NaomiR said:
do they need black nails?? oo err :?
Blacks
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The black is a very popular self variety and is one of the three most frequently exhibited, along with the PEW and cream. A variety suitable for the beginner as well as the experienced fancier, blacks can be a lot harder to breed than novices might imagine. Any colour fault in a black, such as a tan vent, white hair or white toenail will stand out against the dark background rather than remain unnoticed. The only outcross advocated for a black is another black, so they tend to remain very inbred.
As extreme non-agoutis with a lot of pigment, blacks are naturally smaller mice. It is not possible to get a black mouse of the same size and type as a huge PEW and some allowance is made for this. Despite this breeders should never use weedy or weak specimens as breeding stock and must always be aware of the quality required of a show mouse. Although an outcross may not be needed for colour in a black, it may be needed to boost the immune system. In my experience inbred blacks (as all show blacks are) are prone to illness more than other varieties. By only breeding from the disease-resistant mice and by outcrossing if needed, the breeder should be able to keep on top of this.
A good black should be hardly visible - by which I mean that it should feel like you are looking into a black hole. The best black I have ever seen had this effect on me and I have never forgotten it. It was so deeply black that it was hard to see its features because it was so uniformly coloured. The breeder of this black also never benched blacks that were tinted with other colours - they were black through and through. I have seen blacks exhibited with casts of other colours, notably chocolate and occasionally silver/blue, and these mice were just lacking that pure blackness that would have made them winners. One fault in the poorer of these mice was the colouring of the inside of the ears, which was not jet black.
The most difficult fault to eliminate from a black is probably the tan vent, which needs a combination of careful selection of breeding stock and sometimes outcrossing to a different strain of blacks with less tan. The artificial colouring of mice is strictly prohibited by the NMC rules, and any person doing this to make their mouse blacker would be disqualified. However, the plucking of an odd white hair is not banned and some top breeders will do this before a show.
This is taken from the showing section of fancy mice info> Appologies in advance if I am doing wrong by copy and pasting, mods if need please remove.
