[icedmice]

The next couple days will mark the begining of my shaded lines (that is siamese, himilayan and burmese)

Eventually what I'd like to see in Australian mice is a little more predictability in colours, we have such a mix and match that colour ID is quite challenging. I'd also like to work on making those points a bit darker, some people recommend breeding to black, but since we don't have extreeme black in Australia it's probably going to have limited benifit. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This is my pair:

Furbio's Elvis

This is a horrible photo of Elvis his ears are a little bigger (not as big a your mice) but reasonable by Australian standards.
His baby won Best conformation mouse at last show, unfortunately Elvis doen't tolerate the smell of other males, it's kept him out of the show circuit for over 1 year! yes he is over 1 year old now.
He's a siamese fox.

ICED White heather

My precious home grown gem, I'm very proud of this litter. However her mother was a an agouti himilayan so chances are Heather may be too. Her grandmother won grand champion at last show. Please ignore the whisker barbering, they've grown back now.

I'm planning on keeping a siamese LC doe from this litter to cross to White heather's brother. He's also himilayan, LC Rex, I think it's called texel???

 

[Jack Garcia]

You can show agouti-based himalayan in Australia? I didn't know that.

 

[icedmice]

Yes, She'd fall in "shaded" LC (longcoat) class.

Can't you?

The unstandardised colours seem to be the most popular here. Along with blues and reverse siamese.
Marked, black self, agouti self, PEW usually don't get a second glance....unless they have a special coat!

I'm not 100% sure she is agouti himilayan. There's 50% chance she's just a standard himilayan.
It's paticularly hard to distinguish in this line.

Either way 50% of her babies will be non-agouti. Her father was black!

It would be nice if down the track I only have siamese in this line, so I don't have to do any guesswork.

 

[icedmice]

Just a thought!!!
We have a much warmer climate in Australia. Could that be a contributing factor as to why out siamese lack darker pigment?

I mean...apart from the fact half our mice are from a rainbow of colours :roll: .

 

[moustress]

I'm a great fan of having good climate control in my mousery especially when it comes to temperature. AC in the summer and space heater in the winter along with air cleaner and humidifier as needed. Ventilation is also important.

You ought to be able to extract and purify the traits you want from these mousies in a few generations, say about a year or so, and two or three more generations. There are all kinds of unstandardized combinations that are nevertheless quite lovely, as are your current siamese-ish meeces. It's a challenge and great fun to work with what you have.

 

[icedmice]

Oh cool, I might need some help along the way. Hope you don't mind if I pick your brains about shaded mice.

I'll pick the best siamese doe....hopefully I get one!
Trouble is I don't know if the himi boy I'm thinking of crossing to is actually agouti himilayan too!
I'm keen on keeping the longhair trait in this line. So I'll probably be keeping the best LC Siameses.
Elvis is definately a black based siamese. Hopefully that will help.

My mousery IS temperature controlled. My house is insulated and air conditioned.
Regardless, it still is a warmer climate no matter what you do.

 

[Jack Garcia]

No, we can't show shaded mice unless they're on a black or blue background. A chocolate or agouti (as you've shown) is always weaker in points and more smudgy than a blue or black (including extreme black).

I've known a woman in south Florida (tropical rainforest climate, alligators and pythons live wild there) who bred siamese rats with really great conformation and points in a spare bedroom, so I don't think the outside temperature has that much to do with it, although it obviously helps if it's cooler.

 

[moustress]

You should make Punnett squares to help you predict what you might get. I use multiple squares when I'm not sure what I've got for a pair that I want to breed. this method will tell you what the percentages are for each possible combo of genes. Then you compare the outcome to your predictions. I think it's a real challenge to breed this way, and lots of fun. It's also a way to learn more about phenotype vs., genotype (form vs. genes or what you see vs. what you've got). There are many recessive alleles that hide in even the most highly bred show mice, and pop up in litters two or three generations later when you think you know what you've got.

Have you had enough biology to know what a Punnett square is? If not it's just a simple grid type graph. You can probably find one on line and print it out. I do mine freehand in a big notebook. I use another notebook to record litters in detail. You wouldn't need any of this if you wanted to just buy show mice and mate them, but I think doing it this way is both harder and more fun, and certainly a lot more educational.

 

[icedmice]

LOL I'm doing that already (the punnet square thing). We had someone construct a really handy chart in our club.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dczmxq3g_0fj68rgdp

I'm also planning on writing individual mouses genetic codes on their cage tags...but until I nut a few things out there are any number of possibilities that can occour!

To give you an idea of how dark our shaded mice are ... Elvis is actually not a bad example, his points are quite obvious.

Also White heather is not definately agouti, she may be black based ... I just won't know for sure till later. In any case 50% on their offspring should be non-agouti and the non-agouti ones should have darker points....in theory.

The only reason there is agouti in this line is because a breeder had sold me the founding agouti himilayan as a siamese....at the time I didn't know any better.

Don't forget...our mice have a fair way to go before meeting international standards.

 

[Jack Garcia]

That is a neat chart!

If you need a genotype calculator, you can always use this modified down to one-letter-to-an-allele: http://www.changbioscience.com/genetics/punnett.html In other words, due to the limitations of the machine you can only use one letter to represent any given allele, so for example instead of c^h representing himalayan, you'd have to use "h" (or whatever else works).

Just curious...Australia currently bans the import and export of all mice, correct?

 

[icedmice]

Yes that's correct.

It's a shame because I'm paticularly interested in abyssinian mice.
I know there's a few that would adore a dumbo or siamese rat.

I guess we should be greatful we have what we've got and work to improve those ones.

We are permitted to get a licence to keep "spinifex hopping mice" they're pretty interesting!!!
Until I can succesfully culture meal worms I won't be heading down that path.

 

[Jack Garcia]

It really is a shame! It's possible to ship mice into and out of the US, but it is extraordinarily expensive (thousands of US dollars). But I'm glad it remains possible.

Have you ever thought about having some mouse hair clippings mailed to you and cloned in a lab? :lol: :lol: