Hello everyone, I hope you are all well! I have been terrible with popping in here but I wanted to share my latest litter (and hopefully be a bit move active with all you lovely folks).
The mum of this litter is our lovely Lady Karamilk Starbuck Fluffybottoms, affectionately referred to as Starbuck. She's a LH cinnamon from Holmden Hill Haven, with lines that date back to River Road Hamstery. She has wonderful type and a fantastic genetic temperament. She was Janice's pick of the litter, and I am so blessed and fortunate Janice saw me fit to have her, and breed her.
Starbuck's genotype is Aa C- Ee pp Rd- Rx- ll - so we wanted to pair her with one of our extreme dilute boys. My extreme dilutes have "okay" type, but they definitely need some help as their faces get quite long. My ED blacks are also browning more than I'd like, so with this great outcross I was hoping to sort that out. Luckily, the natural temperament on my EDs is fabulous and I've certainly selected for the best ones.
We tried her first with Toby (ED black band) and when that didn't work, brought in his son, Hamlet (ED black). Nothing was working - so we added sun lights to our house, bumped the temperature of the house, and began feeding the girls leafy greens to simulate spring. Still nothing!
Losing hope, I tried her on a whim with Hamlet's son, JD, who is a melanistic yellow carrying ED. Once, and bam! Starbuck ballooned. JD's type isn't too awful, definitely better than Toby's, and his temperament is wonderful. He's just rather small and kind of lanky. His genotype is aa Cc(e) P- ToY Ll so we're expecting LH pups from this pair.
She had her pups during the day yesterday (we were at work) and has been tending to them ever since. She's been a very good mum to them so far!
I'm very glad things have gone well with this litter. Our last litter, in December, ended up being a very stressful and sobering experience in my breeding career. The female, Gherkin, experienced dystocia (pup stuck in her uterus). Since we don't bother our females, we didn't discover the issue until two days after birth. There had been signs something wasn't quite right (she barely touched the supplements I put out) but two days later, at 6am I noticed a lot of blood in the bin. We got her out, and she was very weak, but still nursing her eight pups. I got SubQ fluids into her, we phoned Ontario Veterinary College, packed up Gherkie and her eight pups and drove off.
She was in very unstable condition, but the vet agreed to operate as it was the only way to save her life. The pups were kept in an incubator while they performed the emergency hysterectomy. No one thought she would survive... but she did! She even accepted her eight pups back after that, which was amazing.
Gherkin was hospitalized for two days, and sadly we lost four pups. Due to the hysterectomy, she was going to stop lactating. We found her four remaining pups a foster mum. She accepted the babies wonderfully, though unfortunately we did lose three of the remaining pups. It left us with one - Bumble - who has some lingering health problems as a result of the fostering/emergency and will either stay with us or live with Gherkin's family (she was on loan). Gherkin healed beautifully and is now back with her family, however the entire experience was very traumatic and terrifying. I was just lucky and glad we were equipped to deal with it, both in our abilities, and financially (just Gherkin's surgery and hospitalization were $1100, not including other costs). She received absolutely the best care, and we will be taking all future hamsters to OVC.
Hope to update you all with their growth soon!