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Genetics ? Silky/Curly = poor survivability?

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Posted by JM on April 28, 2003 at 13:52:39:

A couple months ago I discovered a little silky mouse in one of my colonies. I had no idea any of my feeders were carrying any hidden goodies like that, but I was pleased to discover him and specifically bred him to create a colony of silkies. No problem. Seems though that the silky colony I created also carries a gene for curly/wavy hair. Cool. I think genetics is fun, I bred for that as well.

Now I have some silky/curly babies. Problem is this combination seems to be "Weaker". Most of the pups do not survive to adulthood, those that do seem to mature very slowly, to have "Thinner" hair (Almost like balding spots) and it seems that most (Those that wind up dieing) never successfully get both eyes open. They are very difficult to photo, but I have a few shots here of one of the white silky/curly's that is considerably smaller than her siblings who happen to be mostly only silky, not curly(This one has red eyes, the eye that is open anyway, but I did not breed any albino into the line and as far as I know the parents are not het for albino....not sure how this came about)

You can see she is particularly smaller than her siblings, but these guys are approx 3-4 weeks old. The brown/white one on the far left is also a silky curly from the same litter, both his eyes are open and he is a bit larger than her. But the two on the far right are also from the same litter, silky only not curly and they are considerably larger and more fully "Furred" (no balding looking spots)

Another odd thing....the silky parents that seem to carry the curly gene are ROTTEN parents and if I want any of them to survive at all I have to foster the silky/curly's to non-silky parents.

Any opinions about these guys? Weak genes in the combination or just my bad luck on these so far?

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