# Slim pickin's



## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

I'm in a breeding hiatus right now, but here are a few itsy bitsies in my yellow (fawn and red) tri line. The dad is Oddball, and the mom is Oma.
Oddball's and Oma's babies

Oddball

Oma

Oopsie babies from the hermaphrodite tri


I've been having many deaths in both my yellow and yellow tri lines. It's time for some outbreeding, clearly. Flame, the silvered fawn, died when her litter was about two weeks old; Firestarter, the sire of that litter died shortly thereafter, and three of the litter have died in the last couple of weeks. I observed two of the babies having seizures, so I'm assuming the others died of that as well, as they had showed no signs of illness or injury of any kind. It's a problem I've seen in my tris before, so it's not a total surprise. The entire tri breeding program in my mousery needs to be revamped, as I also had four young bucks in another grouping die over 48 hours, also without any sign of illness or injury.

At this point, I plan to restart the yellow tri line from a different line of fawn and red mousies, and may well do the same with the beige to black tris. I'll have to let the young tris mature in order to try and eliminate, or at least minimize. the seizures.


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## SarahC (Oct 3, 2008)

oddball the oddeye.I am so jealous.My hearts desire.I have bred one and of course it was a weakling and died.Bad luck on the losses,I am having a similar problem with hairless.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Yeah, I love him to bits. His head colors are pretty striking as well.

I guess one can expect problems with any newer type of animal, and that's why I'm still weighing the options as far as my accidental abyissian is concerned. I guess I'll wait at least another month before making any new pairings of any kind. The mousery is just about full to capacity.


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## windyhill (Jan 19, 2010)

Oddball is so pretty!


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Thankyew!


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## unicorn (Feb 14, 2010)

They are gorgeous, I am sure if you work on it you will get back on track in time, I have seen it with lines of my rabbits where sometimes you are not breeding for type or show standard you are just breeding for alive, healthy and strong, you do come out the other side though with better stock and far more experienced.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Yup; I always plan for goals in the long term. Importing high born show meeces are okay for some, I guess, but I like the challenge of bringing a line up the hard way. It's the work that makes it so interesting to me. I've always gone for things that are out of the ordinary, and not just with meeces, either.


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## Lizzle (Apr 7, 2010)

Wow, your oddeyed mouse is absolutely beautiful! I wish I had one!

Out of curiosity, what do you mean a litter from a hermaphrodite tri-color? Is this somehow similar to the way calico works in male cats? I'd love to know more!


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Some lines of mice have a tendency to throw a relatively large (5-10%) numbers of intersexed babies. It's not related to color or markings necessarily but often you'll find that the intersex appears in one certain line of mice and it just so happens that that line of mice is a certain color. In other words, they're linked because of the way a line is color-bred and the intersex is passed on somewhat inadvertently. It's a classic example of correlation not implying causation.


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## moustress (Sep 25, 2009)

Interesting; this would mean they tend to happen in particular litters because of the line and not because of the color, i.e. because they from a transgenic background, not because of the particular color of tricolor. Is that what you are saying?


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## Jack Garcia (Oct 9, 2009)

Kind of.

If the breeder wanted to, after a time she (or he, but usually she it seems. lol) could breed mice of every color and marking who were intersex, or could breed mice in that particular kind of tricolor who didn't every give intersexed babies. But there's really little point to isolate that as a major criteria for breeding unless your goal is to produce lots of babies all the time (since intersex animals are almost always infertile, they don't breed).

It's just one of those quirks of biology that sometimes happens (just like in people, btw). I know a guy in NYC who gets intersexed mouse babies all the time.

I think I might have had one, although I classified her as female due to the presence of nipples, but she never bred. She didn't have a scrotum or a penis, but her genitalia was weird-looking and more masculine than other females. I should have taken pictures.


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