# Albinos at petco, what other genes are in there?



## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

In areas like my part of VT, its hard to come by anything other than the white mice typically sold at petco. They've had other varieties show up very rarely and I have always waited to purchase until they have some in stock (really not a huge fan of the pew). My previous male, a wild-type agouti, produced a wide variety of young but developed a tumor and was fed off as soon as the tumor began to inhibit his quality of life. I breed my mice both as a hobby and for my snakes so I can't go too long without a male. Most of my females are related and I would rather not inbreed exclusively so I need a new male. I know the pew carries a double recessive and am pretty none of my females are heterogeneous for that gene.

My question is, have any of you used a PEW from Petco as a breeder? Are there any other interesting genes in them generally that might be expressed in their offspring? Long hair, spotting, other colors, etc or are they basically wild-types that have been bred true to the PEW gene? Total luck of the draw? I think its a little silly that most pet stores only carry white mice, even for sale as pets rather than feeders.

Thanks


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Also, for for the record, I'm do have a male breeder from a prior litter just coming of age and will breed him to his mother after she's recovered from her current litter as well as a couple of his cousins to see what sort of recessives my mice have that I don't know about.


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## pro-petz (Nov 14, 2012)

Albinos at petco could be carrying anything and everything or just be albinos as petco obtains its stock from commercial breeders and most of those would be producing for the reptile industry also I would guess that the majority of the albinos will have very few other colours being carried.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Well, I'll pick one up and let you folk know what happens in a couple months.

One of my old male's female offspring should be giving birth in the next day or so but I'm not expecting much from her first litter (she's doesn't look all that fat and may eat her young for all I know). She was bred to her father, the agouti, and looks like an agouti with white patches (not sure what the variety name is for that). If the spotting is separate from the color gene then presumably she does carry the agouti gene and since she was bred to her father she could either have all or 3/4 agouti young depending on whether the father was heterogeneous or homogeneous (assuming the agouti color is a single gene trait and its dominant). I suspect he was het since only about a quarter of his young had agouti coloring (either solid or spotted). About a quarter of his young with this female's mother were spotted (including non-agouti ones) so I'm assuming he carried a single recessive allele for spotting and that his daughter has two copies so 3/4 of the young aught to be spotted? The father also carried a pink-eye gene, it will be interesting to see if his daughter does as well and if any of the upcoming litter expresses it.

I don't know how all these color genes interact but do have a fairly firm understanding of genetics in general so I'm trying to figure out what's in my mice having so far only bred that agouti male to two females a few times. This next batch due in a few days will be the first time inbreeding but I wish I'd kept a non-agouti female for that purpose as I think the pairing would have been more revealing.


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## PPVallhunds (Jul 26, 2010)

yep agouit is domant over non agouti and resseve red but ressive to so many red.

A.A A.a is agouti
a.a non agouti e.g. black

so if her mum was black or a dilution of black e.g. choc she is A.a and so must be her farther so put tougher they have 75% chance of more agouti.

the white patches are called pied and your right is excessive and desperate gene to colours.
S.S S.s not pied.
s.s is pied.
so she is s.s and dad must be S.s so put tougher 50% chance of more pied.
the pied gene is the same gene for broken and even mice but the spots must be in the right places and shapes to be classed as broken or even if there not there just called pied.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Right, half, not 3/4 spotted. Its been a while since I've had to calculate genetic probabilities. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!


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## Stina (Sep 24, 2010)

The petco albinos probably only hide or carry black, agouti, and/or piebald.....slight possibility of e (recessive yellow/red).

Btw, just a note, you are using incorrect genetics terms; when you are saying homogeneous and heterogeneous, you mean homozygous and heterozygous.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Stina said:


> The petco albinos probably only hide or carry black, agouti, and/or piebald.....slight possibility of e (recessive yellow/red).
> 
> Btw, just a note, you are using incorrect genetics terms; when you are saying homogeneous and heterogeneous, you mean homozygous and heterozygous.


Haha, you are completely right. One of those brain fart moments. I guess its been longer than I thought since I had to talk genetics, lol. Thanks.


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## DaisyTailsMousery (Nov 8, 2012)

My first male was from a feeder bin with about a hundred PEWs in there. (They don't sell male mice anywhere else at all close yo me I hated having to use him as a breeding buck, but it was my only choice) He had a littler of 10 with a brown mouse 2 albino 4 brown and 4 black. I am thinking that is what most albinos carry under their white. I am not completely certain on this though and you do live in a different area than I do.


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## Shadowrunner (Sep 26, 2011)

I see the pink eyed white gene like a thick coat of white paint.
Take any mouse, any color and mentally dump a bucket of white paint on him.
IT could be anything under all that white, but it really depends on where he comes from and what the breeder
usually has and works with.

For instance, petco PEWs may almost always be agouti, black or brindle where I am.
But all of my PEWs are blue or splashed under the white.
It's just a matter of figuratively stripping off the white paint whit selective breeding to see what you had/have.

Someone else might be able to explain it better, but I'm a visual learner so..

I started with petco mice too and had the same problem. 
Ask the cashiers when they typically bring the mice in and go then.
I can't tell you how many times that payed off.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

The paint is a good analogy. With snakes I always explained it that the albino gene doesn't replace the colors, it just covers it up (same for any albino). I will probably switch to the paint analogy in the future.

Also, my spotted agouti female (daughter and mate of my old male) gave birth to 9 young. They are just getting their hair now and it was quite revealing. There are 2 non-spotted agoutis, 1 spotted agouti, 2 spotted blacks, and 4 PEW. Because the male had never produced PEWs before I now know that he carried a single copy of the albino gene and neither of my original females did. He passed it on to his daughter and now I've got my first batch of albino young. He did produce some pink eyed young with the gray female but they did not have white coats.

I do have an interesting observation with the spotted young though. Is spotting a multi-gene trait? When the agouti male and my red female produced spotted young the white patches were small and limited almost entirely to the face and neck. The spotting produced in this batch produced massively spotted young. Some are even belted. They also produced spotted blacks which I had never seen with the male and red female. The red female produced about 6 blacks spread across 4 litters with that male. Is it random chance that none were spotted or is it more than a simple single gene recessive trait? I had assumed the trait simply did not express itself in black mice with the genes my breeders have.


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Sorry, I would just edit my post but the edit button seems to have gone missing even though nobody has posted after me. Anyway, I misused the term "belted" up there. To better explain, the first generation had small white patches on their faces but the next one is more white than colored with the color appearing as round patches. If they were snakes I'd just call them piebald.


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## Shadowrunner (Sep 26, 2011)

nnt. That's most likely correct.
Most pet store mice will be piebald(pied) if they have the white spotting.
That sounds exciting. :3

Some other genes can produce white spots like "banded", "rumpwhite"or "variegated" although the patterns are different.

Pied mice tend to have a ton of variation in spotting. I believe it's got something to do with modifiers.
Someone else should really address that part though, because I'm not sure how it works.

Will you be posting pictures? I love spotted babies. :3


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## gyri (Nov 20, 2012)

Sure thing. Here's the litter. Normally this cup is upside down with the nest under it but when I was cleaning the enclosure today I took the opportunity to snap some photos.









This is the mother


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## PPVallhunds (Jul 26, 2010)

yep 1 gene for pied, broken, even and I think Dutch As well. it's the modifiers that decide how much white and where.


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