Post by anielka on Mar 22, 2014 15:19:14 GMT 10
So about eight months ago we adopted three baby wild mice whose mother had joined the Choir invisible in a neighbour's house. We bred four litters of half-wild F1s from our only four fertile fancy female mice because we had no fancy male mice left from our own lines (we don't breed often). All the mice were brought up together so that the males could remain in one colony. The disadvantage was we didn't know which mother gave birth to which pup as they all conceived, gave birth and nursed together. (In a hollow log - very sweet). This was the second time we've used wild genes to improve the hardiness of our Western Australian fancy lines. This F1 generation were amazing! Every single one is agouti, of course, but several are really very friendly for half-wild mice including my favourite mouse-of-the-moment, tiny Ring, a 12 gram female who chatters loudly and gently walks onto your hand for a trip out of the Giant Colony for a walk round the house.
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Now meet Coconut Ice. She has absolutely nothing to recommend her whatsoever. She was unhandled, lived on her own in a pet-shop until she was four months old, has no particularly special conformation but we brought her home in January because we knew we could give her friends and a wonderful life and she has one special thing in her favour.........
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She was albino. Obviously if we wanted to see what "lay beneath" our male half-wild mice genetically albino was the way to go. Here's our first litter of F2's - one-quarter = 25% wild mice. We hit the genetic jackpot! 50% should have been agouti but obviously Coconut Ice carried the same Dilute gene the F1 agouti father carried. Blurry photo but here's what we got:
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One black self, two dove, one argente, one very broken dove (that looks white), one either himalayan or albino (not sure yet) and one....sort of brown/coffee/chocolate mouse?
Such a bad blurred photo. Just might be a Burmese.
So I've no idea what went on with the genes here other than we now know the grandma must have been our black marked Moo-Cow.
We absolutely love this litter. As an aside we seem to have finally wiped out ear-mites completely - the wild strain seem much less susceptible. And we haven't had any mammary cancers since we first used wild genes in our deme. Obviously all our mice are small but.....we quite like them that way!
Anielka
