Looking for breeders in the U.S.

[firedrake13]

You say you don't want to cut corners but you're planning to breed pet shop hamsters without knowing their genetic history. That right there is cutting corners. TBH I think your being pretty selfish. I have currently 5 hamsters I've bought from pet shops, and a total of 11 hamsters in my home right now due to the current re-homing of the Oops babies from the two pregnant females I aquired not knowing they were pregnant. All of these hamsters and happy and healthy, but that doesn't change the fact that my Nanashi still had to be PTS due to a rectal prolapse due to poor breeding. Just because it's never happened to you doesn't mean it wont, and it's pretty immature of you to think otherwise. These are things YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT if you plan to do this. I in no way will EVER condone someone breeding petshop hamsters just to supply another shop. This will only help fuel more poor genetics to be out there...and having the heart break of any number of health issues that come along with these types of breedings.

These videos are just an example of what your breedings could cause:

Erin's Pippy

Think Before You Breed from SnickersTheFirst

[LocoRocoPanda]

My hybrid, Rao, died due to poor health.

The thing is, poor genes lurk. Sometimes they can strike and sometimes they won't it's not fair breeding animals who could have potential health risks. All sorts of things you can't see!

These things can never be rushed to and as the saying goes "If a job is worth doing it's worth doing right." Or something like that.

Either way, you should always seek the healthiest possible hamsters for breeding and if that means paying for shipping healthy breeder hams, then that's the price to pay for good health.

[Hamtastic]

Originally Posted by Almi

I honestly believe the reason we have very few GOOD breeders anywhere is because all of the hamster enthusiasts and breeders convince the general population that breeding hamsters is not something that should be done by anyone except experts, and only in one specific way - and that they are certainly not capable of becoming an expert in the field and no one trusts them to breed "correctly."

I strongly doubt that this is the reason. I think it's more like hamsters are by far not as popular in the U.S. as dogs and cats are, and maybe rabbits and some other animals. Those who do own hamsters are casual owners for the most part who don't necessarily know much. It's frequently children, who are given small animals by their parents because of the low maintenance factor and short life span (= low commitment). Plenty of people breed for fun without checking into animal background and health history. Usually just a litter here and there (like "oh it'd be fun to get hamster babies, I'll go get myself a boy and a girl") I highly doubt most hamster owners even know what a hybrid is or that syrian hamsters don't just come in "teddy bear" and "fancy" varieties. It's easy to see that it's the case just by browsing Yahoo Answers, Youtube, and small scale forums, and product reviews on major pet chain store sites. If they don't know that, they probably don't know about what professional breeding of hamsters is like or really consider it. Those who want to be serious about breeding can always become such--the information is available on the web, hamster forums are a registration away, and contacting experienced breeders for tips is not that difficult.

[Almi]

I guess it's a little redundant that saying what I'm doing is selfish. You bought a hamster from a pet store. Why? To have for a pet. For yourself. That's selfish. It's not wrong or bad, but certainly selfish. Owning pets, particularly caged pets, is selfish.

I agree with both of you. However, in order to snatch up the opportunity, I must begin acquiring hamsters immediately, or the store will just find another source to get their hamsters from.

This is why I don't understand why breeders won't more willingly sell and ship their hamsters to people that know how to breed and all of what it entails but just lack the proper breeding stock.

So, unless someone wants to help me acquire some good quality animals, saying that you "don't approve" in some way or another is just beating a dead horse.

[Almi]

Originally Posted by Hamtastic

I strongly doubt that this is the reason. I think it's more like hamsters are by far not as popular in the U.S. as dogs and cats are, and maybe rabbits and some other animals. Those who do own hamsters are casual owners for the most part who don't necessarily know much. It's frequently children, who are given small animals by their parents because of the low maintenance factor and short life span (= low commitment). Plenty of people breed for fun without checking into animal background and health history. Usually just a litter here and there (like "oh it'd be fun to get hamster babies, I'll go get myself a boy and a girl") I highly doubt most hamster owners even know what a hybrid is or that syrian hamsters don't just come in "teddy bear" and "fancy" varieties. It's easy to see that it's the case just by browsing Yahoo Answers, Youtube, and small scale forums, and product reviews on major pet chain store sites. If they don't know that, they probably don't know about what professional breeding of hamsters is like or really consider it. Those who want to be serious about breeding can always become such--the information is available on the web, hamster forums are a registration away, and contacting experienced breeders for tips is not that difficult.

That is certainly another factor, but you can't deny the fact that that is what the hamster community generally does.

And well, I am serious about breeding and doing it in a way that I deem "right." I don't think the fact that I want to sell to a privately owned pet store that I trust is a good reason to "not allow" me to breed.

I do not lack information when it comes to hamster breeding. I do, however, lack quality hamsters with pedigrees.

[radiocricket]

Looks like I have a few posts to catch up, I hope I don't miss any of the points I'd like to address.

Breeding from pet store hamsters isn't all necessarily bad. Great quality hamsters can be found in pet stores- where do you think most of my pups go? The problems that you'll see with pet store hamsters are poor natural temperaments, infectious disease and hereditary disease. Also, you may not have the ability to screen for breed quality animals from the limited number of hamsters available.

Let's tackle these one at a time. With the poor temperaments, sure most hamsters can be tamed but do you have the discipline to remove a hamster from breeding lines when you can see the temperament is poor? Will you really care? What if it's a beautiful Chocolate Dominant Spot Longhaired male? What if it's a beautiful Silver Black Tortoiseshell female that's in heat right now and you know you won't have enough hamsters to meet the pet store's demand otherwise? This is something that most novice breeders can't do, unbiased, knowledgable selective breeding. It's much easier to focus on the hamsters on hand today than to think about where your lines will be generations down the road. There is definitely a difference between the temperament of my pups versus the pups from commercial breeders. I can't tell you how many times store owners and distributors have commented to me about it. That is my reward for all my selective breeding over so many generations and years, getting them to this point. I will occasionally breed a pet store hamter into my lines. The difference in their pups' temperament is obvious. It will ususally take me 2-3 generations to bring the temperament back to the point I like it and that's with breeding back to my lines, not breeding in additional unknown hamsters.

In your situation, quantity is more important than temperament.

Then there's the concern of infectious disease. Syrians are highly susceptable to contagious disease other animals carry. It's why you see so many hamsters in the pet stores with "wet tail". Let's say you drive around and acquire 20-30 pet store hamsters to begin your breeding program. Do you have the means to adequately quarantine them? What about six months from now when you bring in more? Not just in separate rooms, but so they can't contract anything once it all goes airborne? What are you going to do once you do have an illness outbreak? Are you prepared for the vet bills, the lab testing and the work it's going to take to disinfect everything? Now that you're pregnant, you don't want to be around strong disinfectants. Also, lets say that three months into it, a hamster comes down with diarrhea. Are you going to be able to tell the pet store that you can't supply them with pups until you're sure they aren't infected with anything or do you just sell them and hope it turns out okay?

Even more of a concern is your being pregnant. Hamsters can carry LCMV which puts your fetus at severe risk of birth defects. Remember back a few years ago when those transplant patients died and they traced it back to a hamster purchased from PetSmart? They started testing animals and the whole distribution chain and they found infected hamsters and cavies from the East Coast to the Midwest? It was almost six months before the PetSmarts in my area started carrying hamsters again. When they did, they had far more dwarfs than Syrians, if any Syrians. That trend has still continued in the Petsmarts in my area. Syrian hamsters will carry the LCMV virus asymptomatically even though they are shedding the virus. Since I've started breeding, I've been pregnant twice and knowing that LCMV was out there, I didn't bring in any new hamsters during my pregnancy, not from other breeders and especially not from pet stores. A breeder near me did the same thing with both her pregnancies too. Just knowing this, I'd think you'd put your baby ahead of everything else. The LCMV was out in the commercially bred lines for who knows how many years before the unfortunate circumstance in which it was discovered and I'll bet if you go out there and start testing commercially bred hamsters today you'll find it again. I've been to a distributor multiple times and I know that if you started testing animals, you'd find all kinds of things. Even if the animals arrived to the distributor/pet store healthy, they're being exposed to everything else just during transport or housing. I've never seen a pet store employee sanitize their hands between handling different species. Not like the sanitizer does much and everything doesn't end up airborne anyway.

I do urge you to research and consider LCMV and decide if it's really worth the risk.

Then you have the concern with the hereditary disease in hamsters. You're not going to see those issues at the beginning, unless you have some very poor quality animals. It's as the hamsters age that you'll start seeing the problems- short life spans, tumors, etc.. That's how I started supplying the pet store on the west coast. The owner was sick of hearing back from people that the hamster had died, had tumors or started getting misshapen heads. The final straw came when she had to met a customer at the store on Christmas because a little girl's hamster had died. The owner decided they'd rather spend the money to get hamsters with pedigrees from me, have the shipped and charge much more money for them than to disappoint her customers. With your breeding scenario, you'll be breeding so many unknown hamsters and each will have had how many offspring before problems start to show up. You're more worried about filling the quantity today and not thinking about what may come of your decision a year from now.

The difference between what you want to do and what reputable breeders due is the difference in goals. I, as a breeder, work to produce healthy, well-temperamented hamsters as close to standard as I can. I have different lines with different focuses. Your goal is to produce 25-40 pretty hamsters a month. Quantity has never been a goal or consideration of mine. I work to produce quality hamsters and then when they need to be placed, go about doing it. You need to produce a certain amount of hamsters each month and you're breeding to meet that quota. Concerns of health, temperament and standards will inevitably be yielded to quantity. Your attitude is one of a commercial breeder- I need quantities and need to hurry and get them so they don't find a different supplier. A hobby breeder can supply a pet store but it's the hobby breeder making the pet store work for them, being an outlet for their pups. You're approach is completely opposite, the pet store wants them so I'm going to breed to make the pet store happy. With all the hundreds of litters I've bred, I've never once done a mating without a specific goal of improvement and/or knowledge. I've never bred for another person's wants. I have many months where I don't have any litters at all and I don't have to worry that I'll lose an avenue of placing pups. If you hit a month where you're not producing the quantities you need to fill a pet stores orders, then you face losing the pet store to another supplier.

I am definitely not against breeding and have supported and supplied several novice breeders. I won't just give my hamsters out to be bred to anyone that shows up with $10 though. I want to see that they have the same dedication to the fancy that I have. Hamtastic is right in that the reason there's not more breeders and the fancy isn't larger in the US is due to the nature of the animal. Hamsters are viewed as pocket pets for children. Not many adults are going to invest their time and money into a fancy where there's little recognition. The fancy has gotten so much smaller now than when I started years ago and it's from reputable breeders retiring, poor breeders coming and going, the economy, hamster clubs closing, disease, etc... No breeders that I know of will sacrifice their ethics just because there are few breeders out there. If we stop caring, what will happen to the fancy then?

The general public does not look for hamster breeders and it's not from lack of advertising. It's just much easier and accepted to go the local pet store and get everything you need, including the hamster. The people that get hamsters from me have usually gotten 1-3 hamsters from pet stores that were either nasty and/or died within weeks. They find me when they're looking for a better option. They will find you at that point and have no problem that I won't let them see the pups in person and trust my temperament assessment of the pups. Unfortunately there are just very few people that get to this point.

Lastly, I do want to add that you may be putting too much weight on a pedigree. A pedigree is worthless if there isn't selective breeding behind it. I could easily breed pet store lines for a few generations and produce a pedigree for them but that doesn't mean that they were selected for size, coat, color, temperament, etc... All it shows is ancestry. Here's another example, say I sold hamsters to someone, an Extreme Dilute Black and a Silver Grey and then that person bred the two together. The resulting hamster would be a genetic mess, and against breeding ethics, but they can turn around and say both it's parents are from HHH so you know it's a quality hamster. With just one breeding, a unethical or ignorant breeder will mess up years of my work and is the average person even going to know that? This is why it's harder to get breeding hamsters from a reputable breeder, you're asking that breeder to trust you with years of their work. Do you think that when I got started I just contacted the top breeders and asked for hamsters from them, much less so that I could breed for pet stores? Of course not. I worked hard and built up my hamstery slowly as I gained more knowledge and demonstrated my devotion to the fancy. It was at that point that I was able to add their lines into mine.

Also, I can tell you that if is this your first child, you're may be overly optimistic with what you can handle and take on. I know, I've been through it myself. The cage cleaning gets harder as your belly gets bigger and if I didn't have a husband that supported me and helped when I couldn't, I surely would have quit. Then you have the baby and there's no time for hamsters. I had thought I'd just put my baby in a bouncer while I bred hamsters and then your baby's born and you realize you can't put the baby anywhere near the hamsters. I know with these hard economic times, breeding hamsters for a little extra cash seems like a perfect opportunity and I really do wish it was. There's no one out there more than I that wishes it was possible to breed hamsters for some extra money at the end of each month.

Consider LCMV, research it and decide if that's really a risk you want to take. If you feel that it is then follow my previous link to the AWA regulations and see if you'll be able to meet those requirements long-term. You need a vet to contract to oversee your operations each year, a written veterinary protocal, a euthanasia protocol, a yearly exam of all hamsters, etc... It's not fast or cheap and again, I don't think you're realizing all of this and that's just their vet requirements. I'm not trying to dash your dreams but there's so much more to breeding hamsters to supply the pet trade than most people realize.

-Janice

[Almi]

I'm not taking quantity over quality. Sure, easily I could easily produce 40 low-quality hamsters every month. However, I'm being very picky with which ones I select...I am especially adamant that they have good temperaments. That is why I said I am going to -try- and meet the quota, because I am not going to just go out and buy hamsters that have an interesting color or pattern. I handle every single hamster in the store, and if there is one that is nicer than the others, I may snatch it up. I definitely stay away from all hamsters that seem overly scared or nasty.

Thank you for the information concerning LCMV. I have never heard of that, and we still have just as many Syrians around here as we always have. I had Syrians for my entire last pregnancy and was completely unaware of this disease. So yes...I have kids. In fact, I have a set of twins that were quite needy for the first 6 months, so I do know what it's like, I am probably more painfully aware than most people, since I was alone with them for most of the day in those first few months. Despite the twins, I was still able to care for the many pets that I had back then. If I can still find time to do things with two needy babies, I have no doubt that I will have any problems with one, and it is not that hard to pop baby in a baby sling to get some chores done, or do them when my husband is home. And like I said, worst case scenario, I absolutely can't handle it, and I set about the task of finding good homes for my hamsters.

What's the difference in selling someone a hamster as a pet and having it never reproduce than having it reproduce with a less-than-desirable mate? Certainly, if someone would actually sell and ship to me some good quality hamsters with good temperaments, that's what I would be breeding instead of pet store hamsters, which seems to be everyone's main problem with what I'm doing. So why is no one willing to get me started, if they so want me to do things "right?"

Btw, I realize what a pedigree is and that you can have a "bad" pedigree and a "good" pedigree. Which is why I have been saying "quality hamsters with pedigrees," not just "hamsters with pedigrees." Sorry, but I'm a little bit insulted.

Again, thanks for the information and insight, but I'm probably not going to waste anymore time on this thread if no one is actually willing to help me get somewhere, as I have better things to do. I realize I'm probably just one of those annoying people out there that you think is being absolutely idiotic and irresponsible. But take heart - I have read all of your posts and taken into consideration what you said. I still want to breed hamsters for this pet store, at least try, and I still want to get some good breeding stock instead of breeding pet store hamsters. But I have already explained to you why I'm doing things the way I am currently, so not much more can be said.

[radiocricket]

You are taking quantity over quality. Most of what you've posted about has been quantity. You've even posted you need to hurry as they currently don't have any hamsters and you don't want them to find another supplier. If you were interested in quality, you'd be asking completely different questions, but the only thing you're asking for is to be sent a number of hamsters in a variety of colors. In the absence of someone willing to ship, you've stated you're just going to go around to other pet stores for your foundation hamsters. Not the best option with Syrians, but an especially poor choice with Campbells and WW. Getting the quantity does trumph getting the quality.

I am really sorry you can't see the point of view that I and some of the other members here have expressed. It is frustrating for me to see another breeder come into the fancy with the wrong ideals but you're not the first and won't be the last. Again, it's just part of the problem the fancy faces.

Had you approached a reputable breeder and said "I want start breeding hamsters, I really like the Greys and Torts, what do you suggest", that would have been one thing. You're approaching it completely differently saying you want every Grey and some Yellows, Torts and Tris so that you can meet a pet store's demand of 25-40 hamsters a month and hope to make some money doing it. I see these two breeding scenarios as being two opposite things, I'm sorry that you can't. I know it seems unfair and unreasonable that a breeder isn't willing to supply you with hamsters for your breeding foundation, I've tried to explain the reasoning. I wish I knew how to explain it better as I know that sometimes it takes different angles and approaches for people to see things from a different perspective. Perhaps if you thought of it for dogs instead of hamsters. Say I approached the top poodle breeders and said I wanted a bunch of pups out of their Champion lines. That I have an outlet that only wants to sell my poodle pups and I do want quality dogs but I need act fast so I can start supplying them with 10-15 puppies every month. That you've bred a few litters of poodles in the past but now you want to do it with better quality dogs. How do you think they'd answer? I think it's generally accepted that the right way to enter into the show dog fancy is to start attending shows, find a breeder that's willing to mentor you, start with co-ownership, etc.. But you can't take the time to do it that way, you need puppies now so you're just going to go around to nearby breeders and buy whatever poodle puppies are available to start your breeding program. Sure if there's an obviously poor puppy, you won't take that one but if they seem healthy otherwise, they'll be added to your breeding program. You'll be able to make the pet store happy by filling their need but what kind of breeder are you really?

-Janice

[Ankali]

I'm a little sidetracked but curious..
Radiocricket, you said you would not provide someone with hamsters so they could provide for a pet store's quota, however when you release your pups to a pet store, you no longer have control of where the pups go and anyone could snatch them up and breed them to any hamster they please.
That was a really long sentence. Anywho, with all due respect - why would you turn away someone who came to you directly for breeding stock because you don't agree with their breeding practices and yet you wouldn't hesitate to ship them across the country to a pet store?

[Hamtastic]

She has explained in one of her previous posts that the store she supplies to goes by good principles and tries to do the right thing. It's true that anyone could go and buy her hamsters from it, but the idea is to support a good approach instead of just being indiscriminate. If one cares about something enough, it's a natural path to making decisions that favor the well being of the craft for the future, especially with time and emotions invested.