[george]

d

 

[Roland]

does anyone know what genetics code a wild house mouse has?

yes

 

[Jack Garcia]

It is wild-type and would be represented as A/A (or Aw/Aw) with all the rest assumed and unwritten (B/B, C/C, D/D, etc).

 

[Roland]

George,

What is the background of your question?
Why do you want to know this?
What is your knowledge about genetics?
Do you know what recessive and dominant genes are?
Do you have a gene chart available?

 

[george]

w

 

[moustress]

That could be fun, if you like the challenge of raising another half wild mousie. They can be hard to handle verging on impossible. I have raised half wild meeces, and I can say for sure that 90% of them fly away as soon as they are bigg enough to bounce off your hand and into to other spaces.

There is no such thing as a wild gene, but there is a difference, as I'm sure you already know. Most wild mousies will be as the others have said, but they can occasionally show up in different colors, just like every other animals. Even fruit flies can be albino, or black, and probably other colors as well.

You deserve a serious answer to your question, and if you in England, there may be different breeds of wild mousies than we have here in the US. I hope my answer is helpful.

 

[Wight Isle Stud]

I personally would get that wild mouse out of your shed sooner rather than later mate, your own mice will soon have bitten faces and the odd toe missing from encounters at the wire, it wont be long before you have a parasite problem and probably disease as well. The fancy mice wont be half as resistant to the bacteria that the wild mouse will have.

 

[george]

t

 

[Jack Garcia]

No. They'll all be agouti.

You really shouldn't breed wild mice deliberately.

 

[george]

i

 

[george]

i

 

[SarahY]

You really shouldn't breed wild mice deliberately.

The mouse fancy is not a dictatorship Jack, people can pursue their mousing interest in any way they fit as long as no harm is being done and the animals themselves aren't suffering. We don't have any right to tell people they shouldn't be doing anything, although we can advise against it.

George, your part wild mouse sounds like one of a kind, it's not usual for them to be that tame. There's every chance the part-wild babies will turn into timid, panicky or aggressive mice, so you would need to be prepared to deal with this. Also, if your wild mouse is a doe, she will not be likely to raise a litter in captivity as she will be too stressed. If it is a buck you can release him when he's done his job, but keep the doe with him in quarantine as he could pass all manner of diseases to her.

Sarah xxx

 

[moustress]

I was just handling a half wild doe earlier. She's well over two years old; and is one of five that I kept around after the last incursion. The boys flew away, and the does were very skittish until they were old (+18mo.). I certainly don't have any trouble confusing them with all my other meeces, though. It's the eyes. Buggy and set way too close and too far up on the muzzle. She no longer tries to escape from my hand.

I had a wild boy years ago; I called him Bandit. He was big for wild boy, and I thought there was something off with him, as his behavior was somewhat 'slow'. I did breed him once to another agouti, and the babies all flew away around the age of four weeks. I don't think any of the wild meeces I've kept brought any special disease with them that wouldn't have shown up in any population of meeces, and there are mites in the best of mouseries at times.

Quarantine is always the best practice with any kind of mousie or any type of known problem. Folks that don't do proper quarantine with any kind of pet are looking for trouble.

I don't think the half wild does I kept suffered in captivity, and they were well socialized to the groups they were placed with.

And, oh, that was several years ago, and the incursion is one of the reason I'm remodeling my mousery to be mouseproof.

 

[george]

i

 

[salemouse]

I used to have wild mice when I was little too and I have to agree, they are better than fancy, atleast interesting wise. I do think it would be an interesting process to possibly get a buck and a female wild and hand rear their children. I personally believe the experience of being raised by a humon allows the animals to form a relationship with us. Its not impossible to tame a wild mouse, I mean all domesticated mice come from them. It will just take some time and effort and money. I also harbered the same thoughts as you, I had quite a few baby wild mice-my father killed their mother-before I ever had fancy and I found them to be quite satisfactery. I think it's all about how much time you'd be willing to give them. I had to give up a good hour and a half every day just trying to get them used to me.
If there are people who can handle lions, which there are, than a wild mouse is certainly do-able. Good luck

 

[Wight Isle Stud]

I would rather get it wrong with a wild mouse though :lol:

 

[moustress]

My half-sister stayed with the Spooner family for about a week when I was quite young, about 4 or 5 years. One of the things she brought with her into our house were wild meeces in a ten gallon plexi tank stuffed with straw. The mousies had tunneled through and through it was kind of like an ant farm. The nest where the babies were was out of sight, and the babies didn't show up in the tunnels until they had their eyes open. I was utterly fascinated. My mother was horrified She was one of those folks with a serious case of mouse phobia, and she terminated my sis's visit, with that as one reason. they are fun to watch, but you have to have a set-up that will allow you to close them in while you do cleaning and stuff. If I were keeping wild meeces I'd use dirt as a substrate. I think that would minimize the odor and the amount of time it takes to clean.

 

[Jack Garcia]

You really shouldn't breed wild mice deliberately.

The mouse fancy is not a dictatorship Jack, people can pursue their mousing interest in any way they fit as long as no harm is being done and the animals themselves aren't suffering. We don't have any right to tell people they shouldn't be doing anything, although we can advise against it.

George, your part wild mouse sounds like one of a kind, it's not usual for them to be that tame. There's every chance the part-wild babies will turn into timid, panicky or aggressive mice, so you would need to be prepared to deal with this. Also, if your wild mouse is a doe, she will not be likely to raise a litter in captivity as she will be too stressed. If it is a buck you can release him when he's done his job, but keep the doe with him in quarantine as he could pass all manner of diseases to her.

Sarah xxx

Ok, then, I'll re-phrase that: I advise against it. The bottom line is that it's a high-risk action (in terms of parasites, psychological/aggression problems, or other problems) that can be easily prevented by not breeding wild/feral animals, if and when you can help it.

Dog breeders see the same thing (just on a larger scale) going on with designer dogs where so many people are crossing dogs to wolves (or to wolf-hybrids) and then come to regret it later on because of the extreme behavior problems. In mice everything is smaller, but it's the same principles. It's potentially a bad idea for both the domestic animal and for the wild animal.

The Rat Behavior website is geared toward rats (obviously), but most of what they have to say applies equally to mice. This page discusses the differences in wild rats and domestic rats: http://www.ratbehavior.org/WildAndDomesticRats.htm

This speaks mostly toward the behavioral aspects and doesn't stress outbreeding depression, parasites, or communicable disease as much as I would. The "Taming" section is particularly interesting. While it is true that there are things humans can do to help "tame down" wild (or partly-wild) animals, why would you choose wild animals when there are domestic animals on whom the work has already been done?

 

[Roland]

No. They'll all be agouti.

Hi Jack,

although I completely agree with what you have written about the problems of introducing wild Mus musculus into Fancy mice, I disagree that there will be Agoutis only. About 25 years ago, when I bred mice for pet shops, I caught a wild buck myself and bred him with some of my females. I got Agouti Tans, as could be expected from the dominance of Tan. The same is true for all other dominant mutations, eg. dominant red (Ay).
The F1 was very wild and aggressive and with the knowledge I have today (25 years later) I would never repeat this experiment. It was my juvenile curiosity only, and we had no internet to find information about themes like this and experiences or opinions from others.

Hi George,

if you want to improve your knowledge about mouse genetics, start with this page:
http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/genetics/index.html
Scroll down a little bit and open the link "The gene chart" for gene codes. The first point you should be aware of is the difference between dominant, recessive and intermediate genes (alleles). There are several good texts in the www, do a quick search for "Mendelian genetics" or "Mendelian inheritance". If you understand the Mendelian genetics, and notice that dominant genes most often are written in CAPITAL Letters, you will understand the genechart very well. Agouti is dominant over nonagouti (a black self), therefore the letter is a capital A. (Btw, unfortunately at for Tan is written in small letters, but that is a completely different story, forget it.) Since Agouti is dominant, it does not matter what the second allele is, therefor we write A/*, where * can be either A or a, the mouse always has an agouti phenotype (=what you see), it does not matter what the genotyp (=genetic background) of the mouse is. If you breed two A/a together, what do you think, how many self black mice will you get statistically? If you are able to answer this question yourself and have a genechart available, you will have a good basis for mouse genetics.

Best regards, Roland

 

[Roland]

Its not impossible to tame a wild mouse, I mean all domesticated mice come from them. It will just take some time and effort and money.
If there are people who can handle lions, which there are, than a wild mouse is certainly do-able. Good luck

it is a little bit off-topic, but if we talk about taming mice, this videos from Germany are impressive:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Mou ... ion_344622