About goals in breeding

[sirius]

Heya,
I put a subject like her, I got that idea from here;
malaysiagerbil.proboards84.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gynaecologist&thread=1149494357&page=1
And because that's a poll, i thought we could talk about that subject here.

So, bull lover said,that
"yes, no colors n no one know about gerbils here.. need to promote them!"

And only two has till now voted that 'getting colours better'.
Yeah, you 'can't' just mix that and that and maybe that to get new colours. With that idea your colours propably are not good and instead of trying the colour better and 'translating' good genes from mom&dad gerbils, you just want new colours.

First of all, you should decide what one/two main colours you starts to breed. Ofcourse there are some 'side colours' like if you breed agouti and argente, you can have a lot of different colours. But breeding a black eyed and red eyed.. hmmm..
Yeah, there are a lot of great colours and it's hard to decide which one to leave to be.
Why? Because if you start breeding all kind of colours and leave 2 babies (you should leave home even one) of the litter, soon you'll have many,many gerbils that are different colours and near eacheothers in 'family tree' and your breeding is a bit of lost at that time ; )
Of course you can breed some gerbils 'just like that' but you should know what you are doing, and that mom&dad are good types of gerbil and are not aggressive. I hope it's obvious to not breed agressive gerbil. (some future plans may get spoiled, if some gerbil starts going agressive, when you were planning to breed it...)
You can do some 'like that' litters and keep from there few and breed them then when is time with a same colour or 'help colour'.
'Help colours' are eg.:
Agouti; gerbil should be by it's colour a goldenred, and back and sides 'tipped' with black. .. yeah,all know what agouti should be. So to the point. It is said that the best colour to colour is the same colour. But in some cases are 'help colours'. Like with agoutis, you can use Honey fox, to bring reddisg to agouti, but like in all 'help colours' they do have a negative point - honey fox makes that 'tummy line' go too high with agoutis and makes that 'golden area' diseappear.

So these things should be know before breeding that and that, that you'll make some colours not-so-good and so it doesn't help you, likewise.

If someone has any questiong about the colours and 'help colours' and all, I would be pleased to answer

[jaswwp]

Yes dont worry we all have done research regarding gerbil genetics. The problem is here we only have limited colors, mostly black eyed, so we need to breed them to red eyed gerbils then breed their pups to other pups with similar resessive genes or breed to other red eyed gerbils. Those white , lilac and other red eyed gerbils you see on the forum we have mostly purchased from overseas to help in breeding new colors. So you will see we have a lot of black and agouti gerbil babies, but they mostly do carry resessive genes like Aa Ee and Pp, and will be useful for breeding the next generation.

[sirius]

If someone comes to Finland, I know where to buy gerbils ; )

[Nezumitaro]

yes jas had toldl all. we r not lucky like u in finland, u still can chose which black is nicer, which agouti to breed. we only hv the 1 agouti in our hand no matter if he/she is up to standard. there r no more gerbil in the market or petshop. we only hv the one in our hand now. thats y we either to breed them or just end when they end their life.

we canot affort to see if the gerbil is aggressivet, wat we can do is to tame them as much as we can. or just wave n say bye to gerbil after 2 - 3 yrs. thats y i breed gerbil but not my bulldog. cos i can get better quality bulldog out there.

[sirius]

Yeah.
First you come to forum where people mate this and that it's kind of 'what the.. why' -situation. I kind of did this because I wanted to know the facts of nobody didn't tell.
Well, I hope you'll get new colours and gerbils as well ; )
And should remember that some colours may be hard to tell, exspecially whites, what they truly are.
Also, if you got some really good pups, and you don't have any other gerbil to breed with (well,you have 6months time to wait and search) also can think about sexing sisters. I know it sounds crazy, but those babies are not more 'sick' or something, only if that familysexing goes on, then. Also remember that those negative genes from ma&da comes easier than if you have no-related- gerbils. I say this, cuz this is also a thing, what you can do. But keep it low, cuz you know where it comes that someone get's idea to sex sisters in no better meaning.
I also respect you, you guys do a lot of great work out there! : )

[jaswwp]

yes, if there is no choice then we can inbreed, but just trying not to for now. At least some pet shops have imported some gerbils from Holland, so we have some new stock now, hehe