Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone I am new to this area of the boards and have a couple of questions on mice breeding. When I was younger (teenager- I am 25 now) I used to breed mice alot.. I only bred the typical ones you see in pet shops here the white ones with red eyes. I would like to start breeding mice again but would like to get into other colors and patterns. Any of you know a site or something that shows genetic traits and what not of like "color 1 color 2 = pattern 0" If that makes since.. Sorry if it doesn't lol Also wanted to know if some of you breeders can suggest a place to get alot of diff colors? and maybe a rack system? Thanks for reading, and I hope to find out lots of info here. ; )

Welcome to the mouse forum

I used to breed mice myself, from basic fancy mice found in petstores. I didn't really do much research on how to trace the genetic traits, pretty much just bred mice together, to see what I got. Then I took out certain individuals who had pattens or colors I liked, and put them with similar patterned unrelated mice. Thoughn at the time the main reason I was breeding mice was to provide food for some of my other pets and sold off the surplus to other reptile owners and a place I found locally (at the time, as I am living in a completely different city) who bought mice,rats and other small mammals and birds from breeders to sell to the pet trade.

I had found a nice dark fox (or fawn, can't remember the difference between the two offhand) which basically was dark brown/black body with a white underbelly. If I recall correctly the white underbelly is a fox, a cream or tan is a fawn. I was able to get almost constant fox offspring from the pair I had (found another dark fox in another town not to far away) though there was always a few broken white/brown, white/tan and a few others in the litters.

Another thing I tried to do was prodce blacked eyed whites. Finding white mice with as little as possible 'spots' and breeding them together, with two independant and mostly unrelated breeding pairs, and my last batch of mice had almost no color other than white in them. I think one more breeding would have resulted in completely white/black eyees but unfortunately at the time, I had to sell off my entire mouse collection as I was moving and didn't have the room to keep raising them in the new location. Given the smell of male mice, and I was moving from a nice 3 bedroom townhouse on three levels, where i could keep all the rodents in one room and close the door, so the male musk didn't stink up the entire house, to a small two bedroom appartment. I had to get rid of the mice.

I don't remember finding a site with good genetic break downs for the various breeds of fancy mice, but I do have a few good sites on general care, raising/breeding and sexing mice as well as other interesting information. I used to have a site (I may do, will have to check), that gave some genetic information, but I think it was just basic Dominant/recessive characteristics.

www.horns.freeserve.co.uk/mousenew.htm

www.rmca.org/

www.afrma.org/

-----
PHLdyPayne