Towards the end of 1999 we received a call from a friend who'd just returned home from traveling interstate, saying that she'd picked up some unusual looking mice in NSW, and thought they may be Rex.

When I saw them, they certainly looked like Rex, in fact one was a longhaired Rex, a variety called Texel. From these 2 males, "Teddy" - a silvertan stumpy Manx Astrex, and "Ruxpin" - a Black berkshire Texel, we started the lines we have today. To our knowledge these were the first Rex gene mice in Qld.

There are a number of genes, some dominant, some recessive that can cause a curled/waved coat in mice. The two most common in the fancy are the recessive gene fz (Fuzzy) and the dominant gene Re (Rex). It didn't take long for us to discover that the gene causing the mice we had, was a dominant one. Because there were both texels and astrex in our first two litters, where the females were not Rexed.

"Ruxpin" was bred to a marked Balinese female "C.Shelley", On the 7/12/99 there were two texels in the litter & we kept both of them - "Carawatha Eugene" & "Carawatha Purma". (Pic A 3.1)

"Teddy" was bred to a beige banded female "Lacock Lucinda" The litter, born on 10/12/99 was half Astrex(5). We kept a dove banded Astrex male from this litter "Carawatha Biggles" .

Mice that are homozygous for the gene usually display better coat quality than heterozygous ones. In a large proportion of Astrex and Texel mice, the exquisite, almost permed effect of the waved juvenile coat, gradually diminishes with age, and in some individuals, it disappears altogether. Both vibrissae and guard hairs on this variety are also curly, and unlike the coat quality, this does persist into adulthood. These curly guard hairs often give texel mice the effect of having a halo of wispy hair all around them.

"Ruxpin" was also bred to our Longhaired self champagne girl "C.Cuvee" & on 18/12/99 she gave birth to a whopping great litter of 17 mouselings. We kept a self chocolate texel female from this litter "Carawatha Greta".

"C.Purma" was bred to "C.Biggles" & at first we didn't think Purma was pregnant, but then on Valentines day in 2000 one little texel female was born. This mouse "Carawatha Chantilly Lace" a mismarked grey roan Bi-colour.

& we mated "C.Biggles" back to his mother "Lacock Lucinda", & on 16/02/00 2 mouselings were born. We kept the female "Carawatha Calliope" a beige banded texel. (Pic A3.3)-

(NOW LIVING WITH HARRINGTON MOUSERY - the majority of this line went to live at either Harrington's or Rosenberg.)

On 23/03/00 a litter of 4 were born to "C.Biggles" & "C.Greta" We kept 3 of these. A Black Longhaired Even marked female (Pic a3.5) "Carawatha Gypsy" A Silver & White marked texel male "Carawatha Groucho Marked", & A self Silver Texel female "Carawatha Victoria". The fourth baby "Carawatha Miscreant" went to Harrington mousery.

Chantilly & Victoria (Pic A3.2), Greta, Calliope(Pic A3.3), Groucho(Pic A3.4) & C.Biggles became our foundation stock.