Provenance:
We checked and checked again with the experts in our chosen supplier and were given assurances that they only sell Winter Whites and that none of them are hybrids or cambpells but they offered no certification. However, you can't be sure and certified pedigree WW in the UK just doesn't seem to be a thing. I have only ever seen one pair of certified siblings for sale in the year I've been looking.
Chungles
looks like an absolutely perfect pedigree Winter White. He has all the characteristics, the colouring, the temperament … everything. He doesn't have any characteristics that I can see that would imply a break in his lineage. He just doesn't have a certificate.
Sossij, on the other hand, is slightly different. She's from the same supplier, albeit a few months later. She was nearly pure white when we bought her with her WW markings being a very fine beige or sandy colour. As she has grown up a little and grown out of her white coat, it's a much more silvery colour now and looks like those shown on the interwebs as "Pearl" winter whites. She has the right head shape, she has good boundaries on the side arches - no yellowing in the boundary - she has lighter eyebrows, a thick, but relatively faint, dorsal stripe. Heck, she even changed colour for winter. But … but but but, when you shine light at the correct angle, she has slightly ruby eyes and I hear that's impossible for a pedigree WW. So in short, everything about Sossij says she is a very high percentage WW, in fact I would happily call her a Winter White and not a hybrid, but somewhere in her lineage is an alien and she has inherited a slightly ruby hue to her eyes and a slight variation to her colouration.
tl:dr We have two dwarf hamsters which have all the hallmarks of being Winter Whites except one of them has a ruby hint to the eyes. I think this means they're good to go for mating as there's probably only a small percentage of alien genes deep in the past and they're very close to genetically pure. But I'm not the expert so I'm here asking those who are
I'll endeavour to get some pics up. Is there anything particular people would like to see for peace of mind?