Breeding 2 Keep Grey Agouti

[darrenb]

Hi All,

Here's hoping someone better at me in genetics knows the answer..

I want to breed grey agouti, but the chances of getting an unrelated pair in south uk is well slim, but i should be able to get just one be it a male or female.

So my question is if i have one grey agouti, what colour gerbil can i mate it with so as not to loose the colouring in the offspring - i dont mind only having 50% grey agouti in the offspring but not wanting to loose it totally.

any ideas room ?

Thanks
Darren

[darrenb]

I think ive sussed it out, in absence of a pair of grey agouti 1:1, i could use a slate as a partner:

grey agouti
A- C- E- gg P-

slate
aa C- E- gg P-

Seeing as the only genetic difference is the aa ( obviously this is the self belly part ) but the white belly is dominant so it sould[/work]. He hopes, please correct me if im well wrong.

[queenofthenile]

Hi Darren, you could actually breed a grey agouti with one of your colourpoint slates. I would think that this would probably be the easiest solution for you because you have this in your stock. Of course if your grey agouti or cp slate carry recessives then you *may* not get even 50% grey agouti. If neither carry recessives, you will get 100% grey agouti. Do you know if your cp slates carry e, d or p?

You could breed a grey agouti with any gerbil that is gg and wind up with grey agouti. Of course, the recessives that both gerbils carry will determine what percentage of grey agouti you will get.

The best choices would be gerbils that are recessive at only 2 alleles. This gives a statistically greater chance of producing higher percentages of grey agouti. So the best choices would be to pair with Ivory (gg pp), Polar Fox (ee gg), or Slate (aa gg). If you can't find those where you live, then you could look for gerbils with 3 recessives, ie: Cream Fox (aa ee gg), REW (aa gg pp), Silver Nutmeg (aa ee gg), or CP Slate (aa CbCb gg). Of course it would be easiest if you just used one of your CP Slates.

[darrenb]

Thanks for that, i did also ask the question on another gerbil forum, and the same responce was given.

I forgot that the ch genes were only resessives - i do have a wonderful adult CP slate and another very young cp slate that is like 2 weeks old now.

I am now having a look for a female grey agouti, i have sent a few emails out on the hunt as we seem to have a male population explosion going on in the UK - and the sad thing is a good grey agouti is hard to find over here as its not been a very popular colour for some reason..

[sandy2]

I think they are lovely!