A sausage with whiskers

We can thank Soleya and/or Legaie(sp) for that turn of phrase.

This doe had only four babies in this litter; it's a good case to support culling to reduce litter size. The other litter is five babies. I've been balky when it comes to culling pinkies, and still don't like the idea, but I have done it, and will again when I see a compelling reason.

I give my meeces a lump of high grade rice and lamb puppy chow every other day; the breeding and pregnant meeces get it every day plus a bit of dried bread with milk and/or scrambled egg, as you see in the pic shown here. The babies eat the supplements as well, when they start to wean, and in group cages I put in enough for everybody. Oddly, the other non-breeding does in a tank don't get fat on this stuff....but they probably don't eat as much of the grains and seeds every mousie gets every day. This tank also has two big wheels in it, so maybe they are working it off. (And while I'm thinking about it, those wheels will have to come out before the babies are weaned, as I don't want them to take impromptu flying lessons...)

The English show breeders think chubby babies are good; they will grow up to be big strong foot long monster mousies. This baby is very wide framed as well as being chubby...I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. I'm so pleased just to start with that it's another red-eyed tricolor/splashed individual. I'm going to breed more of these and less of the beige to black tris, as I have a lot of them, and soon they will be very common all around the world. I'm going to concentrate on the other colors in the next couple of years.

I've seen what comes of breeding a mousie that's half English to a mousie bred by me; he was Monster, a foot long hunk of black buckness. This can't be due to that, as I've had no English show genes input in the last four years. The last one was Hazel, one of the mosuies sent to me from RodentFest four years ago. (The albinos I got off the truck must have a touch of English show mouse in them too. I'm not sure if I'm going to use and of them to mix with my current lines, as there seems to be a lack of good health, as two of them are already gone.) She was a long haired satin recessive yellow doe, very long and lovely, and I didn't know at the time I started breeding her that she was hiding her tri genes. So the potential for size is in there...I like to think I've done well selecting individuals for breeding that improve the size and type of my meeces. But I don't always choose for those things, as I'm primarily interested in color and markings. Given the choice of individuals mousies that both have good qualities, I will choose the bigger to breed.

I wonder how much, if any, English blood there is in the huge white mousies I bred off of my reptile store boy, Berg. I know PEW's tend to be bigger to start with, and I am planning on continuing with that line just for giggles to find out how long it takes to see improvement in the typiness of that sort of mousie.

In any case, this little sizzler, being a light color, is prone to obesity anyway, and I hope it isn't too fat when it's time to breed.

My little sausage is about five and a half weeks old now, and is still quite a wide load. He's the size of many full grown meeces I've seen, and his name: Jimmy Dean

Here are the new pix. He got his first doe last night and was very much on the job.