# way bizarre! you gotta check this out



## nanette37

ok so i went to rescue more feeders and i got 3. one black, one thats maybe splashed (separate post later), and one that looks cool but i have no idea what she is. ive never seen a marking like this. the only thing i could think of was merle, but i thought merle could only be black/white/grey colored? this one is brown and has a perfect patch on her head. she also has a more blondish colored patch on her side that i have circled red in one pic (its hard to see in pictures but you can see it well in person). is it something obvious and im being dumb? (haha) tell me what this is please!


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## Weema-Nerang Mousery

I'd say you've found yourself a Burmese and it's currently moulting. Some of the patterns that come up because of the moult can be pretty interesting.


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## nanette37

haha so does that mean she wont stay that way? when do they molt? like at what age?


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## Weema-Nerang Mousery

I'm not sure at what age they molt, probrably better to ask someone who is experienced in this type. All I know is, is that they can be a real challenge to show because of the molting. Cute mousie by the way.


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## nanette37

haha well i dont show so it wont be a problem with me. and i dont really know much about molting  . but if she's burmese then i guess thats cool


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## Weema-Nerang Mousery

If you go to this topic viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2545 you can see some moulting siamese. Pretty cute if you ask me!!


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## nanette37

thats so weird how they molt like that!


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## Jack Garcia

I agree that she is molting (and/or has ringworm), but she looks like a very poor chocolate on my monitor.


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## nanette37

is poor your favorite word? im getting tired of you calling my mice "poor". this is the 3rd one you've said that about  :lame


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## Jack Garcia

Haha! "Poor" is a professional color/coat/type designation that doesn't reflect on the quality of the animal as a pet, only on how well it represents its variety. 

If you want to have an idea of what a good chocolate color looks like (as well as an example of a poor chocolate), you can go here: http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/varie ... olate.html You can also read about the variety


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## nanette37

haha ya i looked there before. so is she molting then? cuz her color is either "poor" (haha) chocolate or burmese (at least it looks that way to me)


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## Jack Garcia

I would say she is probably molting, but you would know best since you have her there. If in a week or two she looks different, then that's definitely what it is. Some mice molt more than others, for whatever reason. She's a very cute mouse, regardless. 

I don't know what the temperature is like in your part of Arizona, but some mice molt more when the seasons are changing (kind of like growing a winter/summer coat).


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## nanette37

oh well it has been starting to warm up lately so maybe thats why. haha that is such a weird molting pattern! i didnt know they molted so perectly. i wish it would stay that way!


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## Jack Garcia

I have pictures somewhere (currently looking for them) of a very ugly, very "poor," but very cute-in-her-own-way gold mouse I had a while ago, who had a permanent molt that affected only her head. lol


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## Jack Garcia

Actually, I found even better pictures! lol

These are a dove fuzzy I got earlier last year from a friend of mine who is no longer involved in the hobby.



















She was a poor dove. Though her ears aren't horrible, they aren't spectacular either.

You can see how she molted on her head only, though.

Isn't that weird?


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## nanette37

haha thats so crazy! how cute!


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## Jack Garcia

I found the other ones! This was a sooty pet store gold/brindle I picked up in 2008 (if I remember right) because of her weird molt patterns.




























She was extraordinarily "poor" in every way possible (lol) but was a really sweet little mouse nonetheless.

I could never bring myself to breed her but I made sure she lived her life out as happily as possible. To her credit, if she hadn't been so ugly I never would have gotten her.


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## nanette37

haha she's cute! thats so funny how they molt so weirdly


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## WillowDragon

One of my favourite mice, Lily, who is a very poor Dove (she is very mealy) also has molted just on her head... bless her.

She was pregnant at the time, so I think her odd molt was due to hormones.

Willow xx


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## nanette37

another of my mice has started to get a weird head molt!


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## moustress

Don't concern your self with the criticism of those who breed only for show. Yes, it's lame, but irrelevant. Pay no attention the the man behind the posts.


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## nanette37

hahaha thanks


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## MarlaAlVutha

moustress said:


> Don't concern your self with the criticism of those who breed only for show. Yes, it's lame, but irrelevant. Pay no attention the the man behind the posts.


 :lol: 
Here! Here! 
Amen!
"My belief is that the aforementioned person speaks the truth."
"I would like to express my full approval of the quoted post."
"I must say that his post displays exactly the same sentiments that I was thinking."
"I could not have said it any better, I agree to the fullest with said quote."
"Were this post a golf hole that would be a whole in one, I whole heartedly agree."
"They have has accumulated a worthwhile veiw that I have examined thuroughly, and I shall vehimently concur with said person on the bases of said belief because I also share said Idea on said premises."
:lol:


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## Jack Garcia

Brenda, I'm afraid your list of quotes doesn't make much sense.

If you have personal complaints, please confine them to PMs and emails in the future as per the rules (see the "Keep The Focus" section). You are always free to PM me personally.


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## MarlaAlVutha

I have had a couple mice that have gone through the most bizzare molting patterns. I had a blue caracul go through one of those bizzare molts and when he was finished he stayed a much lighter shade of blue, I later found out he was a dove burmese, and the oddest white lightning marks showed on his back after that. He was awesome! I adopted him out as a pet and never tried to replicate the markings. I no longer have his parents and non of his sibs ever showed any patterns like that. He was just my odd ball. *laughs*


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## nanette37

man that sounds crazy! i cant believe i didnt know mice molted like this!  :lol:


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## MarlaAlVutha

YAY! I was able to find his pix. His color/markings did not show up as well in the pix as they did IRL. (yes he has back eyes, I know now that the woman who helped me with his color does not call pink eyed black dove)


































I know I have a "before" picture some where, but I am not finding it right off so I think it may be on my husbands computer.

*edit to fix a pic*


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## moustress

Very weird looking. I've seen patterns appear and disappear on umbrous yellow mousies quite a number of times; it's puzzling. I wonder if that is a moulting thing too?


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## Jack Garcia

On my screen he looks a little like some petstore blues I had a few years ago, who also molted weird.




























Two people tried to tell me they were ticked, but when bred to blacks they each produced only black babies and when those babies were bred together, they produced blues of different quality. I think it happens with blues in particular because of their propensity for color to clump together--they look ticked and can molt in very weird patterns.

It even happened with my blue pet rat, Billy:









(May he RIP)



moustress said:


> Very weird looking. I've seen patterns appear and disappear on umbrous yellow mousies quite a number of times; it's puzzling. I wonder if that is a moulting thing too?


It's related, but separate. Yellow (Ay/* or e/e) doesn't have the same clumping issues that blue-based colors do (for one, yellow has less pigment than blue), but if the yellow mouse is also agouti or cinnamon, the natural concentration of ticking along the spine can sometimes "show throw" the yellow. This is a major fault in agouti or yellow and should be selected against.


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## moustress

Jack, those look more like pearl than blue. Are the bellies nearly white?


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## Jack Garcia

I haven't had them around in years, but from what I remember their bellies were the same color as the top of them. One of them (whom I named Karen and can't remember why, lol) had a bizarre lump on her tail that wasn't an abscess and wasn't a break and wouldn't go away, so that on top of them being very poorly typed led me to discontinue them.


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