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.
