[moustress]

Last night I was surprised by the unmistakeable eeking of pinkies. Wasn't just a couple of days ago that I announced that I had set up a trio of blue tricolors? My mind mist be playing tricks on me, and I didn't write the date down...in any case, they do seem to have that raw and red look I associate with preemies, but they are the loudest dang pinkies ever born!

There are eight or nine of them; I don't know if the other doe is going to deliver soon or if she's even pregnant. One still thinks,"How the freak did this happen." None of those girls have been AWOL, to the best of my knowledge, so they have to be either delayed (very, very very delayed) or preemie.

I'm thrilled to death, but... :?

 

[moustress]

It's been awhile since I posted any mousery goings-on. I have a new litter of black-based tricolors that look nice and big; they demonstrate their good lungs by being very squeeky and wiggly.

My old cuddle buddy Coyote died a couple of days ago at the prime old age of 2 yr. 8 mo. I had already been grooming a new cuddle buddy who I call spud. He's a blue splashed that got sick, and as usually happens, he was handled a lot, and I became attached. He's a very playful little boy.

There isn't really thing else going on mousie-wise. My splashed or tri red baby is getting very pretty. I've got to get some pix of her. I'm not sure if her background color is white or bone or cream.

 

[moustress]

Things have become busy in the mousery again. I decided to put Teddy, my LH curly black boy, up to another doe, one of the does from his first litter. I chose a big LH angora doe, and she delivered seven nice looking pinkies a couple of days ago. Teddy was separated before the birth of his other litter, so he got a chance to play papa this time around. HE always covers the pinkies when mama leaves it, and even does butt duty. I douldn't really tell for sure if Theodora was pregnant as she is large and has long silky fur. I got an inkling when she stopped hiding under the water bottle at feeding time and came up and ripped the kibble out of my hand.

That line, which I got a few years ago by mouse train, has exceptional longevity and nice calm personalities. I would really like to get another buck like Teddy from this litter. I had only recessive curly in my mousery before the mousie train, and they had health problems, so I wasn't promoting them. Teddy has black balls of fur that really makes him look ike a little black sheep. He even still likes me after having been bred twice. He is dang near 3 1/2 years old; I had been thinking of putting him to sleep because he looked like he was too sick, then I decided to treat him in case it was parasites of some sort, and he was up and scarfing treats the next day. That was almost a year ago.

My newest tricolor litter is opening it's eyes. There are some interesting colors in there; I think they are all showi at least two colors, and some of them I guess I should call quads.

I'm considering who to pair for my next blue tri litter. I have good colors now with contrast, now I need to work on getting the colors in discrete patches. I am hopeful about seeing some good yellow/red tris in the next couple of months.

It will be time to buy grain again in a couple of weeks. We have changes feed mills as fuel porces have gotten so high. I really enjoyed the trip to North Branch, partly because the mill was over 150 years old and built of wood covering with metal at some later date. I takes me back to childhood and the grain and feed storage building on my Aunt Ellen's and Uncle Bob's farm; the smell of them was the same. Ah, the memories!!

I have had a problem in a litter of my fawn satins; three of the does started attacking my hand with increasing vigor. One of them nicked the skin, and I moved all three of them into a tank with unrelated does. One of them proceeded to attack their new tankmated. She is an ex-mouse. The other two seem to be getting along alright. There's a number of problems in that litter. two young does have tumors, one has a tail that is bent and knobby an three places. No more litters from that pairing.

The depth of color on my 'fawn' litters have passed being orange and now I'm getting individuals who are burnt orange. I suspect that the overall range of orangeness will tip over soon and I will have to call them 'red'.

 

[moustress]

Much to my chagrin, I seem to have a hairless mousie born of Teddy and Theodora. If anyone who lives near me wants it , let my know, as I can barely stand to look at the poor thing. :roll: It has really, really big eyes...

 

[moustress]

That hairless mousie really wierds me out; it seems healthy and it has an incredible tail, and I am fascinated. I don't really like the hairless part of the package, but I have to admit that it isn't 'suffering'.

My two latest litters are doing quite well; Santee and Sarge produced 11 pinkies. Two were culled, three were fostered with the black based tricolors, which were a litter of 4. So now both does have a nice number of babies to nurse. I'm always relieved when a doe accepts unrelated babies. I put the fosterlings in a small container with bedding from around the nest in which they were to be placed, then after ten of fifteen minutes I gave their new mom a treat and sneaked the little buggers into the nest under the other babies.

I have a lot of really old mousies and it seems hardly a day goes past without one of them either dying or looking so decrepit that I have to put them down.

Another thing on my agenda; I am looking over my blue tricolors in order to pick a new pairing. I've been doing quite well with them. I think.

 

[moustress]

The meeces; I need to talk about the meeces.

Things have been kind of winding down lately; not much success in my pairings, lots of old meeces gone. I have lots of empty tanks and stuff. I need to set a new goal, ad I now have everything I said I was working towards. The meeces I thought were brindled tri have produced nothing whatsoever.

My burnt orange tris are looking good; I think I'll stop there and call it red. It's more red, I think, than the European red, which looks more brown than red to me. More of those will be paired sometime soon, for sure. I have a black tri couple that I'm waiting on, a yellow tri and a blue tri put together just for fun, a couple of others that also don't look like anything is happening.

 

[moustress]

Things in the mousery have been pretty uneventful. I just put four couple together, though, so hopefullly that will change in about three weeks. I've been paring down the population and between that and the natural deaths and the ones who had to be put down, I am at the lowest number of meeces I've had for about two years.

On top of that, my life has been emotionally exhausting, so I'm not having as much fun, and I'm thinking of severely curtailing breeding activities after this batch, as I'll probably need to find new housing in about seven months due to foreclosure on our home.

One sad note; my old cuddlebuddy Teddy the long haired curly black buck was found dead. He was pretty old and had a good life. He sired two litters, one of which included a hairless which surprised the heck out of me. It's quite fuzzy with red fur, which is a relief to me. I never liked the look of a totally hairless animal of any species.

The only other event of note was a doe escaping her tank and breaking into another tank where there's a buck that I would have placed her with if I had taken her out of her other tank. Weird. they are getting along well enough. This will be her last litter; her last one was four months ago.

 

[moustress]

It's itime for me to get back to talking about the important things in life; you, know, those things with whiskers, tails, busy noses, and little patty paws. I've made a few pairings, and I think my great big satin black tricolor is finally going to give me a litter. I don
t quite know why there are sometimes a couple of months at a time where my pairings just don't accomplish anything.

Are there times of year that are better for production of babies?

 

[Miceandmore64]

Not sure but my mouse gave birth last night and that means that he donkey her in ther first or second day thats amazing! Good boy good boy

 

[moustress]

I now have two litters of little eekers, both fawn/orange/cream; three parents are splashes or tri, one buck is self orange. I decided to greed outside the line of tris because I had a high incidence of tumors in the last two generations. One litter has seven, the other is too big, started at thirteen and tonight I'm going to cull down to seven or eight.

 

[Veritai]

If I have a time where litters just won't take it's usually the middle of summer...

 

[moustress]

I put culled a beautiful satin tricolor doe last night. She was thought to be pregnant and may have been, but as her due day came and passed, she got painfully bloated. Yesterday her condition was declining and by evening she looked worse, hair matted, ears flat to the head, and her rectum was in the process of prolapsing. She was a good little girl and let me handle her, but her eyes told me she was in pain. It was probably pyometra; I could feel little things in the belly but most of it was just fluid.

She was big, and beautiful, and it was the saddest culling I have ever done.

 

[Miceandmore64]

Oh that's terrible
We once gave a fish (guppy to be exact) a c-section. The babies lived dad cut her open it was fastinating she does giving birth from old age.

 

[moustress]

One of my blue tri does gave me another litter of blue tris off of the same buck that fathered the last bunch. There were ten which were culled to seven. As usual, I'll wait until the fur comes in before doing pix. They are nice and fat with traces of pigment beginning to show. Also, I have another trio of black tris put together, plus a pairing of black tris. And, of course since i had waited so long for a litter off that satin black tri doe who had to be PTS, I have thrown caution to the wind. I suppose that they will each give me a baker's dozen each... :roll:

 

[moustress]

I have two litters of tricolors that are about 2 1/2 weeks old; the does are sisters and were bred to my only good tricolor stud. I also now have a new litter from the same stud from a lovely large daughter of Tracker. There's c^h in the mix, so there are a lot of different shades and a lot of different types of expression of those hues. I wanted to preserve the ovely silvery beige that Tracker had, and it looks like I got it right. One more tricolor doe is due any hour now. I had a drought in which few babies were born; I so glad the froght has ended.

There's a problem in my fawn splashed/tri litters. Both the males and the females are prone to what look like tumors. They develop right behind the front limbs where the top meets the side, on on each side. Very weird. Could it be some other sort of disease? I'm
gonna throw the wuestion out there in the appropriate section and hope someone knows more about this than I do. I tend to think it's and inherited thing as I have only seen this in that line. I'm waiting before doing any more culling until I have a better idea of what's going on, as I don't think it's an infectious condition. It popped up in a few of the meeces that were bred from a splashed fawn doe and a self fawn buck. I'm hoping that it's a recessive tendency for tunors that I can breed out of the line with out crosses.

I need to take a few pics before I post further.

 

[Miceandmore64]

Sounds good cant wait

 

[moustress]

I'm struggling with myself, though I know I'll give in to good sense. There are about five or six fawn tri/splashed meeces that have developed the swellings I showed in a post a few days ago. One of the does now has lumps in front of her hind legs as well as behind the forelegs. After the culling, I plan to inbreed unaffected individuals and cull agressively as soon as symptoms appear.

This is the first time I've been presented with this kind of difficulty, thought the mousery accident of three+ years ago has hardened me somewhat as far as culling goes. Fawn was one of the kinds of meeces of which I had no survivors, and I had to breed aggressively to extract the genes from meeces that carried the recessive for red eyes. I'm not going to scrap the whole line unless I still have problems after four or five generations.

On reading, I see that transmission of the possible cause, murine retroviral leukemia, is still a mystery. I'm going to have to research this, as I will not give up the line. I have had no occurances of the tumors outside that line, so I am pretty sure it's not easily spread. Nevertheless, I do plan on being extra careful with breeding stock to be sure that I can halt any possible spread. I suspect that breeding may be method of transmission, which would be really bad news, especially if some of the meeces are resistant carriers.

Now I go to learn more about murine diseases and pathology. I am eager to hear or read anything more about this.

 

[moustress]

The problem with lumps on my yellow splashed/tris seems to be tapering off. I've only had to cull one buck from the latest litter.

I'm thrilled to find someone to keep my tricolors and maybe some of the ones from the truck-mice I got five yaears ago. That was a major worry as I have to out of here by about July 7.

In the meanwhile, I'm gearing down breeding. I have only one obviously pregnant doe right now.

 

[moustress]

I'm in Winnipeg, relaxing after 450 me driving. The main reason for this trip was to get some of my mousies to a woman who, I hope, enjoys them greatly, and will have some of them or their offspring to restart my mousery with when I get settled in a new place in a month or two.

I parted with one of my favorite from the mouse-train meeces I got four or five years ago. She got a black eyed bone LH rex doe. A more pleasant handful of mousie you'd be hard pressed to find. That line in general all have wonder calm dispositions. It's a litle hard saying good bye to them, even for what little time I'm hoping to have without them. And I still have a lot of meeces back in Minneapolis. There's a breeder in Mpls. Who will probably be interested in taking some more.

I stupidly forgot to pull out the wataer bottles, so there was quite a bit of damp bedding by the time I checked on the meeces during the trip. My brains are still very scrambled from all the stress I've been under

 

[moustress]

Apex has her new darlings all settled in, hopefully making babies for her, and for me, eventually. It was a little sad saying goodbye to some of the ones I gave her, like the one she named Coconut. I hope that one has a baby or two who have coats as thick and as curly as hers. I bred her to another long haired curly, so there will be fur and lots of it!

My mousery seems to be on standby. I have pairings that have been together for weeks and so far nothing is happening. I sus[ect that there is asomething about the space they are in that is reducing their fertility. Well, we'll have them out of here in a few weeks, hopefully into a better space. I have so many empty tanks right now, and it's tempting to get rid of some of them, but I figure, that if there's room in the POD I may fill then with some of my old clothes. I have a collection of mod fashions from the early to mid sixties that I just can't part with.

I am apprehensive and worried about placing as many of the rest of my meeces with someone. I have one more possibility to pursue, but I have been so distracted, what with the divorce and the foreclosure.