Question About Genetics

Another question on chocolates and recessives.

I am beginning to understand how genetics work but am not positive I *get it* yet.

So here's my question: If I were to breed a chocolate texel mouse to a blue texel mouse NOT carrying chocolate, would the babies still be a mix of chocolate and blue? If not, would taking one of the babies fromthe choc texel/blue texel litter and breeding it back to a chocolate mouse result in chocolates?

So basically what I'm saying is: two recessive colors bred together equals a litter of a mix between those recessive colors or carriers of those recessive colors.

Another one: If the above occurred and a chocolate mouse comes out of the litter, is it also carrying blue because the father was blue or are those genes not passed on at all to that particular baby?

Since chocolate is recessive, and blue is recessive, all your babies would be black texels, carrying both chocolate and blue. Breeding those back to the chocolate parent would get you half chocolates and half blacks, with similar results if bred back to the blue parent. Bred together, you'd have chocolates, blues, blacks, and animals with both genes (black-eyed lilac). If you're just wanting the chocolate texels, I'd breed back to the chocolate parent.

And yes, if one of the parents is blue, the baby must be carrying blue. Because the blue parent only has d or d to give, the baby must get a d from that parent. Even if they get a D from the other parent, making them not-blue, they still have the d from their blue parent. Does that make sense? I try to think about it like a hand of cards in poker.

Here is the finnmouse gene chart, it should help you a bit.
http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/genetics/chart.html

Recessive genes require two copies of the gene for the color change to be expressed. When a black mouse (aa) gets dilution (bb) it becomes chocolate. When a black mouse (aa) gets dilution (dd) it becomes blue.

Chocolate - aa bb C* D* P*
Blue - aa B* C* dd P*

Crossing these two would result in mice that were aa Bb C* Dd P*. In other words, black mice. But if your chocolate mouse carries blue (aa bb C* Dd P*) then you could result in 50% chocolate, 50% blue.

If your offspring are aa Bb C* Dd P*, then crossing them back to their chocolate parent will result in chocolate and black babies. Crossing back to their blue parent will result in blue and black babies.

Crossing aa Bb C* Dd P* with another littermate will result in a mix of black, chocolate, blue, and lilac babies (aa bb C* dd P*). Also keep in mind that any hiden recessives like albinism or the pink eye dilution (pp) will change the results.

Did I explain that decent?

Thank you SO much! That is very helpful and very clear. I'm actually quite excited to get blacks AND chocolates. I was aiming toward breeding black texels- who knew it was that easy!

Another question: Would it change anything if the doe was a texel splash and the buck was just a blue self? Since the buck isn't carrying splash, the babies would be self, correct?

So splash I'm not a genius with, my understanding is that it is a dominant gene, however it needs certain dilutions to be present for it to be expressed. Here's a link an article about it, idk how much is right since I don't really mess with these.

http://www.afrma.org/c-c_splashed.htm The pictures indicate that it works for blue, chocolate, and lilac, but as I mentioned, I don't really know what all goes into this.

If the blue self doesn't carry any c-dilutes, you will have full-color babies. If your buck DOES carry c-dilutes (c, the gene for pink-eyed white is most common), you might get splashed babies, since Spl is dominant, but requires two c-dilutes to be visible. The Spl part of your equation is a little more complicated.