Varieties

I - Self

Pink Eyed White (pew), Black Eyed White (bew)

pew: - c/c - (Note: while all albino c/c mice are pink eyed white, not all PEW are genetically albinos!
bew: a marked mouse (or a very light bone, or red + c-locus recessives ce or lower)

"The white shall be pure in colour. Eye pink or black. Satin to be called Ivory and to be as pure white as possible."

Breeding information below the pictures.

Pink eyed white

Sh pew uros
b. Peter de Vries (NL), ow. Anniina Tuura
pic: Anniina Tuura

(click the pic for a larger image)

Shs pink eyed ivory Necropolis Silverwing
b. ow. & pic: Kaisu Airaksinen

(click the pic for a larger image)

Black eyed white

Lh black eyed white buck DCh Thapsus Naos
b., ow. & pic: Meri Orrainen

(Click the pic for a larger image.)

Astralis Chandalar

Sh bew doe Astralis Chandalar
b., om & pic: Johanna Salo

Note: This article is old and waiting to be rewritten.

Quick Look on PEW

This is the Fancy Mouse of all fancy mice. It is big in size and has excellent type. It's also usually low in faults. When mated to another PEW, only PEW will be born as this variety is genetically an albino. PEWs are used to improve size and type of other varieties, but it's not a 'completely safe' crossing! Being an albino, the PEW can carry almost any colors, so all kinds of 'surprises' may crop up when mated with another colour.

However, it should be noted that not all pink eyed white mice are necessarily albinos. Due to the diluting factors present in the C-locus, the PEW can also be genetically pink-eyed red (= fawn) with ch/ch, ch/c, cch/cch or ce/ce. These mice are prone to obesity and tend to be of poorer type. Therefore, they aren't very common. Genetically pink eyed bone mice can look white enough to pass as PEW. Other "PEW-lookalikes" include Himalayan with p/p.

Quick Look on BEW

BEW mice are very far from PEW indeed and have (almost) nothing to do with bone! BEWs are actually (or, mostly) marked mice with no markings except for the colour of the eye. This is quite hard to breed into perfection and a large amount of marked young are born in a litter. Lightest marked does should be mated to the purest coloured bucks to give a fair percentage of clear white young. True BEW mice don't crop up in a litter of selfs (again, BEW being 'marked' variety) and when breeding for BEW, self or (properly) marked mice shouldn't be used! BEW mice have been bred from variegateds and bandeds in Finland. There are also some 'special' genes that produce BEW, but many of them are lethal, so some of the babies will die before birth or at a young age.

When I wrote (almost) nothing to do with BEB, I meant that one way of producing BEW is to get double dose of "extreme dilution" gene into a Red mouse. This dilutes the Red pigment into white.