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Male mouse question

snakeboy24 said:
thanks for the info. i will get another male mouse from a different shop. just as a point, my colony at the moment has a younger male mouse than the females. i think he is the runt. is it still possible for him to breed or if so would he be likley to have some deformed gienes? sorry if it sounds stupi but i a bit of a novice at gienes.

thanks

lee
Click to expand...
The size of your males is less important than the size of your females. I won't breed runt females, because breeding requires more from the female, and runts are likely to have smaller litters, overall. That is why I tend to holdback my largest female offspring.

While inbreeding may not be a huge thing to worry about, you need to try and account for the numbers of generations the mice have already been inbred for, as well as how many future colonies you would like to holdback from these mice. All things considered, I would rather invest $3 for a different male and thin out the bloodlines a little bit, than risk deformities or genetic problems from inbreeding. There really is no way of knowing how much inbreeding has already gone on in a colony, and anything I can do to prevent further inbreeding is going to help.

As Flagg said...lab mice are inbred for hundreds of generations. So are bulk rodent suppliers. This means that 90% of pet store mice are already inbred to a certain degree...a degree which is impossible to predict with any reasonable certainty. You could already be "on the verge" of genetic disasters and never know it. Why risk it when 1 male mouse can prevent it? For my money, $3 to thin out the blood line and gene pool is $3 well spent...
 
thanks again. i will defiantly buy a new male as i already know were i got my current mice from they are all inbred. they just leave all of the babies and adults together until there are enough babies to form a new colony (another inbred generation) after all i would rater spend $3 than loose my colony to genetic disasters. thanks again. have learned a lot from this thread :cheers:

lee :)
 
Thanks for all the info (don't mind "thread stealing" as I think it is all relevant :) )

I agree with what someone said though, I don't think inbreeding is an issue if you are breeding purely for feeding purposes...

I have kept 2 of the 3 females from my first litter, the one was a runt and she was sick so I euthanazed her before she made the others sick and I scrubbed out the tub well before putting the rest back. So far my little colony looks good! :santa: Just need more girls! lol

PS: My rattie had 12 babies this weekend! I am so so thrilled! :cheers:
 
The problem I have with adding new blood is the constant and in the case of my local pet stores, almost 100% risk of bringing sickness in to my current healthy colonies.

This is probably a lot more of a risk with rats but I have had it happen too many times. EVERY single rat I have bought from a pet store has been sick and infected the rest of my rats. I don't have any where to safely quarantine them in a completely different building. I don't buy rats from pet stores any more. I've also had sick rats from feeder breeders at the local reptile show and I ended up culling them before they got too close to my healthy rats.

So once I have a healthy group of rats or mice I don't like to risk them by bringing in new blood and new sickness. It took a long time to get all my rats healthy and I had to cull all of the original breeders bought from stores because they were so chronically sick.
 
I agree, It's not worth the risk personally, rather start a COMPLETELY new colony with new mice than risk infecting the others...

I bought three mice for breeding originally and have lost one female already, I now have just the one pair. But I am keeping all the females from the current litter (a whopping TWO of thirteen babies, though some that I culled as pinks may have been female). So will be keeping females for future litters as well in all likeliness.

Been lucky with my rats, two petshop buys and one feeder-breeder purchase and none have had so much as a sniffle!
 
hmm........ i see both sides of the point. i dont know what i will do. i will just wait until the time gets nearer :rolleyes: . thanks for all the information have learned a lot!!! :cheers:
 
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