be a flame war for weeks until someone got tired and locked the thread. That said, I was telling Mojo that our main Canadian rat forum lost most of its members as the show breeders did not get along with the rescuers. That said, the two groups are so different the meltdown that was building up was a long time coming. Here, we at least all have a love of breeding in common (for whatever reason). I think friction is inevitable when you throw a group of people together, more so when it's easier to argue through computers rather than in person. It's just how it's handled that matters. I hope no one leaves because of whatever happened. Opinions differ and that's okay. I took a look at a particular mouse forum today and was horrified about how things were run over there. This place is special and the members make it so. I think the part I value most is how accepting most people are of people starting out. There's so much to learn when breeding mice and it's really nice having support. 

(sorry that was a little cheesy)


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## moustress

We're a small community of weirdos who are passionate about rodents, and, yes, we value our contacts in the forum, as it's hard to find anyone outside of it that has the patience or understanding to really hear, much less respond, to all we have to say on the subject.

I'm sure each of us has experienced this at a gathering. You start by saying hello to your cousin at a family gathering. After exchanging nominal pleasantries, she asks you what's new? You tell her about our new mouse babies, she sounds surprised, as she didn't know you had mousies. 'Oh, really? why do you...' So, she sounds interested, and you get going, and she seems to still be interested, and you continue...and after about two minutes she cuts you off, 'OK, OK, that's nice...' and turns and moves briskly to the other side of the room.

Based on that, you'd think we'd avoid acrimonious exchanges in the Forum. But whoever has hurt our feelings us is far away, unseen, known only by their words and images. Deep down, does this translate in action to lashing out when we feel abused and misunderstood? Yes, I'm afraid that for some, it does. But it's impossible to get people to say what you want them to say, and all too easy to get them to say what they probably shouldn't say and you surely do not wish to hear! Does electronic media encourage us to react like eight year olds? I think that, all too often, it does! Very sad; tragic in this case, as I don't think the NMC members that reacted so strongly will be back any time soon, if ever.

It's impossible to mediate such a far flung group so the only option becomes, blocking, banning, walking out, turning away, and withdrawing. I thought about it yesterday. In some ways, I'm a tough old bird, but when it comes to my mousies and the folks who I've come to think of as friends in this forum, I'm all warm and soft and easily squished. I was feeling very squished over the last couple of days.

The whole flap started over what the right words when describing mousies. That's why I posted that pic of a tricolor buck with nothing more in the way of comment than 'Pretty mousie'. I would go completely off my nut if I really continued like that. It was the only alternative at that moment; I was afraid to say anything! I sensed danger; I threw that out into the ring and fled. I hate it when people I like go at each other like they did in that deleted thread. It's demoralizing. I don't think anyone was really guilty of deceiving by their use of language. It's very much buyer beware when buying meeces from other breeders, in any case. I think the ego gets too pumped when looking at a part of our life that is base on personal affinities and enjoyments. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think trying to claim exclusive use of a bit of wordage is nonsense...but at least I think we understand a little better just how the show folks feel about some of us 'hobby' breeders. and we don't like being told that mousing is just a ghoddam hobby when for many of us it's a way of life just as it is for many NMC members.

Ach! I'm going to let it go now and get on the the fun part where I post pix of my litters. I like looking at pix of my own meeces, silly as that might seem. They won't sit still much, so pix are the way to go, especially with very young mousies.

Just remember, goys and burls, it's nice to be nice to the nice. And if you can't be good, be careful.


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## Cordane

I tend to stay away from things like that, I believe mostly it is because I dont know what *good* is but to me, any mouse I see on here has me in awe, especially your mice moustress. I think that's one thing I love about being in a country that hasnt been breeding for that long, there is always something to improve on. Mice from overseas appear like a whole nother species so you are constantly in awe of what your mice may one day become.
I can sort of understand the fear, I am alway shy and worried about posting pictures of my mice because all they are currently is a run of the mill pretty mouse.


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## moustress

C: Thanks for the kudos. Yes, and I have my own standard, and Shimmer pretty well fulfilled it before she was bred. A little bigger might be nice, but I think she is dang near perfect... 'm jus' sayin'...

Shimmer, mom


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## moustress

Ooh, ain't I bad, tooting my own horn like that!


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## besty74

saves waiting for someone else to do it!


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## moustress

Hear, hear! :lol:


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## moustress

I finally have a litter with several blue tricolors.

It's been a typical series of attempts; first I had a couple of nice tricolors and splashed, but decided not to use any of them for further breeding because there were behavior problems, basically severe barbering from the first doe I used (2 yrs. ago), so I waited for her daughter to mature, bred her, and she did the same weird things. Along the way I also produced a bunch of agouti based tris and splashed.

I had to start more or less from scratch, using an unrelated buck that carried blue, and a blue pied doe from an accidental litter;those two produced one blue splashed/tri buck. I had received some mousies via mouse train about 15 mo ago, but didn't want to use the nice blue does because they had curly coats, which I don't think is a good coat for tris and splashed.

I decided that Arabesque or her sister Odalisque, both SH curly, were the way to go, so now I have a bunch of pied curly shorthaired blues...I didn't get any tricolors in the first litter. It's weird the way two litters back to back from th same pairing can yield such different results. When one doesn't have access to much in the way of decent stock, one must look around, see what you have to work with, and form a plan of action.


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## moustress

Forum life here in FMB has seriously begun to pall for me. I've dived in after the foofarah last week, trying to be responsive in a substantial way to many posts, trying to take up the slack.

I'm not a moderator. This is probably a good thing...it's too bad that most of the more experienced English breeders have faded into the horizon. They don't need the grief and I don't need the grief; NOBODY needs the grief for pitty's sake.

I have suggested this; when you have a dispute over some factual matter in someone's post, maybe you ought to start with a pm to that member instead of rolling out the s__t spreader. Some problems are a result of a person not stating something in as clear a form as might be; other problems are from a person not reading the post carefully before framing their challenge/question/objection.

Honestly, I have never been reluctant to allow that I may be wrong in certain things. I don't understand why anyone would want to put me in a position where I feel like I might have to defend myself. this forum is for a fancy' meaning that it's a hobby, and it's about exchanging info and impressions and images; it's supposed to BE FUN PEOPLE!! I try to give other members the benefit of the doubt, I really do.

I have half a mind to go ahead and print the rant I wrote and decided to hold back and saved.

It's nice to be nice to the nice. I try to be nice. I try to be good.

I think I should maybe take my toys home and not play in this backyard anymore.


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## besty74

perhaps just take a break, a little breather away from it all, but do come back, alot of people on here enjoy your tales, advice and your lovely pictures. Don't let a few bad experiences stop you from being helpful to others.


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## thewesterngate

I think you're a very pleasant person and it'd be a shame if you left! There are plenty of bad days though, so just take a day off when you need it, might come back feeling better?


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## moustress

Cordane: I hope you read this because you are just the kind of person for whom I have always stuck up in this forum. Just because your mousies came from a feeder bin, or pet shop, or wherever, doesn't make them 'bad' or 'poor'. I started with pet store mousies. I've had a few breaks in getting a hold of stock that I used to move my meeces towards what you see here in the Forum. It's taken about 14 years and I've loved every minute of it.

I just love mousies, whether they are 'highborn' English style or small common pet store mousies. I even love wild meeces, as long as they don't cause me grief. I use a live trap, so I can save them and send them to a safer location than my my house, where three cats roam.

Your care, enjoyment and attachment to your meeces is the only thing that should matter; don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. No one has the right to put you down and tell you are somehow at fault for having a beloved pet mousie who just happens to be smaller and less 'typey' (moustress cringes just a little and looks for the rain of crap that followed the last person to use that comparison) that theirs.

It's issues like this that are likely to keep me in the Forum; I am passionate about helping folks do the best they can for their animals.

When I first started here, I had to struggle against prejudice against 'common' meeces, and those who have them,and have the durn gall to want to share in the Forum. I asked, "Where's the love?" But I have had time enough to realized that where love is scarce, you gotta Bring the Love, as Love attracts Love; accept no substitutions.


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## Cordane

moustress said:


> Cordane: I hope you read this because you are just the kind of person for whom I have always stuck up in this forum. Just because your mousies came from a feeder bin, or pet shop, or wherever, doesn't make them 'bad' or 'poor'. I started with pet store mousies. I've had a few breaks in getting a hold of stock that I used to move my meeces towards what you see here in the Forum. It's taken about 14 years and I've loved every minute of it.
> 
> I just love mousies, whether they are 'highborn' English style or small common pet store mousies. I even love wild meeces, as long as they don't cause me grief. I use a live trap, so I can save them and send them to a safer location than my my house, where three cats roam.
> 
> Your care, enjoyment and attachment to your meeces is the only thing that should matter; don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise. No one has the right to put you down and tell you are somehow at fault for having a beloved pet mousie who just happens to be smaller and less 'typey' (moustress cringes just a little and looks for the rain of crap that followed the last person to use that comparison) that theirs.
> 
> It's issues like this that are likely to keep me in the Forum; I am passionate about helping folks do the best they can for their animals.
> 
> When I first started here, I had to struggle against prejudice against 'common' meeces, and those who have them,and have the durn gall to want to share in the Forum. I asked, "Where's the love?" But I have had time enough to realized that where love is scarce, you gotta Bring the Love, as Love attracts Love; accept no substitutions.


Moustress, I always read your little ramblings page, I find it useful and I love reading about what you are doing.
Thank you for saying that, I do find it a little disheartening when people talk about mice from the pet stores in general being poorly bred and they should never be bred from, essentially saying they are.. terrible. I love my mice, I find enjoyment in watching them interact and I love working with them and taming them up to adopt them out so other people can find the same enjoyment I do. 
I never knew you started with some pet shop mice, You have done so well in improving them and I can only hope to one day get to that stage. 
I do love wild mice though we have the odd one that the cat brings in, Dad uses kill traps but if I can catch them as soon as the cat brings them in, I release them into the hay shed we have. The odd bite I get can be worth it. 
I will be going back to the beginning of your thread and reading it from the beginning. No doubt it will help me immensly.
Thank you again, truely. Your words are so kind


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## besty74

I think alot of the talk of badly bred poor type pet shop mice probably comes from the uk, because over here very few pet shops actually sell mice and when they do they are awful, scrawney, badly bred(back to back litters etc) little things that rarely live a year, againest our gorgeous, big, chunky monkey show type mice that are carefully bred for type, colour and good health. It is difficult to picture the situation in other countrys, for example today i stupidly asked poor cordane if she had kiwi birds near her! I had a romantic idea in my head of wild ones running across her land.


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## moustress

besty: We all have had wild notions of exotic far away places; I was intrigued with Boggit Keeper's location, named The Forest of Dean, and she informed me that I could do a virtual tour via Google Earth (god how I love that!) and then directed me to a seaside town called Mousehole, which I also toured.

One of my favorite sayings: Nothing is obvious to the uninformed. There's nothing to be embarrassed about in that, though. Unlike stupidity, it is wholly curable. I also thought B.K. was a dude...*doh*...sometimes we get a picture in our head that is just so far off...I try not to judge by appearance, but online it can be especially hard to picture the person at the other end of the line. Unless you use your webcam. I have one on my laptop, but I've never used it. :? I'm afraid I'll leave my computer on all night and really frighten someone when I'm back in place. I don't even know how to use it...I am something of a dinosaur, being nearly 60 years old. I embrace new technology with great caution.


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## besty74

I absolutely love mousehole. We used to go there when i was a kid, i tried to take my own kids there and could barely get my chrysler to the local car park! once in it was lovely and just full of great memories.
We should have a thread were we try to guess who is a dude or gal!!!


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## Cordane

besty74 said:


> I think alot of the talk of badly bred poor type pet shop mice probably comes from the uk, because over here very few pet shops actually sell mice and when they do they are awful, scrawney, badly bred(back to back litters etc) little things that rarely live a year, againest our gorgeous, big, chunky monkey show type mice that are carefully bred for type, colour and good health. It is difficult to picture the situation in other countrys, for example today i stupidly asked poor cordane if she had kiwi birds near her! I had a romantic idea in my head of wild ones running across her land.


No question is a stupid question, I assume you. Even if they are native to New Zealand, form what I understand they are rather rare. They are actually an endangered species. Due to the introduction of stoats and ferrets, as well as your common dogs and cats, the numbers of Kiwi have decreased over time. It has gotten to a stage where we take kiwi eggs are taken from the wild and incubated, they are kept until they weigh a kilo or so which means they are a good size to fend off stoats. Many of them actually have trackers placed on them before release and I believe we actually have an island or two off the coast where kiwi are most often released which I believe are free from common predators. 
I'm lucky to live in a country that doesn't have snakes or anything so the need to constantly breed mice is not there. We don't have to continually produce mice, have back to back litters. I will not defend the pet stores because I know that although they breed mice, their knowledge on health issues, breeding and genetics is close to nil. The only good thing about the pet shop is they do stop breeding their mice if they can't find homes for them. On a side note.. I need a room for my mice. I love the idea of a mousey shed or something. Currently my mice cages are spread around the house. Two in the lounge, one in the study and two in my room.


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## moustress

New Zealand is a fascinating place; to me, all the islands in that region are interesting, as is Australia.


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## besty74

Cordane;I use my garage as my mousery, got a little heater and some lighting, don't need air conditioning here as its NEVER that hot.But still seem to end up with mice in the house, a cage in the kitchen to keep an eye on, a cage in my bedroom as a quarantine, a cage in my daughters room because hes her fave!!
Sounds like the pet shops near you are much better than the ones here, alot more responsible.


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## Cordane

moustress said:


> New Zealand is a fascinating place; to me, all the islands in that region are interesting, as is Australia.


Trade? I find New Zealand boring. Although its a lovely place and you always see something new when you go on a road-trip. I have been almost every where in NZ so very few places are new to me. However, road trips are always fun 


besty74 said:


> Cordane;I use my garage as my mousery, got a little heater and some lighting, don't need air conditioning here as its NEVER that hot.But still seem to end up with mice in the house, a cage in the kitchen to keep an eye on, a cage in my bedroom as a quarantine, a cage in my daughters room because hes her fave!!
> Sounds like the pet shops near you are much better than the ones here, alot more responsible.


We don't exactly have a normal garage. Our house is about a metre off the ground so there is a metre from the ground in the garage that is not sealed. Plus, the garage is our laundry and currently houses a Heron Kit Car. My Dad continually talks about converting the garage into a room but he has been saying that for many many years and I highly doubt he will finish it and let alone start it by the time I move out. Boy it will be difficult finding a place to rent that will allow the amount of mice I have.


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## moustress

I consider myself lucky to have found a whole bunch of really big really nice meeces that had been dumped at my local privately owned pet store. A breeder apparently had to get rid of them quickly. there were about 40 adults of both sexes, babies, many dead, I took 17 of them only because they had cracked ten gallon tanks for $3. a pop. I made my own cage tops, improvised water containers (until I figured out that THAT was a complete waste of time, and got water bottles).

I had never had any inkling about all the colors, markings, coat types....I was completely hooked on mousies from that moment. And it all started when my 14 year old daughter caught a little wild mousie, and I let her keep it for a couple of days. She lost interest in mousies after about a year and a half, but I was hooked.

Considering how few breeders there are in these parts, I have been blessed with opportunities to get some amazing mousies from far away.

Addendum: Re: trading places... Why is it that humans always want what they don't have.  If we had matter transporters I'd do it for a month or two, but the idea of a plane flight that long kind of puts me off. I'd have to confront my seasickness issues...if I could afford the voyage, I'd go tomorrow.


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## moustress

Here are a list of short messages to whoever is out there thinking there is anything to gain in arguing further:

Pick whichever fits and apply to self.

1) I've tried being polite.

2) I admitted I could have phrased it better, and shown what that would look like.

3) Why are any of you fostering this discord?

4) You get a F in 'playing well with others'.

5) What have you got to gain in continuing in this vein?

6) Anyone who has been in this forum for while knows, or should know, that I don't give in when I think I'm right.

7) If you want to fight I suggest you go find a gym with a punching bag.

8) I am not gong to mince words or walk on eggshells in this forum, and I'm not going to go away.

9) Just stop it, OK, you are being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

10) By now, everyone who cares to knows what I meant to say.

There should be no more.


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## Cordane

moustress said:


> I consider myself lucky to have found a whole bunch of really big really nice meeces that had been dumped at my local privately owned pet store. A breeder apparently had to get rid of them quickly. there were about 40 adults of both sexes, babies, many dead, I took 17 of them only because they had cracked ten gallon tanks for $3. a pop. I made my own cage tops, improvised water containers (until I figured out that THAT was a complete waste of time, and got water bottles).
> 
> I had never had any inkling about all the colors, markings, coat types....I was completely hooked on mousies from that moment. And it all started when my 14 year old daughter caught a little wild mousie, and I let her keep it for a couple of days. She lost interest in mousies after about a year and a half, but I was hooked.
> 
> Considering how few breeders there are in these parts, I have been blessed with opportunities to get some amazing mousies from far away.
> 
> Addendum: Re: trading places... Why is it that humans always want what they don't have.  If we had matter transporters I'd do it for a month or two, but the idea of a plane flight that long kind of puts me off. I'd have to confront my seasickness issues...if I could afford the voyage, I'd go tomorrow.


Since we don't have breeders, unless I want to break the law, then pet shop mice is all I have. I do believe if I was willing to travel more than 5 hours and be willing to drive through Auckland City, I may be able to find some more unique mice and possibly a little more typey. It was total luck to find Xia, she is my current goal. Maybe a bit chunkier than her but her type is a good first step.
As to trading places, I believe the reason is because it would be classed as a holiday and everyone, (maybe not everyone) loves the idea of a holiday, potential to be anyone you want, pretend or not. Its the unknown that intrigues people, curiousity takes over and one can't help themselves. Many people like adventure, new things. I suppose in a way, its like mice. Put a hand in the cage and they can't help themselves but to explore the new thing that is in their environment. 
I'm use to traveling, while I was between 7 and 11, I went on 3 planes from Invercargill to Whangarei to see my Dad and then 3 back to Invercargill to go home. I did that 4 times a year for 4 years. That is around 96 planes and from memory and around 106-107 hours of flight time.


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## moustress

For me, I don't mind the travel per se, it's the wear and tear on my worn out joints. All that waiting in lines, going through security, all the rigamarole that one has to endure these days. The last vacation we took (me and hubby Nate) was wonderful except for the airports (and the luxury' hotel in Nassua where we stayed for a night; next time I would not go through Nasua at all) and all that walking. Some of the big airports don't have skycap service, and I was just beginning to get the picture of what I could and could not any longer endure. Pooh. I sound like I'm worn out, and sometimes that's how it feels.

In any case, yes, the grass is always greener, etc, etc. I've seen a lot of the US, every state in the continent except one, and that a lot of miles, almost all by auto on the cheap, eating from a cooler most of the time and sometimes sleeping in the van. It wasn't awful, but was awful tiring. We did that for about seven or eight years, and I was glad to give up that life.


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## Fraction

moustress said:


> Forum life here in FMB has seriously begun to pall for me. I've dived in after the foofarah last week, trying to be responsive in a substantial way to many posts, trying to take up the slack.


I don't even know exactly what happened last week; everything seemed civil when I went to bed, and by the morning the topic was gone. I hope I didn't contribute to the experienced breeders leaving--after all, I'm not even a breeder.

I hope you don't leave though Moustress. I enjoy your posts, and your mice.


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## jaroslava

Hi Mousetress,

I don't get on here very often and haven't read a lot of the posts, so don't know what the kerfuffle was about, but just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate that you started with pet shop mice and have been improving for 14 years since then, and are willing to share your journey and the knowledge you have gained along the way.

I too have started with sick, tumour prone, poor type, bitey, pet shop mice. I have been at it for 3 years only, but have just managed to finally rid the mousery of respiratory problems, "Touch wood". The tumours are only rarely popping up now and their type, coats and colours are improving. It is so hard to get a mouse to exhibit _all_ the features of a show mouse. Invariably, if they have lovely large eyes, their ears are small. Or if their colour is nice and even, then their heads are too narrow. There's a breeder in Sydney who likes like having bred excellent ears on her mice, but on the other hand, if looks like their heads are still too narrow. We persist! Lol  Thank you again.


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## MojoMouse

jaroslava said:


> There's a breeder in Sydney who likes like having bred excellent ears on her mice, but on the other hand, if looks like their heads are still too narrow.


Me? I like having bred mice with nice ears (I wouldn't say excellent though), but I'm even more proud of their big eyes. Body shape is nice as well. Working on the narrow faces.


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## Gill

Like you, Moustress, I think I'd soon become tired of teleporting round the globe, but think of the opportunities if we could send mice that way. I'd love some of your fawns, and if Mojo could send me a long-hair.............

Here's to Star Trek and Blake's Seven.


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## moustress

Gill: Yes! I'm just getting over wanting to collect the entire set of meeces; my hubby feels that way about cats. Now THAT would not be pretty!


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## moustress

I'm trying to work up the energy to re-post my pix of the fawn boys. I had the post removed because some of the pix, and the message window, were blown up way too big. And now I can't find my list of which pix I wanted in there...sonetimes I feel like I'm about to turn 80 instead of 60. Blah.


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## jaroslava

MojoMouse said:


> jaroslava said:
> 
> 
> 
> There's a breeder in Sydney who likes like having bred excellent ears on her mice, but on the other hand, if looks like their heads are still too narrow.
> 
> 
> 
> Me? I like having bred mice with nice ears (I wouldn't say excellent though), but I'm even more proud of their big eyes. Body shape is nice as well. Working on the narrow faces.
Click to expand...

Yup, thought your mice certainly do have lovely ears compared to what is available in Australia. And big eyes and lovely body shape too. The narrow faces are proving very difficult to change, and in my case the really pointy noses too. But as Mojo said she is, we are working on them still.

Apologies to anyone who thought i was being nasty with my previous comment. I was just trying to indicate what conformation problems we are having to tackle here in Australia. Not trying to single out particular breeders for that. My own mice would take out the awards for narrowest heads, lol. But did mean about the lovely ears on Mojo mice.


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## moustress

Last night I was looking at pix of my meeces from five years back; I'll have to dig up a few of those to show just how far I've come. I thought those meeces were da bomb; now they look kinda weasel-faced and skanky, not all, but some. I have learned so much in this forum. It hasn't been easy picking my through the mine-fields of personality clashes, though.

There's a difference between the kind of discrimination that causes trouble and the kind that just wants to help you to see the difference between things. And there's a big difference between constructive criticism and the crapfest that occurs in this Forum a couple of times a year. I hope I've learned to do better in those regards. In the past week and a half I've written several angry rants that were transferred to the round file.

It's nice to see support, but I don't expect it. I try not to be self-righteous or bigoted with regards to the differences between mousies that are shown and mousie that are not shown. Deep down, I know that they are JUST MICE!!! No matter who has them, or where they come from or where they take them, or what they do with them...

..as for my mousies, I'll pts them when I want, do with them what I want, and no one has any right to tell me differently, as long as I do it in a humane fashion. I'll spit the little MF's and toast them by the dozen over a slow fire if want. (have I failed to shock someone?) I loved chickens, as well, but hey, you gotta eat! Chop chop. Yum yum.


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## besty74

you will need at least a dozen for a decent portion size!
baked in a pie sounds good to me


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## moustress

Hope I didn't ruin anyone's dinner with that last post. Sometimes I surprise myself...

besty: Ooh, mousie pie; yummers!! When's dinner?

I was distressed to find that I still had mites in the tank with my blue tri babies. their eyes are just starting to open, and I guess it might have been just that one mite between the toes of the one baby that was licking frantically. I saturated a paper towel with Reptile Relief and rolled them in it, then put them aside to dry near a lamp, giving them one more little zotz of R.R. from above. I didn't want Mom and the gang of sisters licking it off. I may have to replace my mites control chemicals, as the Reptile Relief was frozen by;; accident. I think my bottles of Iver-On is still good. Gonna have to try to capture a live cootie or two so I observe them as they DIE DIE DIE! :evil:!

Truth be told, I am reluctant to use those products as a spray the way someone said they do; it's a toxic chemical. Anyone who insists that it's OK' to spray everything in sight hasn't thought it through very well. I don't want feel like I have to wear a respirator in my mousery. I'm thinking of going back to something I tried few years back; No Pest Strips, or the generic version of that. I used to hang them in the West Room when we had infestations of Asian lady bugs. I used to stick one into my bedding bin, and I'm going to research to find out if it would leave any toxic residue on grains and seeds. I also used to place a No Pest Strip on the top of a cage when I thought there might be pests bothering my little darlings, leaving it there for 8-10 hours and then removing it.

I know those things have cautions on them, so I didn't use them constantly, and never in someplace where there was no ventilation, but then I have always tried to provide the cleanest air possible, not only for the meeces, but for myself. I have a history of upper respiratory crud in a variety of ways, so they get a full size air cleaner, just like I have for myself. I could go back to using Ivermectin Solution for Injection, diluted in a gallon of jug. That comes in a small package, isn't prohibitively expensive, and I don't need to end up with it up my nose or in my eyes...I'm big on What Works, and unafraid to try it again...filling water bottles isn't a big deal, as my hubby helps with that...

I'm full of thoughts. :roll: Thanks for reading.


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## moustress

I've had three, maybe four litters born in the last two days to four does, all sisters, bred as trios with their brothers. They are crosses from Red Rover and a black tricolor doe. I'm not cullling until tomorrow; there aren't any huge litters, and and I want to see as many of them fully furred as possible before culling.

This is going to be exciting! Will I get red tris? I can hardly wait! The red is recessive (ee), but I think there's a chance. :!: This will be my first mixed litter of tris in a while, and my first that has the possibility of red tris among the black and the 'what have you'. I'm pretty sure none of them are agouti based.

I'm still learning through this process. I'll post again when there are signs of colors showing.


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## moustress

About the sale form; I'm not selling, I just want to place them with other breeders.

This looks like a lot of work to someone who has arthritis in her hands. I'll have to think about it. I have about 40 I'd like to adopt out.

I can wait about two more weeks or so until my latest piles of pinkies need separate quarters.

The bucks will be the first to go, one way or the other. I have a lot of young mousies in the kitten range.

Go ahead and delete the post, K.

My red and black tri babies and doing fine. I'm sure i'll have some misc. choc., blue, agouti tris and pied, maybe a few self. I think diversity is fun and good. My meeces are pretty much mixed after the incident over a year and a half ago.

I'm going to turn the West Room into a recording studio until winter; at which point we may shift things back. It all depends on the weather and my health.


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## moustress

Busy time of year, eh? Are any of you at all caught up in the hubbub surrounding the Olympics? I'm avoiding the blanket coverage entirely.

Today I took a client to some thrift/vintage/consignment shops. She didn't find what she was looking for, but I got a gorgeous hatpin of Italian glass and high quality crystal with the original bead on the end. Green glass, clear crystal. Should go well with a couple of my vintage hats.

Then I took the client grocery shopping, doing my own at the same time...this must sound awfully tedious.

Errr... mechanics to mount new tires and a ocuple of new rims; I now have a full size spare that will go in the topper I'm getting this weekend.


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## besty74

AAArrrrgggghhhh!!!! 
I have come on here to avoid the olympics and talk mice, everywhere i go the roads are shut for road events or delays for people travelling to and from them, the M25 is an absolute nightmare at the moment, more a car park than a motorway!
As you can tell i am not a fan, maybe when they are elsewhere and i can travel around in peace!

That hatpin sounds lovely, reminds me of an old friend of my grandmothers who always wore hats, i love hats. not quite as much as i love shoes... or mice!!!


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## moustress

Ahhh, shoes! I have a problem with buying shoes that seem to fit, but not that well, wearing them once with all the joy that brings to my poor tootsies. Then I hang on to them. I try to give them away. I'd never buy used shoes unless they were like new. Nowadays there are ways of decontaminating old shoes; heck, I do it all the time. (>,<) I like like my old shoes.

The first step is admitting you have a problem...


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## besty74

can i ask what your new message at the bottom of your posts means?


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## jadeguppy

Have you tried diatemecious (sp?) earth in your cage with the mites? Food grade is what I would go with. It is safe if they or you eat it, but it kills mites and fleas. Some people feed it to their dogs and cats to help control internal parasites. You can also buy it for human consumption. I'm thinking of sprinkling a bit in the cages as a preventative measure.


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## moustress

jg: I do use diatomaceous earth in my garden, but I'm afraid the meeces would burrow and get it in their eyes and nose. It can be highly irritating like that. It does a great job on slugs and bugs and other crawlies, though.


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## jadeguppy

I've been wanting to put some in my yard for flea control and possibly ant control, but it has rained every day. I'm not complainign about the rain though, my new fruit trees are much better off due to it.


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## moustress

I put mine on at dewfall or dawn; the moisture of the dew helps it stick a bit longer.


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## moustress

Wow! It's been two and a half months since I posted in here.

There hadn't been much going on in my mousery; I've been slowly weeding my population to make room for my new breeding cycle. I made eight pairings this weekend; one blue splashed buck and three blue tri does; one yellow tri buck and two yellow tri does, a pair of black tris, a pair of satin fawns, and tonight I choose a couple more black tri does and a black tri buck. Oh, I almost forgot the brindle tri buck and two brindle tri does. Oops; that make 11 litters. Lotsa babee mousees!!! Wheeee!!!

I figure I should have litters popping out the week before Thanksgiving through the end of the month of November.

I'm hoping that RL will step aside and let me back to the important things in life; mousies, mousies, and more mousies!!


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## jaroslava

I can so relate to this last post. But i am curious, have you timed these latest pairings for the holiday break to get the maximum amount of time available? This time of year i am offloading so there aren't so many to try and keep cool in the summer heat. There have been some much nicer litters produced here in this last winter and spring, June to September. Hopefully I'll get organised and get some photos soon to share.


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## moustress

No, the pairings weren't timed to coordinate with the hlidays break. I'm 60 years old, so, I don't do school, although I do think about auditing a class every now and then.

I timed the litters to come in groups of two or three at once, as that often allows for evening out the numbers if a doe has a huge litter and another has just four or five. There are a total of twelve does paired with eight bucks. The blue tricolors are the larger group, with three does and one buck. I have two black tricolor does with one buck, then two yellow tri does with a tri buck, and two pairs of brindle tricolors. have I forgotten any of them? Oh, I forgot the satin pied fawn pairing...and the other pair of b;lcak tricolors...they should be interesting; they have very little white. I like having a lot of color from head to nose with little swooshes of white here and there.

A couple of the does are at that 'ohmygod they're gonna s'plode any second' stage. Yeah they's my S'plodamousies.


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## moustress

My first litter of this round of pairings arrived today! Sarge must have caught Shimmer the first night. There are nine babies, seven of which are very good sized, the littlest is not realy that small. I'm pleased to have a litter as I[ve had little in the way of results from some pairings that have been together for a couple of months.

The babies were eeking vigorously when I opened the mousery today.


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## andypandy29us

congrats on your first of many litters  ... cant wait to see pics


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## moustress

Pinky pix are, imho, kind of pointless; it's the pix of the pair that produced them that are interesting at this stage.

Today I found that two of my three blue tricolor does had produced an even dozen little eekers. I'm ecstatic!!


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## andypandy29us

fantastic on the tri's ... I dont mind waiting a few weeks for non pink pictures  ... My daughter loves the pinkie pictures as har fav colour is pink and she thinks they are very cute x


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## moustress

To be honest, I always have found pinkies a little repulsive. I used to take pix of them, but it seems pointless. As I'm not breeding for show standards I don't really look for advice on culling pinkies. That's not to say that I haven't looked when others show litters and point out the ones to cull. I only recently developed the grit (call it callousness if you need to) to start culling my litters.


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## GibblyGiblets

moustress said:


> To be honest, I always have found pinkies a little repulsive. I used to take pix of them, but it seems pointless. As I'm not breeding for show standards I don't really look for advice on culling pinkies. That's not to say that I haven't looked when others show litters and point out the ones to cull. I only recently developed the grit (call it callousness if you need to) to start culling my litters.


for shame =O lol people always say I am weird, because I find newborn baby mice and rats to be some of the cutest things on the planet, baby gerbils look funny though I think newly hatched songbirds are cute too, baby parrots just look like little aliens :shock:

I was amazed when I had a litter of baby hamsters to find that they can RUN at birth, they have no idea where they are going xD, but they boogey ,when baby mice or rats can barely move.

anyways, looking forward to fur pictures, I have always adored your blue tris *drool*


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## moustress

Shimmer and her daughter ate all the babies.


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## bonsai

I'm really sorry for your lost.


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## ThatCertainGlow

Oh no! How sad.  I am sorry for your loss.


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## andypandy29us

oh no ... so sorry to hear that


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## moustress

It was sad, for sure, but her daughter Roselle, a yellow tricolor, had her litter yesterday, and they look very good. I've learned never to count on anything when it comes to breeding...it's hard not to be sad, but, as you can see, I hedged my bets. I'm giving Shimmer one more chance; she did fine with her first litter, so I;'m not sure what conclusions if any, can be drawn from the 'cuisining' of this litter.

I've come to the conclusion (Oo) that those wiggly pinkers must be awful dang tasty.


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## moustress

Roselle's litter has been fostered onto the blue bunch. Now they have a total of eighteen between three does which is just about right. Both Shimmer and Roselle appear to have developed pyometra, and are receiving treatment. I think Roselle will be fine, but I don't have a good sense of how Shimmer will do. She seems very chipper and clear eyed just like her girl, so we'll just have to give it a few days and see what happens.

In the meantime, I've paired another of Shimmer's fawn tri/splashed girls, Rosande with an odd buck who I think is brindled tricolor, these splashy/roany/merlish meeces have been showing up a lot, and I want to know more about what's going on, but they don't seem to conceive well or bear well...I think they are all brindled tris of one type or another...it's a work in progress.


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## moustress

RL has kept me from posting like I used to; this is the longest I've gone since I joined this forum without making a post in this Forum. There wasn't much going on during the months of October and November; my pairings weren't producing and I was feeling frustrated.

Now I have two litters of babies and a couple of litters of 'kitten' youngsters. I am so happy to have poduced a few nice blue tricolors and even the splashed blues are looking really good to me. Blue and lilac on silver look a lot like tricolor. I always wanted blue tris ever since I got my first tri five and a half years ago. My fawn tris are starting to show different shades as well, which is an even bigger deal to me. I am enjoying watching them all as their colors fill in and begin to show themselves.

Tracker, my #1 black tricolor stud has been paired off again to another black tri doe. He was looking lethargic and seemed bored and depressed in a tank all by himself but he perked up the moment a gave him a lovely lady to keep him company.

Teddy, my LH curly black buck, has litters off my two top black tricolor breeding does. He has the splashed gene and one dilution factor, so I have a couple of tris in those litters. I figured that I'd get at least a couple, but the real reason I did that pairing was that thel ine he comes from is so very healthy, long lived, and have treat personalities, good size and nice clean ears. While I really don't want curly tris, the offspring will all be heterogenous for both LH and curly, so it'll be easy to sort out. I'm not sure about the LH, that might be a recessive in that line. He's a real sweetie, even after being bred, very affectionate and cuddly.

The other new litter are about three days old; I bred Anya, a satin SH blue tri doe, to Smidgen, a ratty looking small blue tricolor buck that has really nice markings and colors. While she had a problem delivering, and a few of the babies were stillborn. When I saw her in trouble I removed Smidgen and fostered her babies onto another doe. They had nursed a bit, but she wasn't tending them, and they had cooled down considerably. They were accepted as fosters. I was worried about Anya, as she obviously was retaining a couple of babies. I checked several times over the following six hours, and I was relieved to find that she had expelled a couple of dead babies. I was so pleased with myself when I managed to get the survivors back into her nest after them having been fostered out for a few hours. My trick was to scoop up the babies and then take used bedding from the tank they were going into and sort of roll them in it to give them the smell of the tank to which they were going. then I gave the mums a treat while I buried the fosters in the new nest under the babies who were already there. I'm so glad that Anya is doing well as I'm planning to breed her again.


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## moustress

Tracker was found dead a few days ago in the tank with his latest mate, Trackee. He was almost exactly two years old and had been one of my most reliable studs. He didn't let me down; he was put with one more doe and is now a father posthumously. Trackee delivered ten little eekers two days after he died. They are good looking little things; already showing nice, if faint, bold markings.

I am so pleased to have this last litter off of him; he carried recessive yellow and gave me a litter of pied fawn a few months ago
that have been paired to see if they produce some nice tris in various colors. Trackee is black to chocolate tri, Tracker was black to beige, both may carry recessive yellow.


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## onionpencil

sorry for your loss, glad he managed to father another litter.


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## moustress

Here are some pix of Tracker from about one year ago.


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## ThatCertainGlow

I'm sorry to hear of your lose. He sure seemed to be an important man in your mousery, and I have been reading about him for so long that it has the un-real quality of someone you know passing on.  Thank you for sharing him with all of us.

Take care,
Zanne


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## moustress

Thanks for your kind wishes, TCG.

:gwavebw The litter he fathered that was born two days after he died are fulfilling my heart's desire. :gwavebw

:gwavec I have yellow tricolors again, at last; real tris with solid blocks of two or more yellow shades. :gwavec

There are also chocolate and black tris and a couple that I'm not quite sure exactly what to call. They are only about 12 days old and no doubt these will be easier to define in another few weeks. I am so looking forward to getting pix up of the yellow tris!

Tracker also has a pile of great grandkids starting to get their fur. He contributions to helping restore my mousery after the accident over two years ago have been and will continue to be huge.


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## andypandy29us

Im glad his heirs will carry on his legend


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## Shadowrunner

I am so thrilled for you on the yellows.
Bittersweet, but oh-so-wonderful at the same time.


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## moustress

Tracker lived a good long life with many forays into breeding; I was sad that he died, but thrilled to have one last litter from him. Having my first yellow tricolor off of him is a good balm for any sadness I felt at his passing.

Real life has been eating up my playtime in such a way that I haven't taken the time to do photos and post them; I especially need to put some of my darlings in the Mousies du Jour thread.


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## moustress

I need to cull my stock again; I wish someone would come buy and get some of my surplus. I have some lovely blue agouti tricolor does, that are too old to breed. I still have about one third of the does that were produced in the process of extracting the fawn genes after the accident that killed two thirds of my meeces back in Dec. 2010. I have entirely too many bucks. I have a hard time choosing so I tend to do whole tanks at once, quickly, without out any dawdling or hesitation. I don' like it, but it must be done. I have eight young satin pied fawn/orange bucks and I wish someone would come and get a couple, at least. I have a hard time euthanizing them as I love buck, they are so much more bold and playful most of the time. I also have about seven or eight blue splashed bucks, really nice ones, that I'd like to place.

I have placed my two best blue tricolor does with a young blue tricolor buck with red eyes, and they seem to be showing after a week. They are nice big girlies. I've had a whole lot of nothing happening with the rest of my pairings. I switched out fawn self boys as nothing was happening, and the New Boy on the Block step right up to the job. Sometimes the magic just isn't there. *sigh*

We went to the feed mill and got 200 lbs. of oats and 50 lbs. of yellow safflower. I also got about 15 lbs. of while millet, a big of corn free kibble and a small quantity of alfalfa forage cubes just to see what the meeces hink of them. If nothing else they will freshen up the air in the mousery. Let's hope that hubby and son are not as allergic to these as they were to timothy.

I got a bit of yellow clover seed too. The meeces seem a little interested in it, and I'm going to plant some in my lawn. I love clover, and I've never been conscious of seeing yellow clover.


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## TwitchingWhiskers

Trust me, if I were closer, I'd take your excess stock in the blink of an eye! I'm sorry, culling can be though, especially when selectively breeding.

That's a lot of oats!


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## ThatCertainGlow

From what I understand, allergies to alfalfa are much less likely than to timothy.  Not sure how big forage cubes are, but pelleted alfalfa does 'freshen' the air, and absorb a huge amount of liquid. Like if a water bottle leaked, you'd see fluffy pellets, not so much a wet mess. Mine don't eat them, that I can tell. I use them under the bedding layer. Good luck!


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## moustress

I envision tiny fields of vary pale timothy in the cages closest to the basement window. I already have all kinds of stuff sprouting in my back yard from composteing and spreading use litter...that's how I knew I was overfeeding the little buggers.

I go now to learn about the differences between whilte and golden safflower; it smells different.

I'm a manly woman; change is hard. Same good, Different bad?! I even hate shopping for shoes.


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## moustress

Last night I was surprised by the unmistakeable eeking of pinkies. Wasn't just a couple of days ago that I announced that I had set up a trio of blue tricolors? My mind mist be playing tricks on me, and I didn't write the date down...in any case, they do seem to have that raw and red look I associate with preemies, but they are the loudest dang pinkies ever born!

There are eight or nine of them; I don't know if the other doe is going to deliver soon or if she's even pregnant. One still thinks,"How the freak did this happen." None of those girls have been AWOL, to the best of my knowledge, so they have to be either delayed (very, very very delayed) or preemie.

I'm thrilled to death, but... :?


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## moustress

It's been awhile since I posted any mousery goings-on. I have a new litter of black-based tricolors that look nice and big; they demonstrate their good lungs by being very squeeky and wiggly.

My old cuddle buddy Coyote died a couple of days ago at the prime old age of 2 yr. 8 mo. I had already been grooming a new cuddle buddy who I call spud. He's a blue splashed that got sick, and as usually happens, he was handled a lot, and I became attached. He's a very playful little boy.

There isn't really thing else going on mousie-wise. My splashed or tri red baby is getting very pretty. I've got to get some pix of her. I'm not sure if her background color is white or bone or cream.


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## moustress

Things have become busy in the mousery again. I decided to put Teddy, my LH curly black boy, up to another doe, one of the does from his first litter. I chose a big LH angora doe, and she delivered seven nice looking pinkies a couple of days ago. Teddy was separated before the birth of his other litter, so he got a chance to play papa this time around. HE always covers the pinkies when mama leaves it, and even does butt duty. I douldn't really tell for sure if Theodora was pregnant as she is large and has long silky fur. I got an inkling when she stopped hiding under the water bottle at feeding time and came up and ripped the kibble out of my hand.

That line, which I got a few years ago by mouse train, has exceptional longevity and nice calm personalities. I would really like to get another buck like Teddy from this litter. I had only recessive curly in my mousery before the mousie train, and they had health problems, so I wasn't promoting them. Teddy has black balls of fur that really makes him look ike a little black sheep. He even still likes me after having been bred twice. He is dang near 3 1/2 years old; I had been thinking of putting him to sleep because he looked like he was too sick, then I decided to treat him in case it was parasites of some sort, and he was up and scarfing treats the next day. That was almost a year ago.

My newest tricolor litter is opening it's eyes. There are some interesting colors in there; I think they are all showi at least two colors, and some of them I guess I should call quads.

I'm considering who to pair for my next blue tri litter. I have good colors now with contrast, now I need to work on getting the colors in discrete patches. I am hopeful about seeing some good yellow/red tris in the next couple of months.

It will be time to buy grain again in a couple of weeks. We have changes feed mills as fuel porces have gotten so high. I really enjoyed the trip to North Branch, partly because the mill was over 150 years old and built of wood covering with metal at some later date. I takes me back to childhood and the grain and feed storage building on my Aunt Ellen's and Uncle Bob's farm; the smell of them was the same. Ah, the memories!! 

I have had a problem in a litter of my fawn satins; three of the does started attacking my hand with increasing vigor. One of them nicked the skin, and I moved all three of them into a tank with unrelated does. One of them proceeded to attack their new tankmated. She is an ex-mouse. The other two seem to be getting along alright. There's a number of problems in that litter. two young does have tumors, one has a tail that is bent and knobby an three places. No more litters from that pairing.

The depth of color on my 'fawn' litters have passed being orange and now I'm getting individuals who are burnt orange. I suspect that the overall range of orangeness will tip over soon and I will have to call them 'red'.


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## moustress

Much to my chagrin, I seem to have a hairless mousie born of Teddy and Theodora. If anyone who lives near me wants it , let my know, as I can barely stand to look at the poor thing. :roll: It has really, really big eyes...


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## moustress

That hairless mousie really wierds me out; it seems healthy and it has an incredible tail, and I am fascinated. I don't really like the hairless part of the package, but I have to admit that it isn't 'suffering'.

My two latest litters are doing quite well; Santee and Sarge produced 11 pinkies. Two were culled, three were fostered with the black based tricolors, which were a litter of 4. So now both does have a nice number of babies to nurse. I'm always relieved when a doe accepts unrelated babies. I put the fosterlings in a small container with bedding from around the nest in which they were to be placed, then after ten of fifteen minutes I gave their new mom a treat and sneaked the little buggers into the nest under the other babies.

I have a lot of really old mousies and it seems hardly a day goes past without one of them either dying or looking so decrepit that I have to put them down.

Another thing on my agenda; I am looking over my blue tricolors in order to pick a new pairing. I've been doing quite well with them. I think.


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## moustress

The meeces; I need to talk about the meeces.

Things have been kind of winding down lately; not much success in my pairings, lots of old meeces gone. I have lots of empty tanks and stuff. I need to set a new goal, ad I now have everything I said I was working towards. The meeces I thought were brindled tri have produced nothing whatsoever.

My burnt orange tris are looking good; I think I'll stop there and call it red. It's more red, I think, than the European red, which looks more brown than red to me. More of those will be paired sometime soon, for sure. I have a black tri couple that I'm waiting on, a yellow tri and a blue tri put together just for fun, a couple of others that also don't look like anything is happening.


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## moustress

Things in the mousery have been pretty uneventful. I just put four couple together, though, so hopefullly that will change in about three weeks. I've been paring down the population and between that and the natural deaths and the ones who had to be put down, I am at the lowest number of meeces I've had for about two years.

On top of that, my life has been emotionally exhausting, so I'm not having as much fun, and I'm thinking of severely curtailing breeding activities after this batch, as I'll probably need to find new housing in about seven months due to foreclosure on our home.

One sad note; my old cuddlebuddy Teddy the long haired curly black buck was found dead. He was pretty old and had a good life. He sired two litters, one of which included a hairless which surprised the heck out of me. It's quite fuzzy with red fur, which is a relief to me. I never liked the look of a totally hairless animal of any species.

The only other event of note was a doe escaping her tank and breaking into another tank where there's a buck that I would have placed her with if I had taken her out of her other tank. Weird. they are getting along well enough. This will be her last litter; her last one was four months ago.


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## moustress

It's itime for me to get back to talking about the important things in life; you, know, those things with whiskers, tails, busy noses, and little patty paws. I've made a few pairings, and I think my great big satin black tricolor is finally going to give me a litter. I don
t quite know why there are sometimes a couple of months at a time where my pairings just don't accomplish anything.

Are there times of year that are better for production of babies?


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## Miceandmore64

Not sure but my mouse gave birth last night and that means that he donkey her in ther first or second day thats amazing! Good boy good boy


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## moustress

I now have two litters of little eekers, both fawn/orange/cream; three parents are splashes or tri, one buck is self orange. I decided to greed outside the line of tris because I had a high incidence of tumors in the last two generations. One litter has seven, the other is too big, started at thirteen and tonight I'm going to cull down to seven or eight.


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## Veritai

If I have a time where litters just won't take it's usually the middle of summer...


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## moustress

I put culled a beautiful satin tricolor doe last night. She was thought to be pregnant and may have been, but as her due day came and passed, she got painfully bloated. Yesterday her condition was declining and by evening she looked worse, hair matted, ears flat to the head, and her rectum was in the process of prolapsing. She was a good little girl and let me handle her, but her eyes told me she was in pain. It was probably pyometra; I could feel little things in the belly but most of it was just fluid.

She was big, and beautiful, and it was the saddest culling I have ever done.


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## Miceandmore64

Oh that's terrible
We once gave a fish (guppy to be exact) a c-section. The babies lived dad cut her open it was fastinating she does giving birth from old age.


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## moustress

One of my blue tri does gave me another litter of blue tris off of the same buck that fathered the last bunch. There were ten which were culled to seven. As usual, I'll wait until the fur comes in before doing pix. They are nice and fat with traces of pigment beginning to show. Also, I have another trio of black tris put together, plus a pairing of black tris. And, of course since i had waited so long for a litter off that satin black tri doe who had to be PTS, I have thrown caution to the wind. I suppose that they will each give me a baker's dozen each... :roll:


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## moustress

I have two litters of tricolors that are about 2 1/2 weeks old; the does are sisters and were bred to my only good tricolor stud. I also now have a new litter from the same stud from a lovely large daughter of Tracker. There's c^h in the mix, so there are a lot of different shades and a lot of different types of expression of those hues. I wanted to preserve the ovely silvery beige that Tracker had, and it looks like I got it right. One more tricolor doe is due any hour now. I had a drought in which few babies were born; I so glad the froght has ended.

There's a problem in my fawn splashed/tri litters. Both the males and the females are prone to what look like tumors. They develop right behind the front limbs where the top meets the side, on on each side. Very weird. Could it be some other sort of disease? I'm
gonna throw the wuestion out there in the appropriate section and hope someone knows more about this than I do. I tend to think it's and inherited thing as I have only seen this in that line. I'm waiting before doing any more culling until I have a better idea of what's going on, as I don't think it's an infectious condition. It popped up in a few of the meeces that were bred from a splashed fawn doe and a self fawn buck. I'm hoping that it's a recessive tendency for tunors that I can breed out of the line with out crosses.

I need to take a few pics before I post further.


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## Miceandmore64

Sounds good cant wait


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## moustress

I'm struggling with myself, though I know I'll give in to good sense. There are about five or six fawn tri/splashed meeces that have developed the swellings I showed in a post a few days ago. One of the does now has lumps in front of her hind legs as well as behind the forelegs. After the culling, I plan to inbreed unaffected individuals and cull agressively as soon as symptoms appear.

This is the first time I've been presented with this kind of difficulty, thought the mousery accident of three+ years ago has hardened me somewhat as far as culling goes. Fawn was one of the kinds of meeces of which I had no survivors, and I had to breed aggressively to extract the genes from meeces that carried the recessive for red eyes. I'm not going to scrap the whole line unless I still have problems after four or five generations.

On reading, I see that transmission of the possible cause, murine retroviral leukemia, is still a mystery. I'm going to have to research this, as I will not give up the line. I have had no occurances of the tumors outside that line, so I am pretty sure it's not easily spread. Nevertheless, I do plan on being extra careful with breeding stock to be sure that I can halt any possible spread. I suspect that breeding may be method of transmission, which would be really bad news, especially if some of the meeces are resistant carriers.

Now I go to learn more about murine diseases and pathology. I am eager to hear or read anything more about this.


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## moustress

The problem with lumps on my yellow splashed/tris seems to be tapering off. I've only had to cull one buck from the latest litter.

I'm thrilled to find someone to keep my tricolors and maybe some of the ones from the truck-mice I got five yaears ago. That was a major worry as I have to out of here by about July 7.

In the meanwhile, I'm gearing down breeding. I have only one obviously pregnant doe right now.


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## moustress

I'm in Winnipeg, relaxing after 450 me driving. The main reason for this trip was to get some of my mousies to a woman who, I hope, enjoys them greatly, and will have some of them or their offspring to restart my mousery with when I get settled in a new place in a month or two.

I parted with one of my favorite from the mouse-train meeces I got four or five years ago. She got a black eyed bone LH rex doe. A more pleasant handful of mousie you'd be hard pressed to find. That line in general all have wonder calm dispositions. It's a litle hard saying good bye to them, even for what little time I'm hoping to have without them. And I still have a lot of meeces back in Minneapolis. There's a breeder in Mpls. Who will probably be interested in taking some more.

I stupidly forgot to pull out the wataer bottles, so there was quite a bit of damp bedding by the time I checked on the meeces during the trip. My brains are still very scrambled from all the stress I've been under


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## moustress

Apex has her new darlings all settled in, hopefully making babies for her, and for me, eventually. It was a little sad saying goodbye to some of the ones I gave her, like the one she named Coconut. I hope that one has a baby or two who have coats as thick and as curly as hers. I bred her to another long haired curly, so there will be fur and lots of it!

My mousery seems to be on standby. I have pairings that have been together for weeks and so far nothing is happening. I sus[ect that there is asomething about the space they are in that is reducing their fertility. Well, we'll have them out of here in a few weeks, hopefully into a better space. I have so many empty tanks right now, and it's tempting to get rid of some of them, but I figure, that if there's room in the POD I may fill then with some of my old clothes. I have a collection of mod fashions from the early to mid sixties that I just can't part with.

I am apprehensive and worried about placing as many of the rest of my meeces with someone. I have one more possibility to pursue, but I have been so distracted, what with the divorce and the foreclosure.


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## moustress

Sitting here, after having driven about 1350 mi., waiting to hear from people who were expecting me, I feel dazed and a bit deflated.
For 2 cents I'd turn around and head elsewhere. I am tired had a basically good day, but dangit, someone cold have had the courtesy to give me their phone number, at least, if not the actual address I am to go to. I'm tired of renting rooms, and I'm tired of eating out, and I'm tired of....


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## skeallzy

I'm really sorry you felt that way, hon  
I sent my address and phone number to you in our pm conversations on August 3rd so you'd have it on hand. I've referenced the latter a couple of times, and you hadn't asked for it again, so I didn't think to send it again until this evening. I'm glad we got it all sorted out though


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## moustress

Uh huh.

Whiplash hurts.


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## moustress

Now I have only one mousie; he's a lot of mousie, though. Blue splashed or tri; not sure if the whitish patches are actually white or silver. He carries recessive yellow, and comes from a line with outstanding personality. The c locus dilutions are c^h and c.

My Bud traveled well; doesn't seem the worse for wear at all. He reminds of the boxer we had in the Trainor family. Bud curls up when the vehicle is in motion, and as soon as it stops he looks up, and then stands up on his hind legs begging for a treat. Even if I never got meeces back from any other breeders, I'd be set with Bud. he's over a year old, but that line has generally been long lived. His grandpa, Teddy, lived almost three years. He was a wild combination of recessive piled on recessive, so Bud could have a lot of 'tools' hidden in his genes.

I do plan on a trip to Winnipeg in late September, I think, depending on what's going on with the folk I'd be staying with. Apex seems to have had some fine results so far except with the yellow splashed/tris she already had. My line has had a lot of health problems, and I might wait to get a yellow off of Bud. The murine leukemia and poor breeding was why I told Emma that those should probably just be sold as pets. Of course, I have no control over what happens.

I'm hoping that rocketmdove has some success with the yellow trio I brought her in June/

My trip was filled with adventures and misadventures; I'll probably recount some of them, but I'm still kind of jangled from all the hours on the road. I drove from 11 am to 2 am; I'm getting my road chops back. It was very tiring. It's a good thing I like coffee.


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## SarahC

Sounds hectic and draining.


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## moustress

What can I say, except to say that things I like to do I do whole hearted and with abandon.

I'm not dead yet!! (I feel happy...*jig*)


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## moustress

Four weeks after my long trip and I am enjoying the bejeebers out of the one mousie I kept. Bud is being spoiled rotten; he gets to come out and play several times a day. Now, though, he doesn't want the hand unless he get a treat. so he gets toasted oat rings or cooked rice or bits of the cracker I'm munching. sometimes I give him little pieces of my banana or a tidbit of apple. I don't think he likes apple, though. I keep his tank next to me when I'm home, where I spend almost all my time in the bedroom as all the other furniture is gone except for a card table and a couple of folding chairs.

Not spending a couple of hours every night in the mousery was weird at first, but I'm enjoying being the owner of one pet mousie. I do plan on breeding again one day, when I've settled into a new place.

Right now I'm 'squatting' in the foreclosed house Nate and I used to own. It's a weird situation and not really comfortable. Most of my stuff is in storage, and I could be evicted, though that would take a month or two. What I'm hoping for is an offer from the management company that is in charge of residency at this house for me to get out right away in return for a nice big check. They had me sign a contract a couple of months ago, but I was not in good shape mentally and emotionally, and I failed to meet the deadline.

Being suicidal does that to a person. Getting through hour to hour was about all I was capable of for several months. I have considered checking myself into the hospital on a number of occasions, and may still do so if I feel like that again.

After having been diagnosed last week with a brain tumor, I was quite despondent, but the neurosurgeon thinks it's benign, so there will be no surgery in my immediate future. I'd rather not have a hospital as my next address.

It could be argued that most of this post belongs in my other thread, the Baja Manitoba Free Press.


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## moustress

Bud had been less sociable for about a week, then his coat started to look rough and he was kind of hunched up. Then he bit me. Actually, he put his teeth on my finger with a little pressure, then did it with a little more pressure, and THEN he bit me. I figure I should have gotten the message that he wasn't feeling affectionate or playful. I knew there was something wrong, and I had checked a couple of times before for mites; this time I spotted one. It's different than the tiny dark dots that move. This one was about 1/8 in. long and very light beige. It was big enough that I could see a body and a head.

Any one have any idea what they are? I could almost see legs, but not how many.

I had used up my Ivermectin Pour-On but I had some Sevin powder with my garden supplies. HE underwent a transformation from a hunched up miserable looking little guy to relaxed, smooth fur, actually wanting to come out of the tank and play. I'm so relieved! I wonder if this is something that, like with the Ivermectin, needs to be repeated twice more at weekly intervals.

I'll ask in the Health Section as well. I assume it would require subsequent doses.


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## moustress

Bud and I are in Winnipeg presently; I was kid of at loose ends after handling over the keys to the house. I cleaned the crap out of that place, as I wanted to be proud of it as I handed over the keys. My fingernails are down to nubs and my right index finger is split by the cuticle. A couple of others look like they want to do that woo. Cuticles and quicks split in about ten places. I'd wear gloves but I have nerve damage which reduces my abilities enough as it is.

The mousker is doing quite well; he doesn't seem to be bothered by traveling at all. He's happy to eat whatever I present to him, pretty much. He looks so much better than he did earlier before I treated him for whatever those bugs were. Hooray for Sevin powder!

The cat who lives here is avid and eager to get at Bud, but the door latches firmly. It's hard for a cat to get into a plexiglas tank, but I'm taking no chances. He calms and soothes me so much when I handle him. I have a real emotional attachment to mousies in general, and to my cuddlebuddy in particular; he's my Little Love.


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## moustress

Today was Canadian Thanksgiving Day! I got a huge meal that I didn't have to lift a finger to prepare. I shared a bit of turkey and a wee piece of carrot with Bud. He gobbled up the turkey but doesn't seem interested in the carrot.

He had an adventure yesterday with Smudge the cat. I made the mistake of putting his tank in a no-so stable spot while I changed the bed. I went to the bathroom, and when I came out a few inutes later, one of the other people that live in the house came to me to tell me Smudge had shown up two floors down with Bud in his mouth. The poor guy was afraid I was going to be mad. It was so obviously my inattention that was to blame.

Bud is fine; he was rescued and put back in his tank, and seems none the worse for wear and still goes to peer up at Smudge when he comes to sit by the tank. It must have been a joy for the cat to finally get at that mosuie who has been right under his nose for almost two weeks. I suspect that the kitty has been sloughing off his duties catching wild meeces in the time we've been here.

It was an interesting dinner today; we have a couple of vegetarians in the house, so there were a lot of veggies and a fantastic salad in addition to turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes.


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## moustress

I'm sitting at my friend's apartment with Bud's tank at my knee; he is looking very perky. Other people that visit Margie have been enjoying seeing him and I hope that helps promote the popularity of meeces as pets. They see him crawling up my shirt onto my shoulder and are amazed at how cute, sweet an affectionate he is.

Soon we will be moving to a new place, which we will have until June 1, and in the menatime we will be following up on gaining access to subsidized housing. I will wait until I'm settled permanently before I start up my mousery again, but I am tempted to breed Bud if he's still in good shape at Christmas I plan on going back to Winnipeg for a week or two around that time. I may try to get a doe back from Apex to bring home with me. It's a thought, anyway.

I'm upset to see what has happened to a lot of the old material on this forum. So many weird ads and photos all blown up huge and what-not.


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## moustress

I have started to move in to the cheap house James' friend of a friend steered us towards. It's a compromised situation in that the house ws absolutel filthy, and has had a pipe burst in the basement last winter, so there was quite a mold problem. I'm hoping that the residue will not make me or Bud ill.


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## moustress

This morning I woke up with a hot mug of coffee in one hand and a mousie in the other. Bud likes to sit just under my collar, probably more so than when it wasn't so cold. This is the only time I've ever had just one mousie, and I have to say, it's delightful! Bud is not as friendly as I'd like, but then he was bred a couple of times. He's territorial and mocks lunges and does the 'almost a bite', puts his ears back when I reach for him in his tank. His little nips worry me a bit, but so far he hasn't broke the skin. I interpret these as warnings to back off.

He's fine once I get him out of the tank, and again, he gives me little warning nips when he wants to to back to the tank,

I'm using the AC adapter for my laptop as a tiny heater for Bud. I have it right up to the glass next to where he has his nest ball. He curls up right by the glass. He has a really big nest ball; I keep giving him more tissue and he keeps working it in; I guess it's pretty cozy in there now with the little heat source.

I really don't know when or if I'll ever get back to breeding, but I will always have at least one mousie to love.


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## moustress

A piece if normalcy has returned to my life. I took a picture of Bud and posted it. My camera turned up in one of the boxes I recently brought into the house; the only other pix left on it were selfies of me and my wonderful therapist Betsy.


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## moustress

My hard drive from the coffee-drenched and dead laptop has been hooked up and had it's stuff dumped into this laptop. I looked through some mousie pix, and spotted a photo of Bud.

He's a lot older than i thought. More like 2 1/2 years old. He's starteing to show ihis age some but still doing his job as cuddlebuddy. I took some of the stuff out of his tank and he has stopped nipping. I guess the hide and the tube must have caused him to feel more territorial.


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## moustress

Old Bud is starting to look frail; he has lost weight, and sits with his back hunched up. He still loves to cuddle, though; I had him on my shoulder, wrapped up in my hair, softly chirping and chittering like old mousies sometimes do. He seems to really enjoy the warmth of the skin at my neck and shoulder. I know how much I love a hot soak for my arthritic joints.


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## moustress

Mouseless in Manitoba

That's the movie I'm currently living. I'm going to help a local friend get set up with a couple of young females in the next couple of weeks. I am excited for her! And it should mean seeing what has become of the five breeding trios I left with Apex last June. She got the best I had; I was sad handing them over, but I am so glad now to be able, I hope, to access them, handle them.

I miss mousey cuddling so much!!


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## moustress

In case anyone wonders I want to say that I still think about mousies, and wonder when I'll be situated to have a few again.

This was spurred by Mike Chiodo poasting that one his elderly meeces had shuffled off its mortal coil. It appeared to be a blue tri somewhat similar to my late Bud. That reminded me of how sweet it was to have just one little darling to lavish my care on. I miss that!


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## moustress

A few days ago I was asked to join a page called petrodents; it belongs to the same person who started a page of the same name about 10 years ago. It was a fun group for the most part. The problem was that the chat room attracted some really nasty characters, and people were so turned off that the site just kind of drizzled away. Then it was corrupted by bots of various sorts. The founder has tried to recreate as much of the same feel as it had before, and so far we have heard from about four others former members.

This was my first real experience with forums and chat rooms, so I think it's great to have a tiny bit of that back. It was through that site that I made contact with the young man who brought the tricolors from NYC to RodentFest, which I believe was in western Pennsylvania that year, where they were picked up by a Wisconsin breeder to bring back to the Midwest. I picked them up after a 300 plus mi. drive, and then back to Mpls with my lovely mousies. It was the best Mother's Day ever!


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## moustress

I have a ton of mousewares that are available free, if anyone s interested, in Minneapolis


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## moustress

Missing meeces. May get a couple of girls later this year. Mike Chiodo's pix of mousies with flowers are really attractive. He's having a gallery showing for a whole month of those pix; he does a lot of interesting photos, but these are really something! He's on Facebook.


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## nickajshelden

my own ramblings a bit
I've noticed it is easy to personify these little creatures in the cage next to my bed.
In one cage (3 females and 1 male) they all act about the same: they don't particularly like to be touched, they all have given me little warning nips from time to time, but if I bring food into the room, they act like a food compass by climbing on the cage walls always closest to the food. they are happy to be handled if they get food with it.
the other cage (at the moment just 3 females, I put the male in solitary confinement so he doesn't immediately mate with the females who are giving birth) we have one who just delivered a litter...and boy has she gotten snippish. anything happens in the cage and she attacks (sometimes with a pinky still hanging off her underside). She has calmed down a bit more recently, and it seems the other two females have figured out the situation too, but delivering food to the cage was entertaining. One of the other females has adopted the role of nurse, and seems to look out for the mother doe quite well. I tried a little experiment. I have found that these mice do not share very well. when I put a piece of chocolate mint between the two non-mother (yet) does, they fought over it. yet when they had their fill, I put another piece of chocolate next to a pup that had made it out of the nest, and the nurse delivered both items back to the mother. Then the third female in the cage... Y'know how we all have that one friend who won't stop exercising? well she has spent every waking moment (my sleeping times) on that wheel since I got her 2.5 months ago. every night I give the cage a light rattle, which is enough to make her take a water break for about 5 minutes, so I can sleep. The water makes an almost equally unpleasant rattle...
ah, life with pets


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## moustress

Mouseless still. I am still here thinking about it. I see the Forum has fallen off in usage. That's too bad!


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## santraford

He's having a gallery showing for a whole month of those pix; he does a lot of interesting photos, but these are really something! He's on Facebook


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