# Pictures



## bella_squeak (Nov 4, 2015)

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## bella_squeak (Nov 4, 2015)

Thank god I finally got the pictures to work!

This is my very first litter that are a week old now. The second pic is the mom and third is the dad.

The fourth is another doe I mated with the male.

So I wanted to ask.. when you have a mouse that you want more to look like other than just mating two with the same characteristics is there another way you can get it that's more likely? (I'm not sure if that makes sense). But I really love long hair and I would love to have long hair from the last picture even if it isn't grey but another color.

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## micurious (Nov 7, 2015)

So cute! Definitely brindles, and not X-linked since you said you live in the US. That's fun, apparently you can get lighter colors in brindle as well - I think the white/beige ones are quite pretty.


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## Laigaie (Mar 7, 2011)

When you want more of the same, how you go about getting them (other than breeding to a same-variety mouse) depends on whether the genes in question are recessive or dominant.

With recessive genes, you need *both* mice to either be that color or carry the gene for that color. Breeding a blue (dd) to a blue always produces all blues (or other blue-based colors). Breeding a blue to a mouse that carries blue (Dd) produces half blues and half not-blues (who will all be blue carriers Dd). Breeding a blue to a mouse that doesn't carry blue (DD) producess *no* blues or blue-based colors, but *does* produce an entire litter of carriers (Dd).

However, if you have a brindle, that's a dominant gene. Your brindle might be heterozygous (one copy of the brindle gene and one copy of something else) or homozygous (two copies of the brindle gene). If the mouse is heterozygous, and you breed your brindle-that-carries-black (Avy/a) to a black (a/a), you'll get half brindles-that-carry-black (Avy/a) and half blacks (a/a). If your brindle carried agouti instead (Avy/A) and you bred to a black (a/a), you'd get half brindles-that-carry-black (Avy/a) and half agoutis-that-carry-black (A/a). That means you could get some mice that don't look like either parent. The same is true if you bred a brindle-that-carries-black (Avy/a) to an agouti-that-carries-black (A/a), resulting in brindles carrying agouti (Avy/A), brindles carrying black (Avy/a), agoutis carrying black (A/a) and blacks (a/a). To make it more complicated, brindles' stripes are the color of the other gene they carry (unless they're homozygous; then it's agouti striping). So a brindle carrying black has black stripes on orange. A brindle carrying agouti has agouti stripes on orange. It helps you get an idea of what else is going on (though again, homozgyous brindles also have agouti striping, so you can't rule that out). If you want more brindles, you can breed to anything, but how many of the litter are brindle, and what kind of brindle, will depend on what you breed them to.

To make all that worse, some colors rely on more than one gene. In the first example, I talked about blue *or* blue-based colors. Blue is two copies of the a-gene, producing self mice (described above as black) *plus* two copies of the d-gene, producing blue-based mice. It also requires at least one copy of the P-gene, producing black-eyed mice. So sometime there are more factors at work. Wanting blue but breeding to a brindle might get you blues if the brindle carries blue *and* carries black (Avy/a D/d), but that same pairing could also produce blue-striped brindles (Avy/a dd) and self black mice (aa Dd) and black-striped brindles (Avy/a Dd). So...complicated, because many of the genes are additive.


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## bella_squeak (Nov 4, 2015)

Wow I feel like I am in science class again. Thanks for the help and knowledge.

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