Info and help please? (Matty Day)

[Tammy22]

Hi Matty, (or anyone else who can help)

hope you dont mind me asking you this!

I recently had someone email me with this question:

Hi, i was wondering if you could help me. I have to grey Chinese hamsters (that are living in different cages) one male and one female (they look identical.) I am going to breed them in just over a month (then they will be the right ages) i have been feeling confident about breeding them as i have read loads over the past 3 weeks but recently people have told me i cant breed two of the same coulor is this true?


I havent got a clue about breeding chinese hamsters!

Can anyone help me out? - i will definately be sending my "essay" about not breeding without researching and the ins and outs of breeding etc., but i just wanted some info about the questions they asked??

Thanks very much.

Tammy x

[Matty Day]

yes you can though it should be obvious which is the male .the only thing i would be careful about is breeding two Dom spots .you can do it. And m the pups will be fine . but its advisable to have more cages as you might get weaker babies or even a black eyed white. And defiantly smaller litters due to the white gene. no eyeless whites though

[Bunsey]

25% of the babies will die in womb as Ds to Ds is lethal. is this the one on the other forum? there's a girl on there who wants to breed her two grey chinese. i had to tell her what a dominant spot was as she'd never heard of the term. the hams are brother and sister from a pet shop! the way she writes, it sure sounds like her. please don't anyone encourage her to breed!

[Tammy22]

Hi Bunsey,

just checked the other forum, yes it is her!

Tammy x

[agatecrystal]

She obviously hasn't done all of her reading then to want to breed a brother and sister! silly girl

[Matty Day]

25% of the babies will die in womb as Ds to Ds is lethal. !

many breeders of Chinese still do it and I certainly will in the future partly as I want to see if I can stabilise the black eyed white mutation ( I am not alone on this one and am thinking of working with another Chinese breeder to see if we can do it). and I want to have a separate normal line as it tends to lower the quality of the normal’s if you have Dom spot in the line they grey a bit

Thought it does put me in a dilemma do I introduce Dom spot now and split the lines later. Or do I breed pure normals . And get totally unrelated hamsters and have a separate line

Or do I keep a mix going and separate later

[Bunsey]

you could take one normal baby, get an unrelated DS and mate those, then sell any normal babies, then just mate DS in that line and normals in the other line.

[Matty Day]

that’s the plan but I don’t want to do it until late 2009 when I will have more space and funds

the dilemma is what to do for the next couple of years in the mean time keep a mix until split or keep pure normal until a mating before split

[Bunsey]

i'd go with pure normals. I'm planning to breed normal WW and i'd just love pearls, too, but it's not a good idea because it'd weaken my normals :(