Tricolor in combination with red
My red or creme tricolors are Ay based, the red is dominant and I often breed one of my Ay tricolors with a normal tricolor to get new red tricolors. A red tricolor can also be bred with recessive red, wich some breeders prever as the dominant red mice have a lethal gene that can cause obesity. I chose for dominant red because I allready had this line and I knew what to expect when breeding with these animals.
The red tricolors are quite a young line, I started this project in the beginning of 2014. The beginning of this line wasn't very hard, I had some Ay red mice and crossed thos with my normal tricolors. In the first litters there were just normal red youngs, but these carried C dilution (the gene that for instance causes black to turn into siamese), so I crossed these red offspring back to my tricolors and in these litters I found my first red splashed youngs, at this point it wasn't hard to get my line started.
Red tricolors show their color when they start growing hair, basicly aroung 7-9 days after birth. The hard part in breeding red tricolors is to get a bit more contrast in the three colors. The creme is often very light and hardly noticeable against the white and the red isn't that much darker then the creme. So my goal in this color currently is to get the red richer in color and darker.
