# A newbie question..



## Hollvrudet (Jul 21, 2012)

Hi all

It's been I while since I don't participate in this forum, because I don't breed mice any longer. My experience was short and leaded by mere curiosity, though it was very rewarding and I hope to set up a proper breeding plan in the future.

Yet, I have always had a doubt that might sound a bit silly:

If new breeders are encouraged to start from show quality stock... which is the worth to get show quality mice? that is... what they can expect at must, if not keep that strain -supposedly being already the highest quality- to keep being as good?

Beg you pardon in advance for my ignorance.. I don't want to sound disrespectful nor to despise your work

Holl


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

New breeders are encouraged to start from show quality stock if they can mostly because the predominant view is often that breeding should be to "better" the species and while feeder breeding is generally accepted, people that breed unhealthy mice without much of a thought to pairings and what they want out of it, or to try to sell in bulk to people on craiglist etc are somewhat akin to back yard dog breeders.

Most pet shops have lines that are riddled by health issues, mice that do not make it long or have issues and often that puts new people off when they encounter them.

Even show lines, while counted as high quality, need a lot of work though. Maybe in the UK where lines are a lot more established, the improvements are smaller in some of the varieties like PEW but certainly in the US a lot of our varieties would be laughed off the table at a British show.

Perhaps if you are wanting to start off with PEW or the larger pink eyed self mice then you will not see too much improvement from generation to generation, however all of the marked/patterned varieties have size/type improvements as well as keeping their markings and even just a few generations and you can have noticeably better than you started with.


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## Hollvrudet (Jul 21, 2012)

Lilly said:


> New breeders are encouraged to start from show quality stock if they can mostly because the predominant view is often that breeding should be to "better" the species and while feeder breeding is generally accepted, people that breed unhealthy mice without much of a thought to pairings and what they want out of it, or to try to sell in bulk to people on craiglist etc are somewhat akin to back yard dog breeders.
> 
> Most pet shops have lines that are riddled by health issues, mice that do not make it long or have issues and often that puts new people off when they encounter them.


Yeah, that's right. But I wonder however if wouldn't it be interesting to try to improve some of those pet / feed strains in case they might hide not only bad genes, but maybe some rare mutations aswell, that could be isolated from illnesses and thus enrich the show mice pool... I don't know if I am saying fooliness here.. I have heard also that all the mice stock comes ultimately from a few strains, so it could be that anything on their DNA has been already shown.



Lilly said:


> Even show lines, while counted as high quality, need a lot of work though. Maybe in the UK where lines are a lot more established, the improvements are smaller in some of the varieties like PEW but certainly in the US a lot of our varieties would be laughed off the table at a British show.


I see. So you can imagine here in Spain, where mice fancy is still very rare... 95% of people here are feed mice breeders, and there is not, to my knowledge, any serious Mice Association or Club.. in fact the first problem I would have in case I started breeding again would be to find good stock mice...


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

Quite a few people do start with pet shop/feeder mice, and some of them have got really far. Obviously it helps if you can find even one good quality mouse though.

Funny actually, end of January I will be starting a project/blog doing just that, a couple of trios of feeder mice, possibly PEW and black but hopefully more variety in there too and seeing where I can end up.

The thing is that at the end of the day people that want to aim for show and can travel to shows, will usually be able to find their way into getting some good quality stock at some point in countries where there is already active showing. Starting with pet shop stock and it may take years to get up to the current show quality and of course by then show quality will be better if it is a variety that is worked on.

In the US shows can often be 10+ hours drive away too, so its a small group of people that can even manage to do that. The majority of breeders in the country do have pet shop/feeder stock


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## Hollvrudet (Jul 21, 2012)

Lilly said:


> Funny actually, end of January I will be starting a project/blog doing just that, a couple of trios of feeder mice, possibly PEW and black but hopefully more variety in there too and seeing where I can end up.


That sounds really interesting! please, could you share some link to it? I'd love to follow your experiment, as somehow is which I wanted to do some years ago.



Lilly said:


> The thing is that at the end of the day people that want to aim for show and can travel to shows, will usually be able to find their way into getting some good quality stock at some point in countries where there is already active showing. Starting with pet shop stock and it may take years to get up to the current show quality and of course by then show quality will be better if it is a variety that is worked on.


ok... so the thing is that anyway show mice keep evolving : ) therefore there is a goal to achieve... that is what I was referring to: even if you start from show quality mice, that is a work in progress anyway, and you have still margin to push it forward... I wonder, which are the goals at that point? once a self black is perfectly black... is it a matter of getting bigger ears? bigger mice? appart from lifespan, which is non limited work by itself... but with self colors and patterns, once they are already perfect to the human eye... I don't see how they could be made even small improvements. I am speaking ideally here, ignoring the fact that in most countries, those perfect mice are far from being achieved...



Lilly said:


> In the US shows can often be 10+ hours drive away too, so its a small group of people that can even manage to do that. The majority of breeders in the country do have pet shop/feeder stock


Yep. That will be my case also, I won't have the chance to travel that far to assist to shows, supposing mice shows existed within that distance. The best I can expect is to find someone that breed good quality mice and ships them to my town. There use to be some breeders on Spain back in 2012, but now I found none.


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

Well I can't talk for UK breeders but the common view over here is that no mouse is ever perfect, there's always something else to work on, although I have seen discussion before about what happens when you have the biggest you can get, the nicest ears etc, where do you go then and honestly I don't know the answer to that, other than to breed for consistency or take up another variety.

Blacks though are a very good example, they are smaller than pink eyed selves, they're not as typey. Even if you had the perfect pigment and no faults then there is still a long way to go in terms of size/ears etc and getting a perfect black with no faults is extremely rare, most will have milk mouth, white toes, tan hairs etc

From watching a video series by a UK mouse breeder then his breeding was a lot about the competitive aspect too, I guess somewhat akin to dog shows

Or for other people its not really about the progress they make as much as being part of the community and just the joy or having/breeding/producing quality mice


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## Hollvrudet (Jul 21, 2012)

I see... anyway it is more a theoretical discussion for me, since I am pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find anything near perfection overhere as an starting point ; P

Then I guess that fashion changes also, and in the same way that german shepherd dogs or persian cats have change their appearence over the last century, also mice would be subjected to such changes in taste..

I am very curious about the series on Mice Breeding you talk about... do you remember the name of it or know where can I find it? unfortunately there is not that much of AV material on these subject : /


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## Lilly (Nov 21, 2015)

This is the first part of it






The sound quality was very bad for me so had to use a sound booster but found it very interesting to watch

Also another thing is that show standards are not everyone's idea of the "perfect" mouse. I know some breeders that like a lot shorter noses and personally I prefer chocolate tans to be creamy belly and lighter top. Just personal preference really. Also show standards say if there's a straight line formed by the top of the ears/head the ears are too low, whereas a lot like the ears that low down and massive. So really it is what you make of it and lasts as long as you can keep finding goals and enjoyment


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## Hollvrudet (Jul 21, 2012)

Thanks for the link Lilly! I enjoyed that documentary very much... it's a pitty there are not many videos about the hobby over there...

Cheers!
Holl


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