Hello All,
I post to this forum about every 4-6 months or so. I am hoping to find someone knowledgeable on the subject of lab mice and how I can go about acquiring them. A USDA license is needed to purchase mice from the facilties that have strains worth buying. For those of you who are not familar with my post, My name is Gordon. In 1992 I purchased 400 mice from flukerfarms to fill up a 144 cage draw style mouse breeding rack I custom built. If you plan on raising large #'s of reptiles it is essential that you breed your own mice, unless you're Donald Trump. The mice I bought from flukers were an outbred line, albino masking wild coat. This strain consistently produced litters of 25-29 after its first couple of parities. In 1995 I lost this strain in a major flood we had here in New Orleans. In 1998 we relocated and built a new facility with over 400 cages. When I tried to reacquire my old line, I found that flukers no longer sold mice. I traced the strain back to the mouse house in Arkansas. She told me she had mice from two sources; one from a business that was no longer in business and had no contacts and the other from a well known lab who sells to the public discretely. I purchased their line but it was not the line I had had. In my spare time I have been researching both on and offline since 1998 to try and find what strain I had, and how I could reacquire it. I talk to people around the world on almost a weekly basis. In the process of my search I have discovered many amazing strains of mice, but most of these I am unable to purchase as an individual. I thought of opening up a business or non profit just for the purpose of acquiring the strains I would like to have. But I would like to speak to someone knowledgeable on the subject before committing to something like that. Since 1998 I have worked with many strains of mice including CD1's, ICR, FVB, CF-1, Swiss, Swiss websters, Swiss blacks, C57BL/6DBA, Balb/c, C3H, ets., etc. Presently I have only two strains of mice Swiss Websters, and Quackenbush mice which I imported from Australia for $1400.(mostly importation cost) I was told that I am the only one in the U.S. that has this strain. I have all the documentation and importaion papers on this strain. The Quackenbush have been the most prolific line I have been able to acquire to date. But they are still nothing like the line I had got from flukers in 1992. Here is a short list of some amazing strains of mice I have discovered in my research but am unable to purchase due to regulations and ethics codes.. Note I have complete data on each of these strains and where each is maintained. I will not name the strains here.
XXX strain - Is an inbred strain that is maintained here in the U.S. It has a simple recessive gene that causes this strain to grow twice as fast as normal mice. They also reach breeding age at just 4 weeks old instead of 8. This strain also grows to a slightly larger size than most mice and it has a much more efficient feed to growth ratio than any other strain. Which means less food for more mouse in less time. Anyone who breeds mice on a moderate scale will realize the tremendouse potential of this gene especially if combined with the strains below.
QQQ strain - Is a transgenic strain that has a simple recessive gene that doubles litter size. If you breed this gene into a strain that averages 8 pinks per litter the homozygous offspring from the F2 cross will have an average litter size of 16. The benifits here are obvious.
ZZZ strain - I am actually going to clump two very similar strains under this one title. Both are outbred lines one has an average litter size of 22 the other 20. These two outbred lines which are maintained at two seperate facilities that are unrelated are the most prolific mouse breeds I have been able to find. If you crossed this strain with the 2 above you would get a true super mouse of fecunduity.
iii strain - is an inbred line maintained here in the U.S. It is a hardy robust line with an average litter size of 18. this is not a simple recessive trait, multiple genes are involved. So what's so special about this line??? The fact that it is an inbred strain. In general, most inbred strains are not very hardy and have small litters, but there are exceptions and this being an extreme one. Most hobbyist have outbred lines which cannot be maintained indefinitely. Because they have a diverse group of genes, unless you keep a pedigree and avoid any inbreeding and maintain a large effective population not a census population. Example, if you had a population of 1 male and 100 females your census population would be 101 but your effective population would only be 4. To maintain an outbred line over time takes a lot of paper work and a very large population, at least a few hundred cages. Inbreeding on even a small scale can ruin your outbred colony. Once inbreeding has taken place in your colony there is no undoing it. You lose the gene that keeps your colony diverse and you start to lose the strains characteristics. That's why you hear so many breeders say they like to mix in new blood in their colony every so often. On the other hand, an inbred colony could bottle neck to a single pair and not lose any of the strains characteristics. Because inbred strains are basicalliy genetically identical. So you can maintain a small colony of very prolific mice and you do not have to worry about pedigree.
If anyone can help me acquire the license or ability to acquire mice strains from government regulated facilities and State Universities, I would be willing to share with them the strains I acquire plus a wealth of knowledge from almost 2 decades of breeding mice on a moderate scale. Plus all the information and knowledge I have acquired through my research on this subject.
Thanks,
Gordon
www.bigeasyreptiles.com
