This article is from the Jan./Feb. 1992 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Troya Duncanson

Question from Jessica Jakubanis, age 14, Norridge, IL (Nov./Dec. ’91): Part b–How to get Silver Siamese.
A To get a nice Silver Siamese, first find someone with Sable Siamese (a very brown mouse with near black points). Sable Siamese is a Black mouse with one Siamese factor and one Chinchilla factor instead of a double-dose of the Siamese factor like regular Siamese mice. Now cross Sable Siamese with Blue Point, and the resulting litter will be a mix of Siamese and Sable Siamese. Save these Sable Siamese, cross them back to Blue Point for the highest probability of producing Silver Siamese, or cross them with other Sable Siamese that had a Blue Point parent, and prepare to have a few litters before Silver Siamese shows up. (You will be getting Self mice, regular Siamese, Sable Siamese, some Blue Point but also some Silver Siamese.) This is a simple program, provided you have, or have produced Blue Point Siamese to work with, and can find Sable Siamese.

ED. NOTE: See the March/April ’85, May/June ’85, and Sept./Oct. ’87 back issues for more on breeding Siamese mice.

Michele Buck, Rootstown, OH
Q How could I create a P.E. White Tan? I didn’t think P.E. White Tan was possible. I have bred some P.E. spotted mice and bred the spots out of them, so I guess they aren’t true albino. I thought B .E. White Tan would be more of a possibility.

A P.E. White Tan mice could present a challenge. What you want would probably be a very dilute Champagne or Lilac Tan, and continue to select the lightest and palest mice until the top color is essentially white. The Tan color will probably not hold up too well with this type of selection. (See the July/Aug. ’91 issue for some other comments.)

Gail DeHayes, Stone Mountain, GA
Q Wanda Wilson said breeding curlies (Frizzies) too young can bring on Frizzie Rot. I took my two young girls out of the tank with their brother and mom. How long should I wait to try first breedings with the two young girls?

A Breeding any female mouse too young can stunt her development. Putting the additional stress of pregnancy on top of the normal stress of growing up and developing her body and immune systems is hard on her. I recommend 8 weeks old before breeding.

As for susceptibility to Frizzie Rot, I wouldn’t be surprised if it showed up in a stressed mouse if it ’s latent in a colony. I haven’t seen it in my colony for over a year (knock on wood) and I just lost my first Frizzie mouse to old age, so I know you don’t have to have Frizzie Rot with Frizzie mice. One fancier told me that she tried everything to stop this disease in her mice. She was only successful when she force-fed Ivermectin paste to her mice (Ivermectin solution in the water bottle did not work). The problem is that it was toxic enough to kill one of her mice and make two others sick (they recovered). This seems to point to a mite problem. Perhaps similar is the problem some immune-depressed German Shepherds and Dobermans have with a mange mite that normally is not considered contagious in dogs unless they’re stressed.

Jessica Jakubanis, Norridge, IL
Q What colors can you use to breed for Blue in rats?

A Assuming you already have Blue, the best color to breed with it is Black. In the mice, the Blue gene enables you to produce Blue Tan/Fox, Blue Sable, Blue Agouti, Lilac, and Blue Point Siamese. Now that we have the Blue gene, we can create Blue Point Siamese rats! And Blue Agoutis. Karen Hauser

Wanda Wilson, New Cumberland, PA
Q I have a new (mutant?) thing happening. In two different lines of my mice (Chocolate Fox and Blue), both begun two years ago by a poor Chocolate I got from an AFRMA show, there has arisen a reverse Argente (English Gold) effect—light gray top hairs and gold close to the skin. If you blow on one, the silver (these are Satins by the way) parts to reveal glittering gold underneath. I’ve looked in much old mouse genetics literature and have not seen it described. I am calling it "English Silver" for the moment. I’ve had four turn up as the only ones in the normal looking litter. What do you think?

A It’s possible that you do have something new here. I know of a similar color called Opal which is a blue dilution of recessive gold (your colony may have been hiding recessive gold for a while). This gives you a base coat of gold at near full strength and darker hair tips that can be selected for. Many recessive gold mice get a black cast over their entire coat unless it is strongly selected against.

From Michael Emerson. Londonderry. NH
I have a new color mouse. No one here could identify it for me so I am calling it Lemon as it resembles Lemon in guinea pigs. It derived out of my Siamese stock.

From Tina Good. Phoenix, AZ
Getting good Silver Agouti looking rats is a bit of a problem lately, as all my stock has Siamese mixed in. I only have one promising Silver Agouti male (from about six litters). The Siamese seems to give me more brown than I should normally get, and the gray (blue) rats I’m getting tend to get a brown tinge on the tops of the hairs. I do get some chocolates from the mix though. Some of them look a lot like the Lilac/Mink color.

I’m getting great odd-eyed rats; the pink and ruby are very obviously different. The bigger the difference, the earlier you see the difference in the eyes when they are little. I even get some cafe au lait ones with two pink eyes instead of pink and ruby, or the usual two ruby eyes.

So far when I’ve mixed a Black and a Fawn (or orange), I’ve ended up with Agouti. But I matched my Black male (background also has Beige and albino) with an orange girl Karla Barber gave me, and I get chocolaty-black colored rats! I ’m going to have to try a rematch to see what happens next time.

Back to top