The Spangled Mouse

01/03/2025

I currently have 5 doelings available that are ready for their new homes! 2 dove self texels, 2 black pied texels, and a chocolate self show type. All are hand tame and eagerly looking forward to meeting their new parents!

In order to speed up the process, please message me answers to the following questions, if you are interested in any of them:

What is your nearest major city and state? Do you live close enough that you can pick up your mice in person, here in Saint Helens, Oregon? Are you looking for pets-only, or for breeding mice? Do you currently own mice, and if so, how many and what s*x(es)? What size cage do you plan to house your mice in, for how many mice? What type of food do you plan to feed? What type of shavings do you plan to use?

Thanks so much!

10/01/2025

My favorite, tightly curled, long ringletted doeling, that I have produced in a long time. She is a blue self texel, and will be staying here.

10/01/2025

Lovey curls on this blue pied texel buckling. I expect his coat to increase in length prior to his adult molt, so I will be eagerly watching him.

07/01/2025

Important announcement:

There is a prior adopter who is making a spurious claim about us in various mouse groups.

I adopted a single boy mouse to them, on 6/12/24, and have not spoken to them since. They have not been in touch with me regarding any health issues whatsoever. That was about 7 months ago. I have never mentored them or stated that I would be their mentor.

Attached is their statement on a mouse group, stating that mice from myself and another local breeder, have some type of unknown disease. They have yet to post any veterinary findings or necropsy findings, let alone findings that would state that our mice have any type of diseases. Again, I sent them a single mouse, SEVEN MONTHS AGO, and now various other mouse breeder friends are messaging me screenshots of this person’s claims against me.

If my mouse had any contagious diseases, he wouldn’t have lived for the last 7 months, and this person’s mouse colony would not have survived the last 7 months either.

Further, I have been told recently that this person was diagnosed with MRSA, then they gave it to their own mice, and then contracted it back again from their mice. One could reason, then, that it is this person’s own MRSA infection that is affecting their mice.

I will be eagerly awaiting any and all necropsy, histopathology, or other veterinary test results pertaining to this issue, that can specifically be traced back to the single mouse I sent this person 7 months ago. As they have several mice from various breeders/locations, any number of things would be passed back and forth, but I await all updates.

I try really hard to stay out of drama, and to keep this page a professional representation of my mice, and a celebration of them. I feel I have no choice but to set the record straight in this case, but I apologize to all my adopters and friends, for bringing drama here.

I have not, nor do I plan, to delete my mousery page.

Wishing you all the best in 2025, and of course, please, if you ever have any issues with your mice from me, send me a message! I always want to know and want to help if I can.

Sincerely,

The Spangled Mouse

PS— editing to just add their crazy Craigslist post. Animal abuse?

PPS— the hairless boy I sold them last June, was sold pet only, but he is clearly with another mouse in the photo they posted above.

27/12/2024

Keeper black pied texel buckling

22/12/2024

MOUSERY NEWS:

Well, I find myself at a crossing point with my texels. Their temperaments are good, no obvious or repeatable health issues. And their coats are the best so far that I have ever produced

A vital part of being an ethical mouse breeder, there comes cross roads, and choosing the direction to take your entire mousery, is a difficult and emotional time.

From my very beginning experiences with mice, I wanted to breed texels, including texels that can produce pied (but also plenty of selfs too, which are easier to show).

My very first crossed between two entirely unrelated bloodlines, is how I got my start in breeding texels. Neither foundation group were hand tame, but when I crossed them. Well, whatever genetic tameness they did have, absolutely did not line up on the DNA strands. I had to cull at least 6/8 pups for vicious biting, leaving me 2 pups to evaluate for breeding quality. I work for the next 2.5 years or so, selecting only the tamest mice to breed from, regardless of coat color or coat quality (I culled many that has exquisit coats, but they had sh*tty temperaments, and we really just cannot abide that if we are going to say that we are improving our bloodlines. Temperament should be FIRST and possibly, ONLY, for many generations until the tameness is set in stone. It is really grueling work, and a lot of times, you go many months feeling like you’re making zero progress towards any of your goals.

Many of you have heard all that before.

Here’s what I really came here to say. I do not want to be a Linda. In multiple ways, but here I am meaning that her extreme inbreeding for untold years, I think had severe deleterious effects on her bloodlines. I do believe that outcrossing should be done when needed, to prevent or try to correct, inbreeding depression/low fertility in a line, and possibly bring in some other traits you’d like to add to your line. For me, in an ideal world, I don’t want to outcross my texel line more than once every 2 years. I am open to bringing in a few unrelated texel lines to outcross to all at the same time, since for me, it isn’t going to take substantially more effort or time, to get all that fresh DNA and modifiers to work with, while only having to deal with the resulting year or so, before I can reliably get my coats back to how I want them, possibly even better, as I’d like more density in my coats. And only have to deal with the nasty temperaments caused by their tameness genes/modifiers, for about that single year (though I’d love to be pleasantly surprised with sweet temperaments much more quickly, so I can focus more quickly on coat quality).

Aaaaallll that said, I guess I am waving my white flag of defeat. I can’t find any line of texels in the US, that haven’t had C dilutes added to the line. I guess if nobody else cares. It’s better to join the team C dilute madness texels. 😛

So that’s my big announcement. Many of you know I have tried everything I can think of to avoid introducing C dilutes into my texel line, to prevent CP linkage. Guess if it doesn’t matter to literally anyone else, I will grind my teeth and bear it. Thankfully I do have some local friends who have been doing lots of great outcrossing their texels for health. So I figure if a snag some from each of their programs, that should provide a robust genetic pool to keep my texels healthy long term, until the next dreaded outcross in 2ish years. lol

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Photos are just to demonstrate some of the texels I have bred over the years, that I am really proud of. These specific mice are not available.

20/11/2024

Extremely happy with this future stud buck. He is sweet, and his coat is what I have been dreaming of for my bucks for many years. In my bloodline of texel mice, the coats are very much s*x linked. The best does have shorter costs but tightly curled ringlets. The best bucks have very long fluffy coats, but only a bit of wave to them. In this buck, we get both!! Now to make his future generations have even longer coats while holding this much curl. Best of all, I have 3 brothers with this same coat quality, his is just slightly the best. I am keeping the top 2, possibly the 3rd as well. Very excited to see how these boys continue to improve the coats on my texel mice in generations to come!www.facebook.com/TheSpangledMouse

20/11/2024

The Spangled Mouse

20/11/2024

Extremely happy with this future stud buck. He is sweet, and his coat is what I have been dreaming of for my bucks for many years. In my bloodline of texel mice, the coats are very much s*x linked. The best does have shorter costs but tightly curled ringlets. The best bucks have very long fluffy coats, but only a bit of wave to them. In this buck, we get both!! Now to make his future generations have even longer coats while holding this much curl. Best of all, I have 3 brothers with this same coat quality, his is just slightly the best. I am keeping the top 2, possibly the 3rd as well. Very excited to see how these boys continue to improve the coats on my texel mice in generations to come!

www.facebook.com/TheSpangledMouse

19/10/2024

ISO WANTED: Who all has high quality show type mice available for this November cross country run, please?

Looking for an outcross show type line, needs to be either self or tan or pointed/C-dilute. No angora/pied carriers ideally. And more importantly, must not carry PED (pink eyed dilute/dove) as I am wanting to avoid creating C-P linkage. Show-pet or in-progress show type could be welcome, if friendly, healthy, and typey/robust.

I am located in NW Oregon, so at the middle of the run. I am unsure which direction Mel is heading first, but can confirm with Mel if/when I find a promising match.

Please comment and/or send me a message! Mel wants to get in all forms asap so they can finalize their November route.

My mousery is:
www.facebook.com/TheSpangledMouse

12/10/2024

Cross country transport is available this November, if you’d like to get some mice from me. See some examples of my mice on my page. (Exact photos of my available mice will be provided as we get closer to the transport dates):

www.facebook.com/TheSpangledMouse

This Thanksgiving, we’re headed west! 🦃

📍 West & South
🗓️ November 17-24

Mel's Neighborhood Rodents will be delivering to the following states shown on the map. Fill out a form or contact us on our website to inquire!

⚠️ We would like to keep this trip as concise as possible. For this reason, stop requests MUST be along the dotted line, or reasonably nearby.
🌐 Please view our site and our transportation group for important adoption, surrender, & transportation information!
🏠 Proof of a SUITABLE enclosure for your future furry friend is required in order to submit an adoption form.

View our available rescues, as well as those from our rescue partners, on our site: https://www.melsneighborhood.com/adoption/rescues

13/08/2024

Very sweet, hand tame, chocolate self show type buckling, ready to go to a pet-home only. His muzzle is shorter than preferred for show mice, and would be genetic, so that is the reason he is pet-home only, not for breeding. Local pick up in St Helens, OR.

13/08/2024

Very sweet, hand tame, chocolate self show type buckling, ready to go to a pet-home only. His muzzle is shorter than preferred for show mice, and would be genetic, so that is the reason he is pet-home only, not for breeding.

Local pick up in St Helens, OR.

13/08/2024

2 sweet dove self texel doelings are ready to go to their new home! Please message me. Local pick up in St Helens Oregon.

29/07/2024

3 of my current fully adult breeding does who have each already had at least one litter. Normally texels will all have their best quality coats as pups under 12 weeks old, then go through a normal molt where they lose some amount of their curls and fur length, and the resulting shorter, less curly coat is what they will have for the rest of their lives. I have been working hard for years to improve the quality of my adult texel coats. This is an extremely slow process because I still have to prioritize baby coat quality, as that is the age when texel mice are shown at mouse shows, and that is the age where they have the best potential. Also, you have to prioritize health and temperament as well. And lastly, if you wait until the mice are 6 months old before evaluating how their coats ended up as adults, to choose which ones to breed, you’d end up with too many mice for not enough space, and you’d only maybe be able to get 1 litter per doe at that point. So instead, I breed the ones that have the best baby coats, but after their first litter, once they have fully molted into their adult coats, I remove any from my breeding program that didn’t keep a significant amount of curl and fur length after molting. As I said, it is a slow process (years) but I am really quite happy right now to be achieving such beautiful results in my older mice, on a more consistent basis.

29/07/2024

3 ee yellow pied texel pups (2 does, 1 buck) and a blue pied text buck pup. NOT AVAILABLE, these are keeper quality and are staying here. Very happy with these guys!