Day Three
By now the Tortoiseshell fever was strong in my desires to produce, BUT that required a Yellow or Yellow combination color hamster coming into my life. I went to the big name pet store with the red bouncing ball in it's sign and decided to look at their hamsters. They had one tank labeled as "Honey Bears". In it was the must lovely colored hamster I'd ever seen and it was too gold to be Cream but too cream to be Golden. He was very curious of me so I asked to visit with him. Upon holding him I noted he had a few sparse hairs on his back which were odd being black. With a little more gene knowledge now I knew this was not a BEC hamster but what on earth was he as he was a self pattern so couldn't be Yellow, but his ticking screamed he was Yellow. Enter Pooh Bear into ST's Hamstery. Who ended up a satin cream carrying Melanistic Yellow
With Pooh Bear came a very harsh lesson on how bad it can be to use one male to produce all of the pups of one gene pool. I bred Pooh Bear to Panther who was a solid black Spicks grand daughter. Here is the results of my very first Yellow breeding here at ST's Hamstery
Yes folks that is 15 precious pups and only one pup ended up not satin against all odds as usually it would only be 50% of the litter would be satin.
My keeper was a Satin Black Tort girl named Ripley because her pattern made her look rippled.
Ripley was a fighter and when I fed contaminated with Salmonella Bean Sprouts she was the only one to recover of all the adult hamsters who got sick. However she never was healthy enough to breed and was petted out to a truck driver who loved her as much as if not more then I did. She passed away peacefully in their hands at 22 months old.
However I learned after many more litters by Poohbear that he had a genetic issue with his heart and began getting phone calls from many people who had PB's great grandsons on finding them dead in their nest at just over 8 weeks old. It was always males and always dead in the nest after being active and playing the day before. Being a responsible breeder I had to remove every hamster in my breeding colony which went back to Pooh Bear and find them all Pet homes. This was one of the hardest things for me to do as I had based my whole Hamstery on that one male and his satin Melanistic son Echo.
