Ay pairings....

I just got my new dominant red doe today and I am thrilled!

I don't have a buck, I could not afford more than one mouse so I got a dominant variety. I am going to breed her right into my tans to increase coloration depth, but I would definitely like to get some quality bucks out of her first. I don't want to dilute the Ay with black, and i am thinking hard about possible pairings. She MIGHT be pregnant with a PE chocolate buck, but it's unlikely.

I have three in mind, tell me which one would make the most sense!
Show Ivory
Show PEW
Show undermarked RED brindle, I am loath to pair this because I don't want to wonder what's what later on.

Hmmmm....... Hard choice. The pew would throw too many c dilutes I would think and thus maybe dilute the red.

I would use the ivory

I would probably use the brindle......keep an agouti male offspring and breed it back to the doe...no wondering what's what ...hopefully the brindle doesn't carry any dilutes...you want to avoid mixing them in if at all possible!

I was thinking along those lines myself. I would go with the brindle.
I would like to thin about creating fawn...so I was thinking of breeding my red buck to a silver doe and then back again. Anyone know if that will work?? Or will that add unwelcome dilutions? What would be ideal for adding pink eye to the mix?

I would like the answer to that question myself! I am going to be creating fawn from scratch. Lol

I would strongly recommend against adding blue (assuming your silver is a blue based silver) to the mix. You'd want to use an argente, cinnamon argente, champagne, or dove.

argente or cinnamon argente would be the best option...if you mix in non-agouti you may end up with sooty animals ....sootiness wouldn't be as bad on fawn...but you could still get gray hairs.

Great. Thanks. That is what I was afraid of. I do have a dove, but she is tan as well and I didn't want to mix that in...but since tan is Dom, then non tans are not carriers correct? That just might work! Or Anyone have a really good argente doe available? LOL!

Candycorn, correct. Whatever doesn't have a firm straight line on their belly by about day 5-6 isn't a tan and won't carry it!

Stina, isn't brindle dominant over agouti? I had thought I'd read somewhere that dominance went in this order= Ay, Avy, A. So wouldn't any babies out of the brindle/red pairing be Ay or Avy?

I was thinking under the assumption that the brindle is het for agouti or black....if it is homozygous brindle that would complicate things...I didn't think of that for some reason. If it is just one copy though, half the offspring would be unbrindled.

Oh! I see what you are saying. Gosh I really wish I knew his code...I picked him up at Rodentfest and I usually don't care too much about pedigrees but this time it would be helpful.

tinyhartmouseries wrote:Candycorn, correct. Whatever doesn't have a firm straight line on their belly by about day 5-6 isn't a tan and won't carry it!

Great! Guess what the satin dove tan I got from you will be doing? LOL!

This is a great post. I am learning a ton about my new genes.

Mixing tan in with your new reds will actually do something interesting: it will put you one step into the process of marten sables. They're foxed reds, meaning Ay/at cch/cch, so if you've got foxes, that's one nifty variety that's really not bred here in the US.

Sables also need U.

So if you mix a red and tan, with an umbrous (a few people have umbrous agouti available) then you can get sables, add in cch/cch and poof, marten sables!

EDIT: Okay, so maybe it's not so easy as 'poof', but you get the idea.

Black foxes are often umbrous already, as umbrous helps the black of a fox stay nicely black. Black tans often have it, too (meaning your black tan buck would have it, likely). I suppose I assumed the use of quality stock. :/

You can't see Umbrous on an animal that isn't agouti, so there's no way to tell if a black mouse is umbrous.
Where did you hear that umbrous is often in black foxes? And that it effects the black?
I'm being curious, because I haven't researched in depth into umbrous, so I'd like to better my understanding if what you're saying is true.

FinnMouse makes frequent references to black tans (and by extension black foxes) being umbrous, and that it makes them bad outcrosses for most things. It's not the most reliable source, but that bit made an awful lot of sense to me. If this thing increases pigment along the spine, and we have a mouse that we want to be really dark on the top without having to worry about sootiness, that's a gene that could really help. JAX describes a strain of a/a U/U by stating that they are "intense black, darker than mice homozygous for nonagouti and closely resembling mice homozygous for ae". Personally, I haven't worked with umbrous, but reading about its effects make me think that it's probably a collection of modifiers, rather than a single gene. If it is a single gene, it can definitely be largely replaced by collections of "sootiness" modifiers, especially with a coat color so delicate as marten sable. Ask around FMB for more info about umbrousness and marten sables in particular, since one of the breeders over there is doing really amazing work trying to bring the variety back to competition level.

Thank you for explaining!

I have Umbrous here. I have had it appear on agouti, and blue agout, and man oh man, the blue agouti go crazy with colour changes!

I guess it makes sense that it darkens the black, I've got some blacks from that line, which are satin, and I assume U/u if not U/U, which appear very dark. Despite that line having very good pigment in the extremities already, and being satin. A few of the blacks have come out and been just 'eh' blacks, so if I guess in theory they were likely u/u, or U/u, and the U/U mice would be much darker.

I think is it. . . SarahC who breeds black fox and marten sables? I will have to ask her more about this!

Thank you!

Or is it SarahY. . . I always get the Sarahs mixed up!

I guess my subconscious must have been wanting to breed Martens because 2 of the does I ended up putting my Red buck with are an Umbrous Agouti and a Black Tan. I also have him in with a really nicely-typed Silver(her babies will be to breed Silver Tan/Blue Tan) and a pretty Beige girl.

I'm pretty much just biding my time having fun with experimental pairings until I get my Chocolate doe from Beth.

Since you've got a buck, you might as well put him to whatever's available. It doesn't lessen his quality at all, keeps him in good condition, and lets you figure out what these genes will do to everything else.