# Tricolour mice



## icedmice

I stumbled upon this little one is a produce store today, her name is "Shirley Temple" after the cocktail.

















I don't believe we "officially" have tricolours in Australia. Shirley I think is our first recorded occourance. 
We don't have a lot of things, no extreeme blacks, no abyssinian, no merle. 
Another breeder recently stumbled upon what appears to be a gremlin! not long ago we didn't have those either.

I also adopted what I believe is her brother a mismarked dutch in the hope I can produce another tricolour to share with other fanciers and pet homes.









Questions:
1) Am I right in my classification. Is she in fact a tricolour?
2) How do tricolour genetics work?
3) Can someone tell me about their experiences working with tricolour mice?

She's only a tiny 13g currently but I'm hoping she'll gain a bit of weight in the next couple months.


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## WillowDragon

How very exciting! 

She definately looks tri coloured to me!

Willow xx


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## icedmice

Thanks Willow, I think she's a tri too, but as we have never officially had one it's a bit up in the air at the moment until I start investigating it furthur.

Question:

With regards to fawn brindles, it is a thoery in Australia that tricolour fawns are the result of marked brindles with excessive brindling. True or false?

We are having a bit of a debate as to wheather my girl is actually a marked brindle as opposed to a splashed tricolour. If she is that has got the be the greyest fawn I have ever seen!!!

In Australia mice resembling tricolours have been bred although all look a bit suspiciously like overmarked brindles. All have had fawn as one of their three colours. 
Mine on the other hand has a dove-like dilute colour. It's more on the grey-brown side and not as orangey as the photo suggests.

It would be very much appreciated if someone could clarify our dilemma and give some examples please.


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## WillowDragon

She is not a fawn as she has black eyes... and I'm pretty damn sure she is not a red. It depends what type of brindle you mean as to whether i can answer your question definately though.

How the splash gene works is it needs something on the c locus to show up, generally c(e) or c(h), extreme dilute or himilayan.
Your girlie looks to me like a black with splash and c(e) which accounts for the biege colour.

It is my understanding that the splash gene is dominant, breed her to her brother and see what happens 

I'm excited for you, I think I would die if I found a mouse like that over here!!

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

She is not splashed/tricolor (or "transgenic" as some people call it), and she is not American brindle (Avy/*).

I can't say for certain what she is though...

Other than "pretty," I mean.


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## WillowDragon

Why is she not splashed Jack? Just out of interest?

Willow xx


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## moustress

As usual, I disagree. This looks like a tri to me. However, it easily could be a brindled mouse. I can't see how anyone could tell from this pic what kind of brindled it could be. It may look like a tri or a brindled, and just be a sport, this is to say a random occurence that is not inheritable. In the US we call black eyed yellow/orange/red meeces fawn. If you want to do a test mating I'd go to an albino buck or a marked black. Transgenic meeces are not as rare as most would think as there have been thousands or different types chrned out by labsover the last 50 years, give or take a decade.


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## Jack Garcia

Splashed (or tricolor or "transgenic") just doesn't appear that way. It's hard to explain exactly but I could show you in person what I meant.

I mean, she could be splashed, yes, but I don't think so. Basically, the demarcation on splashed is not the same and the distribution doesn't happen that way. She looks like a mouse a friend of mine had called a mosaic, where one group of cells was from a different lineage than the others was present and was thus not reproduceable. Depending on the area of the US, either explanation could be just as likely, so I can't say for Australia. 

P.S. Mousetress, are you affiliated with any club or organization? I don't know of any near Minnesota but both the ECMA and the AFRMA accept non-regional members. I wonder because some of your opinions often seem to be...unique...not that that's a bad thing, I just wonder what affiliations you have or don't have...if it turns out you were right about all the guesses I've heard you make, you'd be an asset to any club! 

Edit: After looking at the pictures some more, I will concede that I generally look at splashes and tricolors who are bred to standard, so if this mouse is in fact splashed/tricolor, she's a poor example but cute nonetheless! The only way to know for sure is to breed her to a known non-splash (splash can "hide" when the proper C-locus dilutions aren't present).


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## WillowDragon

To me she looks like a tri colour with dutch markings!!

But I will concede that i have never seen a tricolour in real life and therefore am probably wrong!!

BUT... would a dutch gene affect which areas the colours showed up?

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

Any white marking genes affect where the diluted color shows up, "pooling" it into certain areas on any given mouse.


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## WillowDragon

Soooo it coould be a tri dutch?

hehe... am I annoying you yet? 

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

If you call that dutch in the UK, it's a very poor dutch by US standards, too. 

(Though to be fair, very few dutches are shown...)


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## Jack Garcia

Also, I had another thought that I should add. "Tricolor" mice is a standard designation that is used in the ECMA. In the AFRMA they are called "broken multi." I have heard some people who aren't affiliated with any mouse club actually call them "calico." "Transgenic" is another yet name, but only applies to most tricolors and only some broken multis. So you can see how terminology gets confusing really quickly.


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## WillowDragon

I believe it is Tricolour in the NMC standards too... I believe *runs to look*

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

Oh yeah!  That is yet another variation! That mouse in the NMC standards is a marked sable. So there are literally half a dozen or more ways to get a mouse with three colors, and even more names for it, but only two are standardized. However, when people not affiliated with clubs use the standard names for things that aren't what they say, it gets even more confusing, lol.


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## moustress

A mouse that carried dutch and tri is a very interesting thought. I think I have a couple of those!

*moustress to add to mental checklist of parings she'd like to try*

*yes, she does dream of a realio trulio tricoulor*

The first question is whether the colors shown are black and beige or black and yellow. If it's an actual tricolor, that's absolutely astounding and amazing (and several other early twentieth century pulp zines) and probably wouldn't breed true, much as the other types of genuine tricolours that have appeared. I only call my multi-tone meeces tris as they are not tricolours just meeces with several shades or hues that are based on a single color basis (either eumelanin or phaeomelanin *sp*).i.e. beige, brown, black or cream, yellow, orange, red.

Back to the the subject of marking types and tri (my tri) type meeces. The marking types determine to a great extent where the colors and the divisions of hues appear on the mousie. I think I have worked a way to sort of get a good distribution of a collection of hues on an individual mousie. I am using tri carriers that are marked black. I don't know yet why that works, and even with that, if it were true, the tri thing is stilll very unpredictable. Not the sort of thing a breeder of show meeces really wants to deal with. In addition, there appears to be a sequential process that changes the appearance from generation to generation in mousies that have bold tri markings. Within this sequencing one seems to get sterile individuals, BEW's, and an increased early mortality from unknown causes. I was very pleased when my pairing of the tri buck and b&w marked carrier yielded a large and healthy batch of a dozen babies. Maybe the genome gets played out and needs to go back and pick up some unmanipulated material with work with.

OK, back to the dutch thing; I think that when tris occur that have the colors in patterns that mimic any recognized pattern, dutch, banded, etc., they are broken up within that particular zone, as we see in this girlie. Certain combinations of banding broken into two bold patches across the back seem it indicate sterility, or reproductive difficulties in general. I have Nibbles (shown in other posts) with another tri doe to see if he can git 'er done, and this will be his fourth girlie. None of the first three got pregnant visibly. The two girlies I had with that pattern both died young, one after delivering a dead litter. That probably reveals something really important about the real reason this strain of transgenic meeces were created in the first place. I keep flailing about trying to learn enough about mousie genetics to help me really understand the stuff I read on line. as you can see, I am not at all shy about theorizing and trying to interpret stuff I think I understand. Nor am I shy of asking for help from any source.

I have yet to determine if there's any way to use brindling to achieve a real tricolour. My litters of yellow/tris are intesting, and I am going to make another couple of pairings in both brindling and yellows before I abandon those lines for good.

All I can say for sure about markings types is that without them, one tends to get meeces with all-over mottling, splashing, etc. with little in the way of the islands of pigment that are the most notable feature of of the tri mousies. Over at Funmouse, there is an attempt to define how the transgenic element works; I categorically disagree with 90% of that. There are still two many unanswered questions for standards to be set for tris. Opportunities like this, being asked about the tris, is good for me because it makes me order my thoughts on the matter. It's easy to look at a couple of litters and try to define what you see, but, like I said, I think there is something much more to the whole genotype than The Funmouse or I have yet to discover. The hermaphroditism (I wonder if she has seen that in her mousery) is a weird and wonderful clue that tells me that there is a substantial piece of the tri genome that indicates or mimics the presence of a whole third set of X in the critter.

For what it's worth, the dude who sent me the tris almost three years ago says I'm the only breeder he sent them to who has been able to produce a significant portion of meeces that looks like the tris that he produced in his mousery. I'm just stabbing around in the dark, learning a lot, relearning when I find I'm wrong, and enjoying the results, cuz, hey, they iz all mousies!! And moustress loves da mooziekins, little cutie pot pies that they are.

I do go on, don't I. I think it's because of all that late night time spent awake with thoughts of meeces turning round in my head.


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## icedmice

Hmmmm.....curious.

I took my siamese fox male to the vet today to have a lump diagnosed. I also brought my new little one to get a checkup, she's small but otherwise in pretty good health so that's promising.

It's given me a lot to think about though.

Aussie mice have been isolated from the rest of the world for a while now due to importing restrictions.
I'm wondering if this is a different mutation that also causes a tricolour phenotype?

So I don't know HOW she's a tricolour and probably won't know for a while anyway.


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## Jack Garcia

That's too bad, I wish you could breed her and find out for sure!


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## icedmice

How's this, does it give you a better idea?



















And the cuteness:










Yeah it's hard, I'm discussing the best way of going about breeding tricolours with local fanciers. It's a bit hard, she's comming to Feb show and it might give us a better idea of how to go about breeding her.


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## Jack Garcia

Those are much clearer pictures!

I asked a friend who breeds tricolors for show and she said it looked like a tricolor. The thing is, import or export of mice is forbidden in Australia so it almost certainly must have originated spontaneously if that's what it is. It could also be another "lookalike" mutation. Either way, she's cute, especially in that last pic!


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## moustress

It looks like the colors are indeed black and beige, not black and yellow. I wish you'd just tell us what you see as it's hard to tell from either set of pix that you put up. I'd say there's a good chance it's a tri, but not a tricoulor. Hey, that's realy better becasue if it is a tri and not a tricolour there are lots of things you cold do with it as far as breeding goes. Actual calico tricolours are a sort of hit and miss thing.


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## Jack Garcia

"Tri" and "Tricolor," from a proper show standpoint, are usually the same thing, a mouse who is Spl/*, has two lower C-dilutes which are not both "c," and a form of white spotting; one name is just the shortened version of the other.


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## icedmice

My best explaination is black with the odd silvering tick, silvering isn't uncommon in Aussie blacks it just means she wasn't bred to be a good black. She wasn't bred to be a good anything, she was being sold as snake food.

White resembling dutch in distribution. It's not a terrible dutch by Aussie standards, because of multiple failures in the past many breeders have given up on dutch. My friend and I developed an interest for them several months ago, it's just a fluke we found this mutation in dutch markings.
It's not a great dutch either and needs lots of attention to multiple faults. But none that would not disqualify her in our marked class, she's just loose a lot of points.

and grey....this is the hard one....
The grey in question has a slight hint of brownish hue but is more grey than brown. It's not unlike beige, it is likely a beige.
It's not a paticularly dark grey nor is it pale. If you compare it to the concrete slab she's sitting on it's close to that sort of grey.


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## Jack Garcia

Beige would make sense in the case of a mouse who was a/a ce/ce Spl/* s/s, i.e. a splashed beige tricolor (the black areas of fur being the ones in which the "splashed" gene had "reverted" back to the natural color).


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## moustress

My thinking is going along the line of the Fab Finn, rapunzel, and thinking that the whole thing is extra stuff from an X chromosome that got stuck into the c locus, causing confounding color and marking combos. You might reply that there is no room on the c locus, and, yes, there probably wasn't, but the geneticists made room it, I'm sure. Three where their should be only two, cauing a whole lot of unpredictable things including, but not limited to, color reversion, color pooling, linkage-looking things, hermaphroditism...no, while there probably is a splashed gene, it has little to do with the transgenic element except for the cases where one has the tri factor and the splashed gene in the same animal. I'm sure the splashed gene would create some lovely meeces. I pretty sure I don't have it in my mousery, though.

Blocks of color on color (except for heavy brindling) is not a characteristic of splashed meeces, it's a transgenic thing. It's variegated when it's color on color on a non-transgenic mousie, except for the light grey background allowed along with limited white spotting. I don't understand why the AFRMA lists it as a recognized locus (Spl/spl), but Funmouse says she doesn't know what it is. Why pin down a standard when noone knows what's going on? To point to a patch of solid color on a tri mousie and call it splashed makes no sense to me, especially when there are different hues and white blocks as well. 
I'm not in a race to be the first person to state correctly what is going on with the tri or transgenic meeces, I just want to pin down and describe each and every different variation and try to draw a sensible pattern from those observations and from the new (to me) info I am slogging through re transgeneticism.

To say that tri and tricolour are the same is just wrong. The tris don't have both color groups in their markings. The original tris were called that because they have three different shades from the same color group plus white markings, which seem to be essential to getting the color to pool in those patches.

It doesn't help that the tri factor seems able to mimic other recognized marking patterns. But just because it looks like a recognized marking type doesn't mean that is was caused by a recognized factor. So what is causing it? Think three in the space meant for two, or a hitchhiking third c factor, or maybe more than the c factor, maybe a whole phantom genotype that sometimes acts like a faintly visible ghost, other times like a full demonic possession. Think about things that are where they don't belong, doing who knows what! Think of linkages where none should exist. Most of all don't try to define the phenomenon until there's adequate evidence. We may never know for sure what is going on. (At least, until one of us acquires the education and the equipment to do genetic analysis on a bunch of these insane mousies!)


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## Jack Garcia

moustress said:


> To say that tri and tricolour are the same is just wrong. The tris don't have both color groups in their markings. The original tris were called that because they have three different shades from the same color group plus white markings, which seem to be essential to getting the color to pool in those patches.


You're simply wrong. There's no other way to put it without ambiguity. :| You'll ask any mouse club where "tricolor" is standardized and shown, or attend a show to see what I'm talking about. I have the backing of the ECMA (and probably the MMC and SEFMA or whatever it's called now) in my statement on nomenclature. Do you have any supporting evidence other than your own assertion? It's all well and good if you've bred mice for thirty years and have tons of experience, but you have to have some sort of support for the stuff you're telling people if you don't expect to be corrected when it's wrong, as it is now. It's no different from if you were telling people that chihuahuas were called "poodles" because that's what you call them and you've bred them for a long time.

I know you take your "transgenic" and "tri[color]" mice very seriously because you've bred them as a hobby for a very long time, and that's good and I respect that and all, but you can't be disseminating incorrect information, especially to people in the UK or Australia who don't deal with the same varieties we do on a regular basis and don't know what to call them. You're creating more confusion that is necessary, when it's confusing to begin with!


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## moustress

Guess we aren't talking about the same thing, Jack. It is my understanding that a tricolour is a mousie with both color groups represented on it's back, along with white, i.e: fawn, black,and white. If the language has been hijacked to now mean any mouse with two different shades of any hue and white, then I guess I need to find a new name for the mousies I am working with. You may have noticed that I do not use the term tricolor for my meeces, but just tri or trangenic tris.

Could the difficulty also hinge on the possibility that there are more than one strain of transgenic meeces, or that other breeders have taken the one transgenic line that I deal with in very different directions. I strongly suspect, since reading about dozens of strains of meeces, if not hundreds or thousands, that are transgenic, that some other folks out there have gotten a hold of mousies that do other things than mine do. Ultimately, it makes very little difference to me. Pedro anticipated this difficulty and tried to institute the 'genie' for the line of mousies that my tris came from. As far as me making untrue statements, it's not a matter of earthshaking importance if you choose to paint me as wrong. My breeding choices in this matter is partly intuitive; I've been doing pretty well flailing around based on my hunches.

I suspect this may be a case where language tries to creates the appearance of reality. I don't care about the language as long as I can see clearly what is and what isn't happening in my own mousery.

It's pretty obvious there can be no real agreement as of yet; I just report what I see.


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## Jack Garcia

And I report what multiple independent clubs have concluded and decided on for names. Do you see the difference?

At any rate, I'm done with this conversation now. I don't want to push the wrong buttons because I value this community so very much!


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## icedmice

The unofficial plan at the moment is to cross her to a fellow fancier's mock chocolate boy.
The mock choc boy come from a very good reliable line of mice who have done very well in show.
I want Shirley to be above the 20g weight to breed from her. I seldom breed from a mouse weighing less than 30g but in this case we might make an exception. She might be an oddball colour but she's still my pet and her well-being matters a lot to me.

I AM excited she is so unusual but I don't want to hold my breath. I'm just glad I am privelaged to be the first in Australia to own such a special mouse  .

IF I do happen to accidentally reproduce this colour variety I'm almost certain they will still be called tricolour (meaning 3 colours). It's the closest thing we have to a 3 coloured mouse apart from the occasional chuncky brindle marked mouse.


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## WillowDragon

I did not realise it was possible to get a real tricolour without the splash gene... I am so very tempted now to see if a friend of mine has a spare Sable buck I can pinch to breed to my pied girls.

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

Assuming that it's a proper sable, he will give either Ay/* or at/* (but not both) and U to his babies with the broken girls, so you'd need to keep a male of each phenotype from the litter(s). You'd also need to post pictures.


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## WillowDragon

Could be a very interesting small side project for me 

The broken girlies I have aren't great though, small but decently typed, but the white is not up to much really... hmm I wonder if Dom has any broken girlies for sale?  
*runs off to PM some peoples*

Willow xx


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## Jack Garcia

Any sable or Red isn't going to be the best in type, either...


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