Where'd these 2 come from...?

They do breed true in one sense--that they can be homozygous (Avy/Avy) and a homozygous brindle bred to a homozygous brindle will produce only homozygous brindles. But in another sense, they don't, really, because the Avy allele is probably the most epigenetic of any we deal with.

That is to say, the environment plays a big part in how they look in addition to genes. No matter what the father looks like in terms of color intensity and stripes, the mother and even maternal grandmother's diet during pregnancy determine stripes moreso than the father's appearance. This is what makes breeding brindle difficult, and why I gave up (that, along with the fact that the majority of my stock was petstore-derived and I didn't have the years necessary to make all the improvements I wanted).

This is important to note because the genotype of any given mouse who is Avy/Avy can resembled agouti or recessive yellow or anything inbetween. I've heard of them being black, even.

All these pet mice were bred by me years ago and were Avy/Avy or Avy/A:


(non-striped or "clear")


(over-striped, almost fully agouti)


(clumped together areas of color, stripes too muddy)


(stripes too muddy all over, base color is nowhere near red enough)


(this is as close to standard as I ever got before I gave up and switched to other varieties)

That's so cool.. I actually understood that! I must've learned something along the way and not realized it! :lol: :lol:

(I'm not stupid or anything, it's just that scientific type endeavors have never been my strong point. My professional background and all of my degrees are social science/psychology related.)

So if the BEW is Avy/a D/d P/* then I need to add sa/sa because she's also satin, right? Her coat doesn't show well in the picture.

As far as the c-locus, I think you're right. I have an older litter from the black tan buck and I bred him with his (blue tan) sister. Although it was absolutely unintentional (after all, these are "just feeders," but I might as well learn what I'm doing along the way), I accidentally improved the coloring with that breeding. The black tan buck has some of the tan colored hairs randomly interspersed in the black section of his coat. Some of that shows in the picture, but a lot of it is hidden by the shininess. The blue tan doe has it too, but to a lesser degree.

The pups from their litter (4 blue tans, 4 black tans) don't show nearly as many of those stray hairs and most of them are at the color line, making it a bit "fuzzy" looking. Looking at the litter in isolation, the coloring in the blue tans doesn't draw the eye as much, but the black tans are strikingly black. They look like little bits of coal.

When they're in with the second litter, all snuggled up in the nest, it's not only obvious that the older litter has a much more solid, saturated black, it's equally obvious that the blacks from the younger litter are totally washed out and diluted. At first, I thought it was just the disparity between the older pups' coats as they were becoming more dense while the younger pups' coats that were still fairly thin. But as time goes on, it's clearly a dilution in the colors.



There are two "blue" babies that caught my eye. When their coats started to come in, they looked just like the other two blue pups, but as they started growing, their coats started lightening and looking more silvery compared to the blues. That, in itself, isn't particularly interesting, because a lousy example of blue would be no big surprise among feeder mice. But, now it looks like those two are getting brindle markings with the silvery and blue stripes. I thought I caught sight of it earlier, but they're also satin, so I thought it was the light playing tricks. Today, it -definitely- looks more like striping.

Here's pics from this evening. The striping is subtle and VERY hard to get in a picture.. serious hair puller there. This was the best I could do -

I have to admit, the relative certainty of science does have an attraction when you spend too much time immersed in the unpredictability of human emotion and behavior.

Ok, so I've been over on Finnmouse.. brace yourselves.. :lol:

For my black tan, the most I know about the lineage is that both of the parents were also black tans and the litter I took was comprised of was 2 black tans (one had died before I got there), 1 blue tan, and 3 that look like poor agouti tans compared to the pics on Finnmouse.

So, with that little bit known, is my black tan buck at/* because I don't know anything other than the tan that's showing? Or would it be at/a because both of his parents were black tans and he's not showing the agouti that his brothers show?

Then, he gets a B/* for being black.. and the P/* for his dark eyes. He would have to be carrying blue to make blue babies, so he gets a D/d too..? So all that makes him an at/* B/* P* D/d based on the things I know?

Am I getting any of this right? :lol:

With the exception of the brindles, all of his offspring have been black tans and blue tans. With the brindles, the darker ones are definitely tans, but I'm not sure about the lighter ones. Between that silvery color, the satin coat, and the ghost stripes, they make my eyes cross if I look at them too long I'll have to wait for their coats to come in a bit more solid to tell if there's any delineation between the brindle and the belly on those.

These babies are fascinating me. :lol:

I took the two shades of brindled babies outside into the natural light today and got some updated pics. Even in the natural light, it's hard to see the brindling on the lighter colored babies. It's still not the easiest to see in life, but it's definitely there now and not just the light playing tricks on me.



Am I right that the lighter brindle baby is also Avy/at but with the previously suspected ce/* from the mother washing it out partially, rather than washing it out completely to make the baby a BEW like the Mom? Comparing the dark brindles to the lighter ones, the colors appear proportionally lighter, with the brown lightened to peach and the dark gray turned to an almost off-white tone of gray.

And, am I also correct that the 2 lighter babies would actually be considered brindle foxes, rather than a brindle tans, since their bellies are diluted to a more pure white? Even though my tans don't have the proper depth of color on their bellies, there's still a huge noticeable difference in the belly color between the tans in the rest of the litter and those 2 lighter colored brindles.