Tans and the Red Gene

Here is a question for all of you......

If a red mouse is added into a tan breeding project, will the red gene intensify the tan bellies?? If not, what would?

Just a thought.

I have heard that it could. I have just started trying to see if that is true. My first outcross was very promising. The babies all had much deeper bellies than the previous Tan x Tan litters. I have 2 Tan x Tan pairs together now (Choc Tan x Choc Tan, Choc Tan x Cinn Tan), and 1 Tan x Red. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they all "take". I will be sure to post my results.

Perfect! Please do. . You know how I feel about tans.

The gene Ay itself doesn't make the red more intense. If the Ay reds are very rich in colour, then yes it will help.

Why?

Because the more red pigment a mouse has, the more pheomelanin it has, and the more pheomelanin it's offspring will have. If you breed a nice rich red mouse, to a tan with a poorly coloured belly, the offspring will have more pheomelanin and therefore richer, darker bellies.

If you breed a poor Ay (which can look just as yellow as a poor e/e or Avy) to a tan with a poor belly, it will not help. You can breed and breed and breed and pair the reddest with the reddest over and over and eventually you will build up pheomelanin and get a better red pigment.

I breed my tans to my recessive yellows and i find that the colors are catching up in hue, gradually. Pretty sure I'll need to graduate to Ay soon!

You can use any mouse to increase the pheomelanin in another mouse. Ay is used most often because it is the most popular colour used, since there are no e/e (to my knowledge) in the UK. e/e works as well (ask Roland!) and can be bred to the same deep rich standards as Ay.

Here's a photo belonging to Roland Fisher showing e/e reds


The reason most people chose Ay or e/e is because the pheomelanin is easy to see on them, because they -are- yellow-to-red mice. Agouti is also another variety that shows pheomelanin fairly well.
You can have a BLACK a/a mouse with tons of pheomelanin in it, but you would never see the pheomelanin, because of the black coat.

I never thought to use e/e in my tan lines!

I do learn something new every day on here.