Broken Marked

Best Marked broken bred and owned by Humbug Stud

The broken gene is a recessive marking. For that reason brokens are inbred and sometimes as a result a strain can decline in fertility or resistance to disease. In this case an outcross will have to be made. This can either be to another strain of brokens or to a mouse the colour of the broken’s spots. If using a non-broken to outcross, the fancier will be in for the long haul. If you cross a broken to, for example, a cream, your litter will all be selfs. You then need to keep all the does from the self litter and mate them back to your broken stud buck. From this mating you will achieve heavily marked brokens as well as selfs. You need to keep the broken does and mate them back to a broken buck to achieve lighter markings, and so on. This does still produce brokens with better type/colour (depending on what you outcrossed for) although this can be lost quickly in some cases. An extra advantage, however, is that you can increase fertility and resistance to disease at the same time as trying to improve the type and size.

The ideal broken should have a nose spot that covers a decent area inside the whisker bed, a spot on the opposite ear and randomly placed spots over the rest of the body. Pigment tends to remain lastly in the head and rump area, so these areas can become overly pigmented even though the body has the right spots. Try not to breed from mice with heavy rump markings. Some fanciers advise to never use a buck without a nose spot, which is sensible advice. If a buck is good but lacks a nose spot by all means keep him, but all things being equal with another buck, keep the buck with the nose spot as this is a desirable characteristic.

Some people believe in trying to balance a broken’s spots in the characteristics of the parents. For example if a mouse is ‘one-sided’ (spots mostly on one side) they might mate it to a mouse who has most of its spots on the opposite side. This theory also advocates breeding mice with a nose spot on the same side to try to ‘fix’ the characteristic in the offspring.

Broken Satin