[SarahY]

Hey all,

Just wanted to share pics of my beautiful doves. Still a lot of work to do on them, but they're improving every generation and I'm so thrilled with them First are three pictures of my youngest dove buck, aged 9 weeks old. Then all the others are of four different adult does and some four week old does. The adult does look rather haggard because they all have litters aged between three and four weeks. The three week old kittens are far too jumpy to go on the bookshelf to have their photo taken :lol:

Sarah xxx

 

[SarahY]

Thanks everyone for your kind comments! I can't wait to show them off at East of England next month

Sarah xxx

 

[SarahY]

The biggest and most obvious fault with my doves at the moment are stray tan areas around the ears and vents, but this is getting cleaner with every generation. It's a difficult thing to clean up - I got some very typey silvers with perfect coloured vents to clean it up, but I've noticed that the proper dove coloured mice in each litter have more tan than the pale doves or silvers, so I have to pick the proper dove coloured ones with the least tan and breed them to silvers with no tan, which does result in more mice with tan vents but it's always less and less each time. The first two pictures are of my first dove doe and the second two pictures are of her (pale) dove grandaughter. You can see the improvements in the ears and vents:

Unfortunately it's only the silvers and pale doves that are coming out this clean so far, the proper doves still suffer from a few tan hairs, but nowhere near this bad!

They also have lines in the fur running down the middle of their bellies, some only a cm long, other two or three cm. I think their eyes could be bigger too, but I don't know if that's just a personal preference.

Good points with them are nice shaped faces, big ears that don't stand upright like a cartoon mouse (Heather from Loganberry Stud said the space between a self mouse's ears should be of the right size and shape to rest a ping pong ball in), thick tails, chunky type, they don't have a 'mealy' coat like a lot of non-satin doves, and most of them have dove coloured noses and tail set-ons, as these tend to be pale on pink eyed self mice. This is a non-show point, but they're also fantastic breeders and mothers, and very docile with people.

Apart from that I don't know - I'm only a beginner and these are just things I've learnt to look for. They could have a lot more faults for all I know :lol: We'll have to see what people say at the Peterborough show.

Edited to correct spelling.

Sarah xxx

 

[SarahY]

Unfortunately the standard for dove is incredibly, amazingly vague, so it's all down to the preference of the judge on the day. Dave Safe told me to always show at least three at a time, all different shades, to allow for the judges' opinion of a good dove. He said if you take two doves along, the judge will want the colour inbetween the two. I reckon that as long it's obviously not a silver it's OK to show as dove - but I haven't shown yet

Lily doesn't look that pale to me (and not as pale as the mouse in my photograph as she's paler in the fur), but she does look a bit mealy (like she's been sprinkled with flour), but you can't tell what a mouse's colour from a photograph really. Satins are allowed to be darker as I understand it, because satinisation will darken the coat, hence PEWs becoming Ivories when satinised.

Sarah xxx

 

[SarahY]

Satin definately darkens the coat, so Stardust is probably a silver. I've only seen one dove satin in the flesh and he was much darker. Stardust is a little paler than even my self doves - but again, could be the photograph or my screen!

Sarah xxx