Chinchilla (cch)

So during the May mouse train, I got a lovely splashed burmese (cch/ch) fox texel lady, who just had her second litter. This litter was to an A/A c/c longhair buck, and we got three pups out of it. Two bucks and a doe. I culled out the lighter buck with pink eyes, assuming that this was the himi (ch/c). That left me with a dark-eyed doe and an odd-eyed buck. Except that the odd-eyed buck is apparently a one-eyed buck! His left eye has opened, and is nice and dark, indicating cch/c, which is what I wanted! The other eyelid has not opened, and does not have any dark coloration behind it, nor does it bulge out like a closed eye would. The lid is simply flat against the side of his face, as if there were no eyeball there at all. The parents are completely unrelated from lines that have no connection for at least four generations, and coming from more than 700 miles away. I cannot fathom the possibility that they share some genetic mutation that causes eyelessness, especially since the doe, when bred to her littermate, produced no eyeless or one-eyed pups. The buck, bred to littermates, produced no eyeless or one-eyed pups.

I'm trying to extract the cch to have true foxes and chinchillas, and this is the first buck I've gotten with the gene. I have the fuzzy doe from the previous litter who appears to also be burmese like her mother, but I don't really want to breed the fuzzy doe. She's both smaller than I'd like and fuzzy, which I'd rather separate from the cch if at all possible. With the fuzzy, it's nearly impossible to tell what color/markings I've got going there, plus fuzzy in my longhair/texel line will mostly just get in the way. It's there already, but no sense in breeding it in deliberately, right?

Can I consider it safe to breed the one-eyed buck? If so, my hope is to breed him to his mother (for cch/c+cch/ch=cch/cch, cch/ch, cch/c, cch/ch) and his sisters who is also cch/c (for cch/c+cch/c=cch/cch, cch/c, c/c). They all are fox splashed texel, so it'll be an interesting mix, for sure! That should give me some cch/cch mice, which I can then cross into the tan lines to get the standardized foxes.

I have no knowledge to contribute on the eye issue, but Laigaie, you and I are both doing the same thing: trying to create c^ch/c^ch out of mysterious c-dilute combinations which we hope and expect are c^ch/*. I look forward to your future posts about this line!

I've named him One-Eyed Jack, and he has photos!



His satin makes it harder to see the bands of color on his fur, but his sisters' fur is much easier to read.



Also, splashed might be the cheating way to work with c-dilutes. I can see the big patch of somewhat pale agouti on her side, and compare it to the diluted portions, allowing me to be certain what she is under the c-dilutions. That gives me more information about what the c-dilutions are doing, which helps me guess what's going on. Also, I love her big black eyes.

Yes! Many of the c^ch/* mice I am working with are splashed!

To update folks on Jack's condition:

I've found that he appears to be sighted in the eye (responds to visual stimuli), but chooses not to use it for normal navigation. He does not turn his good eye toward things as a one-eyed dog or cat would do, but instead seems to rely on his nose for nearly everything. Also, he is a good cuddler and both he and his sister are taming up well for mice of their age.

They are extremely light for cch/c. Are you certain the doe is cch/ch?

Let me post her photo again! She's a chocolate-colored mouse with sepia to black points (and a black splash). I only know of one combination of c-dilutes that give you that mouse: cch/ch. It's called siamese sable or burmese, where it's standardized, to my understanding.



Not the best photo to illustrate, but one that shows the chocolate color and her nose point.

And the reference for this being vaguely in the correct color bracket for burmese:
http://www.hiiret.fi/eng/breeding/varieties/burmese.html

Nicole noted in the pedigree that the father had produced chocolates, but I haven't tested to see whether she's B/* or b/b. It's not the most important bit at the moment, though it may become important later.

Maybe she is both b/b and c^ch/c^h.

Oh. Duh. I feel like an idiot. If she were chocolate burmese, her splash wouldn't be black, which it pretty obviously is, even putting her next to an actual black (tan) mouse. Her splash would be chocolate and therefore nearly invisible.

Interesting genetic paradox. Never thought of it before! Now, if you had a b/b c^ch/c^e, the chocolate splashes would actually be a lighter brown than the diluted color. That would look cool! Imagine a b/b c^ch/c^e tricolor! Mmmmmm! Chocolate and dark chocolate. Double chocolate tricolor!