Old pairs, new pairs

[sandy]

Hi, as some of you are quite interested in how to breed gerbils for colour improvement, I thought I'd show you some repairing I'm doing right now.

First off, I unpaired some:

Tamihi and Milky Way: Heavily pied black female and mottled black male. They had 3 litters. I was disappointed in the pups, they all looked more like mom and none were heavily mottled as I had hoped. She's carrying one last litter of Milky Way's.



So Tamihi is now paired up with Fiero. They are first cousins because Tamihi's dad and Fiero's mom were brother and sister. They both carry great mottling potential, and between them they can produce all four basic colours: agouti, black, argente, and lilac.

Fiero (mottled Argente Golden):



Milky Way I paired with McFarlane, a heavily pied Agouti that has had some mottled pups in her previous litters, but usually only one mottled pup per litter. I'm hoping breeding her to Milky Way will increase the number of mottled pups she could have.

I've also unpaired Jasper and Caledonia, the parents of RitziAnn's pup because I already have a pair producing a nice range of colourpoint-type pups and I don't want to exceed my market.

Mountain Dew and McFarlane have been unpaired; they produced one mottled pup per litter but I'd like to see more!



I bred Mountain Dew, my heavily pied Agouti male, to my spotted Burmese female, Queen Noor.


I want to have one litter of pups that carry both mottling modifiers and colourpoint genes. All of the pups will carry c(chm) and I will choose the most heavily pied ones to breed together in a new line. Mountain Dew and my Spotted Burmese are completely unrelated.

My two PEW (or possibly DTW) young males have been paired up. Since I only want one litter out of Mountain Dew and Queen Noor (now pregnant, and due next week), I have paired her up with one of my PEW males, Neo (hopefully he doesn't eat the pups). I'm hoping they'll have lots of spotted siamese pups in future.

The other PEW male, Nova, I have paired with a young Burmese female (hmm...names) in order to find out what genes he carries. I know both PEW's are c(h)c(h) but I don't know if they are A* or aa and/or spotted. So this breeding (one or two litters only) will show me.

Neo (PEW with two Himalayan genes, could turn into a DTW):


Mountain Dew I paired up with my young mottled dark Lilac (she's the sister of the dark Lilac pup in the last thread) female, Osoyoos. They are unrelated. Both of them have very intense colours and great potential for mottled pups with good rich tones in the basic 4 colours.

[sweetie]

Wow Sandy,

I hope that you get what you are looking for.
When unpairing and pairing do you use the split cage method? How long does it take? Have you been successful with all the introductions?

[RitzieAnn]

Good question Sweetie! I was sort of wondering that too. I put Ritzie with Blitz (Lilac, I think) and it took a while..... but they're fine now.

Sandy- Osoyoos looks a LOT like Gizmo. (I had him at our meeting, and he was the one I'd like to breed to Kandice later on)

I also like how you explained all of this WITH the pictures! It's really nice, and It helps to SEE the gerbil, and know what it is at the same time! Thanks for taking the time to do this! ;D

[sandy]

I've found that the younger the female, the easier it is to pair up with a male. My oldest female is Tamihi, who I split caged with Fiero. He's very young as well, so it went quite successfully. Both gerbils are under a year. Mountain Dew seems to be the most territorial male I have, but since both Queen Noor and Osoyoos are very young (3 months) intros were no problem. Milky Way is a gentleman, and I have never had any problems pairing him up with any female I try. I use him a lot for "stud" for that reason. He's super easygoing.

Ritzie, I can't remember if your Gizmo is a lilac or a sapphire. If he is a lilac you will get the usual colours in pups from mating him with Kandace (Agouti, Black, Argente, Topaz and Arg. Cream, Lilac, Sapphire and Dove) but if he is Sapphire you will get those colours plus Burmese, Siamese, Colourpoint Agouti, and Light Colourpoint Agouti. If he carries a recessive p you could also get PEW.