This article is from the WSSF 2016 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Karen Robbins

Sariah Lily Jones, Facebook
Q My Blizzard: she’s a Variegated Agouti, right? She looks just like the Variegated Agouti.

A Yes, Blizzard is an Agouti Variegated. Variegated have the Cap and solid butt markings with the splashes in the middle ranging from just a few to more solid (one interesting note, by combining the patch and viable dominant spotting genes, those mice have just the Cap www.informatics.jax.org/greenbook/figures/figure21-2.shtml). It takes a lot of selection to get these areas broken up. Usually, when you try to break up the head and butt patches, you get less splashes, so it takes a lot of patience to get the solid markings all broken up while keeping as many splashes all over as possible to get the ideal Variegated. N.M.C. breeders have done wonders with this marking by getting rid of the solid head and butt markings but maintaining the splashes overall.

An Agouti Broken Marked mouse owned by Kelli Boka, bred by Sarah Cudbill, England. Photo ©2007 Craig Robbins.

Their markings are ragged on the edges, where a spotted gene (ss) mouse usually has clear-cut markings. Also, a spotted mouse can range from a little white, to the entire body white with no spots.

Variegated is the dominant white gene that includes Variegated Ww and Banded W^shW^sh and one we don’t have in the fancy, Viable Dominant Spotting W^v. That means when you breed a Variegated to a solid/Self, you will get some Variegateds in the litter. Breeding two Variegateds together is not recommended as this is a homozygous lethal gene and you get the fatal/macrocytic anemic BEW mice (WW) that usually die early or have health problems.

There is a good article on Dominant White, Analysis of Pleiotropism at the Dominant White-Spotting (W) Locus of the House Mouse: A Description of Ten New W Alleles. Edwin N. Geissler, Eleanor C. McFarland and Elizabeth S. Russell. Genetics, 97: 337–361, February, 1981. You can also read more on Variegated in the AFRMA Mouse Genetics book.

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