Black Beauty's unusual litter

Day 5:
Black Beauty is nursing these ones. Can someone tell me if they look all a/a or ae/a? Oh! And look at that! Three white tails! Black Beauty did carry s! I wonder if any of the splashed bubs below will turn out to be tris



Lara is nursing these ones. The PE bub is the darker of the two. It's apparently splashed. The other appears to be a greyish (maybe beige?) c-dilute self.



Sophisticated Lady is nursing these ones. We got splashed, all right! That middle splashed one looks far darker than the others. Might it be ae/a? If so, it is exactly what I was hoping for!

Extreme black are born black...the better the phenomelonine present the darker the mouse. Nicole is right about the tan hairs there will be no yellow pigment present on extreme black...they would be white but not yellow (any color/guard hairs obviously being a fault)

I am wondering if the bubs BB is nursing (the black ones) are extreme black or not. If they are not, I need to cull them. It is Day 5. Can anybody please tell me?

In the top picture day 5 from left to right I would say bub 1 possible ae, bub 2 possible ae, bub 3 & 4 not so much and bub 5 (farthest right) is my favorite and more then likely extreme black.

You'll be able to tell the blacks apart when they're 7-10 days old, when the ears get fur. The normal blacks will have yellow ears, the ae/a blacks will have a small amount of yellow in the ears, but it will be significantly less and the ae/ae blacks will have no yellow in the ears at all.

ae/ae blacks are born with pigment, I wouldn't call them black by any means, but they do have a good amount of pigment on the skin, concentrated in the ears.


Ann, black beauty most likely carries c or ch. There is almost no chance she carries pink eye dilute.

m137b, thanks a million for your breeding wisdom and that little, tiny bit of essential genetic information! Would the "ae ear test" also apply to the dark splashed bub? I guess only if his ears are splashed, huh!

Please go look at "Lara is pregnant." I need a breeding strategy, and you are good at them!

There won't be yellow on a splashed unless it's a tan and it's on the belly, the ears and vent just do not have enough tan to start with for it to revert fully. The only way you'd know for sure if your splashed were ae/ae was if they were out of a pair of self blacks who were ae/ae, or if you bred it to a ae/* mouse and got ae/ae pups.

It took me a few years to figure out the ear thing, lol, but it's pretty obvious once you know to look for it. If I had to hazard a guess right now I'd agree with beth, the 3rd and 4th don't appear to be ae/*, just too light in general.

Mrs. Beach wrote: Please go look at "Lara is pregnant." I need a breeding strategy, and you are good at them!

Maybe I looked wrong but I couldn't find the question, lol, what type of strategy?

To get s/s and c^e/c^e together in both parents so ALL the babies would have them! It's easy to get A^vy/A^vy and Spl/Spl.

Day 6 after final cull. I am breeding for ae/a tris, so I've saved the obviously splashed ones, including the PE bub (2nd from right). I'll see, perhaps tomorrow when fur starts coming in, if there are any tricolors, and then around Day 7-10 if any of them are ae/a.



Does it make sense for me to think that only the two bubs with really dark splashing are ae/a candidates?

Day 7:

One more missing? Looking good!

Sorry. Culled down to four. One was so light medium with very low contrast splashes, I didn't think it had a chance of being ae/a. It was also small.

Coming into this late...but just want to say that ae is NOT dominant to a. ae is the "most" recessive allele on the agouti locus...completely recessive even to a. An a/ae mouse will look like a normal black...NOT extreme black. A mouse MUST be ae/ae to have the extreme non-agouti phenotype. See http://www.informatics.jax.org/searches/accession_report.cgi?id=MGI:1855939 (the photo they show as an example is an extreme non-agouti and a non-agouti het for extreme non-agouti...you can clearly see that the homozygous animal has much darker pigmentation than the het)

Ann, do you have the ped for black beauty?...does both parents have any WNT lines?...if so, PE and c-dilutes are entirely possible and I've had issues myself with "mock pew's" b/c of the darn PE gene. Many WNT lines have c and c^ch linked with p.

I stand corrected...there is but one allele on the agouti locus that is recessive to a^e.....it is a^l (lethal non-agouti...lethal when homozygous) ....it looks interesting...they have agouti bellies and flanks, but non-agouti backs!
http://www.informatics.jax.org/javawi2/servlet/WIFetch?page=alleleDetail&key=13
Very interesting...oddly enough the modified portion of the gene overlaps with that of A^y, so A^y/a^l is also lethal.

I have a ped for SLEEPY Black Beauty...dfownstairs, and I leave for work in 11 mins and must eat ! More info later.

Cindy, all bubs are female except the lightest one, which is male.

Stina, I do understand the jax information, however in real life with animals bred for color intensity[not just genetic study] there is a difference between ae/ae, a/ae and a/a. Not in the overall body color, but in the number of yellow hairs on the body, particularly in the number on the ears and perineum.

Black beauty is not related to WNT stock. She has a good chance of carrying either ch or c, as well as a fair chance of being SPL as well. But not of carrying pink eye dilute.

Mrs. Beach wrote:I have a ped for SLEEPY Black Beauty...dfownstairs, and I leave for work in 11 mins and must eat ! More info later.

Cindy, all bubs are female except the lightest one, which is male.

Does are a good thing I'd cull both the light ones. The darkest one would be my pick, not as dark as it could be but still nice heavy markings and good contrast.

Stina wrote:I stand corrected...there is but one allele on the agouti locus that is recessive to a^e.....it is a^l (lethal non-agouti...lethal when homozygous) ....it looks interesting...they have agouti bellies and flanks, but non-agouti backs!

Sounds like my umbrous agouti mice! Are they brown, or black on the back? Looks like black

Stina, I do understand the jax information, however in real life with animals bred for color intensity[not just genetic study] there is a difference between ae/ae, a/ae and a/a.

That may be the case...of slight incomplete dominance...but I assure you that ae is NOT dominant to a. If it were dominant, ae/ae would look identical to ae/a and it most certainly does not. I personally have not ever really be able to tell any significant difference in a/a mice and ae/a mice myself...but the ones I've had were never bred to be as dark as possible. Also, if this is an outcross (or in any situation of outcrossing a good black)....how would you have any way of telling if decreased orange in the ears was b/c of het ae, linebreeding, or carrying or being a c-dilute? With all those factors potentially working together, I really don't think you could in any way reliably guess which mice might be het for ae or just getting some of the effects of linebreeding and other genes......

Casey, I think they were black? They look like tans, but with agouti bellies rather than solid tan...lol

Interestinggggg! I wonder if it's related to the tan gene, since they're both a locus genes! We could call them triple A mice! Agouti, black (a), and lethal black (also an a!)!!!!

Stina wrote:Coming into this late...but just want to say that ae is NOT dominant to a. ae is the "most" recessive allele on the agouti locus...completely recessive even to a. An a/ae mouse will look like a normal black...NOT extreme black. A mouse MUST be ae/ae to have the extreme non-agouti phenotype. See http://www.informatics.jax.org/searches/accession_report.cgi?id=MGI:1855939 (the photo they show as an example is an extreme non-agouti and a non-agouti het for extreme non-agouti...you can clearly see that the homozygous animal has much darker pigmentation than the het)

Ann, do you have the ped for black beauty?...does both parents have any WNT lines?...if so, PE and c-dilutes are entirely possible and I've had issues myself with "mock pew's" b/c of the darn PE gene. Many WNT lines have c and c^ch linked with p.

Yes, I have c and c^ch linked with p AND c and c^e linked with p. Just had what I thought was another PEW give birth to Beige and/or Coffees! Of course c^ch could have been hiding from god knows how long too and I could have light mock chocolates!

oh what a pain...lol

Thanks for the culling advice, Cindy. That would mean I'd be hoping for an ae/ae buck!