Philosophy

I raise mice for both pets and feeders. For this reason, none of my mice are “unwanted”. I don’t irresponsibly breed my animals without caring about their ultimate welfare. I started with the mice to breed them as feeders, but fell in love with the animal itself and became very interested as well in the genetics of the common mouse. Instead of just breeding animals that are fit as feeders but unlikely to find homes as pet mice, I have begun a program of breeding my mice for especially desirable pet qualities. In this way some of the mice who are not used as feeders will have a higher probability of becoming pets. Several of my breeding “bins” are experiments to determine if certain combinations will produce certain desireable traits. Some of these experiments are detailed below.

Himalayan

The Himalayan experiment is one of my long term efforts to produce a particular variety of mouse from several different lines of mice each with one desirable trait. Minnie is my Siamese mouse. When crossed with a satin mouse her offspring will be heterozygous satin and Himalayan. When her male son is bred to a couple of satin albino mice, a good proportion of the offspring should be satin Himalayan. From those offspring a breeding colony will be established consisting of only short haired satin Himalayan mice. As a result of breeding satin Himalayans together, I should be producing 50% Himalayan offspring, 25% albino offspring, and 25% Siamese offspring. These will all be satin and all be desireable. Later on in the year I intend to purchase some large bodied albino mice with very good breeding histories and will cross them into my satin Himalayan project. This will result in a new generation of homozygous for satin offspring, but should also result in some improvement in the overall quality of the mice: longer bodies, larger ears, more robust, etcetera.

Roan

The roan gene is one which has many mysteries attached to it. Is it responsible for the Merle variation? Does it have anything to do with Splashed Mice? I intend to try to clear up some of these mysteries. My exact methods haven’t been completely figured out, but I will post the results if and when I have them!

BEW

White mice are easy enough to find. Go to any feeder bin or laboratory, and you’ll find hundreds of pink eyed, white mice. But white mice that are not albino, that is a definite rarity. To increase the mystery, BEW mice pop up with several different genetic combinations. A yellow mouse with the double chinchilla gene is BEW, as is a double banded mouse. The extreme dilution gene can result in a BEW mouse. Finally there are the various spotting genes, if a mouse has been selectively bred over time the spots can be diminished until the only pigment left in the mouse are its eyes. I’ve had baffling BEW mice popping up in litters, some due to the double banding, some due to the chinchilla gene, and others which are very mysterious indeed. I intend to breed two related female BEW to a non-related male BEW mouse just to see what I get. I might not get any BEW, but it is still an experiment and if I produce more BEW mice, all to the good!

Banded

Banded mice are one of the mainstays of mousedom. Crossing banded mice should also result in BEW. I intend to start selectively breeding the mice to get show quality bands, as well as adding some double banded mice to my BEW collection.

Cow Mice

The tan gene causes the bellies of mice to be a tan color in contrast to a different colored top. When these mice have the broken marked gene introduced it is possible to obtain tricolor mice who have dual colored spots on a white background. I am working right now to have a colony of great “cow mice” who will have the spotting gene and have the tricolored look.

Mice