Hi all,
I have been trying to acquire a highly prolific mouse strain for several years now. There seems to be a tremendous amount of secrecy and disinformation by the scientific and research community aimed at keeping such strains from the public. I have done a lot of research on the net trying to find and acquire these strains, with no luck so far. I actually had an extremely prolific line that I had purchased from Fluker farms in 1992. At first I did not realize what I had. This was a white albino line masking agouti (wild coat color). Older mice of this line would often develop lymphomas (large saddle bag like tumors on both sides of the throat). I am assuming this was an outbred line, because  I separated this line into two groups: Group # 1 - I maintained through brother sister mating. Group # 2 - I maintained through outbred mating, cousin or aunt/uncle mating. The inbred group # 1 produced a higher number of tailless offspring and offspring that would develop ear lesions in which usually the top half of the ear would be lost and the edge of the ear was left encrusted in dry blood This line would usually produce 15 - 21 pups per litter for  the first couple of litters, then this line would produce litters of 25 -27  for about 5 months. The range could be 18 - 29. The females of this strain would separate their large litters of 20 into two piles. They would nurse one pile, then switch and nurse the other. I have not seen this behavior in any other strain I have worked with since, but I have not found another strain yet that produces litters of 20 . The pups in the larger litters were extremely tiny, which was very useful in feeding small hatchling reptiles. In 1994 we added fancy colored mice to our collection. In contrast to our high yield strain they had very small litters usually 3 - 8 per litter. We crossed our high yield line into our fancy mice to increase their reproductive performance. In 1995 we had a major flood here in New Orleans and we had over 3' of water in our mouse room. We lost all of our high yield mice which we housed on the lower racks. Most of our fancy mice survived, but although some had litters as high as 17 most had 8 - 15. Which was about double of what they original produced and which makes me wonder now if this was not a strain carrying the booroola gene. First identified in marino sheep in Australia. A transgenic mouse was created with this gene transferred into it by
S. C. I. R. O. I have also read that a researcher in the UK has identified this gene in a
strain of mice that occurred naturally but no further details were given.

       I have been researching mice strains for  a while now and have compiled a list of  mouse strains of interest to us.  Below I have included some limited information I have found on each strain. Most of this has been cut and pasted from websites or correspondences I had with others.

H,   IQ5, BTBR, M16, CD1, Swiss OF1 ( IOPS Caw ), Swiss webster, ICR

1) H 
       "a mouse strain selected over 101 generations for high litter size, The H-strain,  has a mean (± SD) litter size at birth of 21.5 ± 3.5 pups. University of Norway,  Department of Animal Science"
       This strain has the highest average litter size that I have found. But shipping  from Norway will be costly. I would think that someone in the US has a strain as  prolific as this.

2) IQ5, known as Inbred Quackenbush Swiss line 5
       I presently have the outbred line of Quackenbush, which I imported from  Australia in 2001. below is correspondence and info on the inbred line, the strain I thought I was getting.

       Nauman Maqbool wrote:
       >Yes, there is an inbred strain (Inbred Quackenbush Swiss) developed at
       >the University of Sydney by Dr Ian Martin and colleagues, that has an
       >enormous litter size. Average litter size is around 25-27 and we have
       >observed few with 30 pups/litter as well.
     Personnel

****      ReproGen
       A/Prof F Nicholas, A/Prof C Moran and Z Doan.

       National collaborators
       Dr Ian Martin, Department of Animal Science.

       International collaborators
       Prof Brian Kirkpatrick, University of Wisconsin.

       Students
       Nauman Maqbool (PhD).

     Summary
       The world's most fecund strain of inbred mouse has been bred in the Faculty.  Females from this strain produce an average litter size of around 15 pups born  alive. In the latest of several crosses between the standard inbred strain C57 and  the fecund inbred strain, 630 F2 females have been recorded for reproductive  performance during their first three parities. Average litter size from the F2  females ranges from 4 to 18. A genome scan of these females is presently  underway, with the aim of identifying regions of chromosomes that contain genes  affecting reproductive performance. Several putative QTL for growth and litter size  have already been identified.

3) BTBR
       These mice were obtained from Dr William F. Dove (McArdle Laboratory,  University of Wisconsin-Madison). The strain is highly susceptible to ENU  mutagenesis and has been used extensively for these studies in the Dove  laboratory. 30, 31 The BTBR strain was developed by L.C. Dunn. His original  stock was derived from Dobrovolskaia-Zavadskaia. He brother-sister mated the  stock at the Nevis Biological Station, his emeritus laboratory from Columbia  University.  Around 1956, when Mary Lyon discovered tufted, he inserted it as a  marker and continued to inbreed the stock. The stock was continuously  maintained in the laboratory of Dunn's student, the late Dorothea Bennett, from  1962 on. In 1970, two  of her graduate students, Loraine Flaherty and Karen  Artzt, typed it as H-2b and began to systematically inbreed it and found it skin  compatible in the ninth generation (the first time it was tested) 32 Dunn had  vigorously selected the stock for large litter size so that it could support the  balanced lethal cross T/t x T/t, in which 50% of the embryos die. It has also  been selected for 50% tail length of T/ heterozygotes (K. Artzt, personal  communication). It is thus the ideal background for genes that affect tail length.  Artzt brought the mice to the laboratory of Jean-Louis Guenet, who inbred it for  45 generations before giving it  to the Dove Laboratory (J.-L. Guenet, personal  communication). It is still maintained today in the Artzt Laboratory but has been  sent around the world. It is available from the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor,  Maine, USA.

4) M16
       This is a line selected for rapid growth rate from 3-6 wk by Gene Eisen at NC  State University. These mice are very large, moderately obese and have large  litters. We are using this line for a  variety of polygene discovery efforts.

5) CD-1
       This strain is listed as having an average litter size of 12 by most lab animal  supplier. I opted for the outbred Quackenbush which was listed as averaging  15 per litter. the largest litter I have seen in my Quackenbush has been 18. I  have been told that cd-1's can have litters in the upper 20's.? for specs. on outbred Quackenbush go to address below http://www.arcwa.wa.gov.au/information/services/outbred_mice.stm

       Arc:Arc(S)Genetics Outbred Albino. Coat colour genes: c (albino), B and b  (brown), A and a (agouti), D and d (dilute).
       ARC Source Received as SPF CD1 stock from Charles River Breeding  Laboratories Kingston, NY (1991).
       Source Info Charles River received in (1959) from Hauschka and Mirand Roswell  Park Memorial Institute as Swiss Mice
       General Info Robust mouse. Good litter size and good fecundity, average 11-12  young per litter. Some mice are deficient in C5.
      
       Arc:Q(S) (Quackenbush Swiss)Genetics Outbred albino
       ARC Source Received from CULAS, 1997. Originally from Department of  Veterinary Physiology. University of Sydney
       Source Info Originally selected from Swiss stock demonstrating extraordinary   litter size.
       General Info Robust mouse, larger in size than Swiss. Extremely large litters,  average 15-16 young per litter. Useful animal for reproductive physiology studies.  Some mice deficient in C5

6) Swiss lines OF1 ( IOPS Caw )
       Dr. Chris Moran recommended these in the U.S. but I have been unable to find  them.

7) Swiss Webster
       This is another strain that I was told can have litters in the upper 20's, but they  are listed as having an average litter size of 10 or 12 by most lab animal suppliers

8) ICR
       I have read that certain lines of ICR's are extremely prolific, but I do not know  which ones.

I am presently working with only one mouse strain outbred Quackenbush mice, which I imported from Australia after talking with both Dr. Nauman Maqbool and Dr. Chris Moran. I was told that this was the strain I was searching for. With average litters in the upper 20's and as high as 30 he had worked with this line under Dr. Chris Moran. But if you read the pasted email from Dr. Nauman Maqbool above under 2) IQ5 mice and Dr. Chris Moran's email below you will see that there is conflicting information Nauman says the inbred line 5 is the more prolific Quackenbush line which is somewhat collaborated by the repogen site noted by the **** right below his email. On the other hand Chris Moran's email below claims it is outbred line. The strain I imported has an average litter size of only 15, which turned out to be a costly mistake for me importation of this line from Australia to here in the US cost me $1200 This may be may be chump change for the 2 doctors, but it was a big investment for us gone bad.
.
here is the email I recently received from Dr. Chris Moran

We no longer have the highly prolific outbred QS line of mice available, mainly because it must be maintained as a large minimal inbreeding stock, and it took a lot of time and resources to keep it going.
We have a number of inbred derivative lines derived from the QS outbreds, one of which has kept many of the properties of the outbreds (but it is not so prolific). However, we are not making this inbred stock available to anyone else at this stage. These inbred mice are being used extensively for gene mapping studies in my laboratory.
A paper describing our work on the QS and the derivation of the inbred derivative lines will hopefully be appearing in the journal Mammalian Genome this year (subject to acceptance of our revised manuscript) and will provide accurate information on the reproductive performance of the outbred and inbred mice. The first author of this paper is Marte Holt.

We are still trying to acquire a high yield strain. There are several strains we would like to try here in the US, but all of these are housed exclusively by Jackson labs. Jax does not sell to the public I believe I would need a license are permit required by the federal government. But I do not know how I would go about getting this and from whom I would need to apply for it. I know that cosmetic companies are able to acquire lab mice for product testing. So I don't see why I would not be able to get this license through our painting and drywall company that we own. Jax and Charles River are both unwilling to disclose any information to us. We would also consider trying to import the H strain from Norway, but do not want to do so without this permit. We have found information on several other prolific strain, but when we contact the researchers working with them they acted as though we are inquiring about national security secrets and all information on the websites concerning the fecund strains are promptly removed usually by the next morning. Also we hate to spend all that money to import these strains into the US when we know that they must have strains equally prolific here in the US like the ones we had purchased from Flukers. We would appreciate more than you can imagine any information or assistance in acquiring highly fecund mouse strains or information on permits for purchasing lab strains. Sorry for such a long post
Thanks for your time,
Gordon & Sharon Styron

Almost all strains that are used by the scientific community today was originally derived from mice hobbyist in the pet trade without many of these unique strains the scientific community would have been set back many years of valuable research. It is sad that they repay us by denying us access from the very animals that was freely shared with them years ago. There is a write-up on the history of the lab mouse on the Jax site, it is an interesting read. Cheers, Gordon

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