[fuzzymom]

These mice possibly came from different mothers (some poor quality black tan, black self, and blue). Some of the mothers were satin, some long hair. They were fathered by an agouti male, who continues to throw nothing but agouti.

These are the 6 agouti females I have. Not sure if they are satin or not. No long hair, but some carry it as I've gotten long haired babies out of them. These females throw only agouti and black self.

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[moustress]

None of these look satin to me. It's likely that the male does not carry satin if this is what you are getting. It's harder to tell with black meeces whether they are satin or not. With agouti, the yellow/red part of the hair turns to red/gold and is very beautiful, almost as nice as satin cinnamon (which is chocolate agouti). These look like nice big mousies, and they seem to be in excellent condition, judging from the shininess of the coats in several of the pix.With a healthy black the shininess of the coat is very nearly indistiguishable from satin; it's the shiny belly that reveals the satin.

Is that an agouti tan in the midst of the others photos?

 

[fuzzymom]

None are agouti tan that I know of. Which picture do you refer to?

 

[CatWoman]

The mouse in 4th picture looks like she has a demarcation line, near the front leg.

 

[Jack Garcia]

That's just how poor agoutis get lighter on their bellies (they're supposed to be as fully colored on their unders as on their top). A demarcation line on an agouti looks like this:

That mouse was WNT Myrna, who was actually a white-bellied agouti (Aw/Aw) related to chinchillas, but the demarcation line would be the same on an Agouti-tan, only orangier.

However, the male who consistently produces only agouti babies has to be homozygous agouti (A/A) in order to do so, which means you can't get tan babies, at least from him.

 

[Stina]

she did say that at least one mother is black tan....so agouti tan is possible....but none of them look tan to me from the angles they're shown

 

[Jack Garcia]

If they only give agouti and black-self babies, then they're not tan.

 

[fuzzymom]

Two of the mothers of these 6 females are black tan (poor quality as they have white bellies). Their father is an agouti that only produces agouti babies. So he's A/A. But some of these girls are A/a since I'm getting some black self babies. How does black tan and agouti tan work genetically?

How are these girls as far as....oh what is the word...conformation? Their body size/shape, ears, tails, faces, etc? I know their conformation isn't good but I would like an opinion on them. The male's conformation is terrible. He has small, misplaced ears, a short body and his tail looks like its been stuck on him. The girls look a lot better than him. If I had known about body conformation I would have picked a better male. I thought I took a picture of him, but I can't find it now.

Is it possible to develop the correct body conformation in a line of pet store mice?

 

[Stina]

If the father is A/A and 2 of the mothers are A/a^t, they should have produced half A/A and half A/a^t....i.e. half homozygous agoutis, and half agouti tans. When bred to a black th A/A females would of course produce only agouti offspring...the A/a^t females would produce agouti (A/a) and black tan (a^t/a) offspring. If you are not getting any black tans out of these does then you just didn't keep any agouti tans out of the black tan mothers.

Their type is not good, but they aren't the worst mice I've ever seen. They aren't tiny and thier tails are toothpicks. It is possible to develop good conformation from pet store mice, but it would take a very very long time to do it.

 

[moustress]

Getting the color just right is probably harder than anything else. There's a dizzying range of possibilities for agoutis.

 

[fuzzymom]

*head is spinning* I'm a beginner with the mouse genetics. Ok, I didn't keep track of who the mothers were for these 6 girls. They all are the same age, but could have come from one or several mothers. If some of these females are producing black selves, it is safe to say that one of the mothers of these 6 was a black self, correct? I only kept one male from that group, and so far he only seems to carry the gene for long hair, no satin or black tan. So then the male must be A/a, right? Along with some of the females.

So agouti tan is A/a^t and black tan is a/a^t? Am I close?

Now, I do have 2 females (both agouti self) that are younger sisters to these 6. I'm not sure who the mother was as none of them looked pregnant, which is understandable because they only had 5 babies. I think one of the black tans was the mother though. Either that or it was one of the blues. (my memory sucks. This is why I need to keep better track of litters).

 

[Jack Garcia]

Is it possible to develop the correct body conformation in a line of pet store mice?

Without using show mice as outcrosses, no. It would take years. Imagine starting with two mutts you found on the street and trying to breed an award-winning Doberman. Is it theoretically possible? Yes. Is it super difficult to the point of being impossible in practical (if not theoretical) terms? Yep. So the final answer is something like "yes and no."

In the future, you can keep track of who is related to who by using pedigrees, just like a family tree. This makes it a lot easier because once you write it down, you have it for reference.

 

[fuzzymom]

The reason I wasn't able to keep track is because I did harem style breeding. They would just dump all the babies in one pile and take turns feeding the pile. I never knew which babies belonged to which mouse. So some of these agouti might carry blue, black tan, possibly himilayan, long hair, satin, black self, albino. That's all I can think of now though.

 

[Jack Garcia]

Harem style is not the best way to breed mice if you want to keep track of anything other than the status of the father.