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Breeding for Colour The most important thing to remember when breeding a specific colour is to never, ever mix in other colour genes unnecessarily. Carried genes will have an affect on the colour of mouse - if the mouse is carrying extra genes the top colour won't be pure. In a show you are competing against excellent mice and just a slight tan around the vent or a warm tinge that shouldn't be there will send your mouse to the bottom of it's class. My own mice make a good example of this. When I started breeding doves there weren't any around, so I made them from crossing argentes and champagnes with silvers, but if I'd known then what I know now I'd have used silvers and decent show blacks only. If a dove mouse carries chocolate, the chocolate gene will turn the dove into a warmer, muddy kind of colour and the clear bluey grey will be lost. This muddy colour can be cleaned up in future generations by using silver mice as an outcross and not breeding any mice that carry chocolate, but this takes time and it's better if the chocolate gene hadn't been there to begin with. I'm currently five generations on and the muddiness from the champagne and the tan vents brought in by the argente are nearly gone, but I still get the odd dove cropping up that carries chocolate. 
In the pictures above, you can clearly see the first doe (the two pictures on the left hand side) has tan hairs around her ears and vents, and the second doe (the two pictures on the right) has 'clean' ears and vents, meaning they are the same colour as the rest of the mouse. The first doe was the result of an argente x argente mating, and the orange hairs have carried through. The second mouse is the result of a dove x silver mating, with parents carefully selected to have as little tan as possible. The second mouse is the granddaughter of the first mouse, and I had to outcross to some very clean silvers to clean the tan areas up. Whatever colour you choose to breed, please be sensible about what you mix into it. If you ever have to look for an outcross outside the colour, bear in mind that chocolate will bring a warm tint with it, blue will darken the bases of the hair shafts, dove and silver will lighten it and could bring in white noses and tail set-ons, fawns and argentes will bring in tan hairs, black eyed creams could pass on the stone genes and result in mice that can't be shown (as stone isn't standardised), red based colours will ruin the type, marked varieties will result in white hairs and maybe white sections of tail, and so it goes on. Using the wrong colour as an outcross will ruin your variety and you'll have to put a lot of time and effort into putting it right if you want success on the show bench. You can find lots of information on which colours to avoid mixing in and which colours are compatible with your chosen variety here. |
