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Post by anielka on Jul 28, 2013 21:44:39 GMT 10
We've been really careful not to overbreed as we breed for ourselves and friends. And we've been so careful we're down to just one male mouse, an old black/tan and this, his four-week old nephew from a litter of just one, Cholmondeley (pronounced Chum-lee so my triplets tell me) Cholmodeley is rex, manx and has the smallness and agouti colour of his ggggg grandfather Wild Mouse. He's nothing special to anyone but us but he will undoubtedly father the next generation when his cousins are old enough or with an older second cousin. He's four and a half weeks old.
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Post by MojoMouse on Jul 29, 2013 9:56:31 GMT 10
Haha, the weight of producing the next generation rests on his little shoulders. He's a sweetie. Do you notice any throwbacks to wild type temperaments in your mice, or are the new generations consistently tame(ish)?
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Post by anielka on Jul 29, 2013 12:30:41 GMT 10
Weirdly the original F1 (first cross: half-wild) were very wild but from then on......completely normal. We get the occasional shy mouse but that was normal even before we had the half-wild progeny. Apart from having a race of tiny "thimble mice" about 22-29g everything else is "normal" which is a pity because the wild mice had such beautiful big eyes and roman noses. They were also much more agile and ate a slightly different diet through choice.
I seriously think if we crossed again with a wild mouse we would have a better chance of healthy mice than a pet-shop mouse: every other pet-shop mouse has cancer and it's so sad to loose mice to cancer. Also there's the risk of finding out after you have bred from them. Looks like Cholmondeley will have a special role in keeping a healthy line going.
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Post by greydawnbreaking on Jul 29, 2013 13:34:47 GMT 10
This might be overthinking it, but maybe you could catch a couple wild mice and pair them? Breed a litter or two and select the best temperments and conformations to breed into your lines? They'd still be close enough to the wild that you could probably safely release any extra babies and mom/dad once you're done, so you wouldn't need to worry about homing large numbers.
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