Welcome P17, CocoPups!

[AprilPearl]

All lovely! Was very proud of myself for already knowing the story behind little Potatoooooooo’s name

[flowerfairy]

OMG Pomegranate. Oh they are all sooooo gorgeous.

I will send Pomegranate a plane ticket asap!

[dreamtree1234]

SO.... cute! I just love each and every single one of these, and I love their names, too.

Good luck with the pairing tonight. I hope all goes well and it is a huge success!

[BorisPasha]

Great to be able to see all the pups on here, all together. They are all just so gorgeous

Well I didn't do well with guessing their names. I had a Pomegranate and I had Potato (close but not close enough to Potoooooooo. If you ever have any more P's, I have a huge selection written down in my notebook from my wrong guesses

[Hekomi]

Originally Posted by flowerfairy

OMG Pomegranate. Oh they are all sooooo gorgeous.

I will send Pomegranate a plane ticket asap!

Pom is super sweet. Probably the sweetest of the red eyed pups, besides Peppa. I like her a lot.

Originally Posted by dreamtree1234

SO.... cute! I just love each and every single one of these, and I love their names, too.

Good luck with the pairing tonight. I hope all goes well and it is a huge success!

Thanks! I think it went well, but it's such early days, anything could happen.

Originally Posted by AprilPearl

All lovely! Was very proud of myself for already knowing the story behind little Potatoooooooo’s name

Nicely done! I had seen the story a few months ago and KNEW I needed to use it.

Originally Posted by BorisPasha

Great to be able to see all the pups on here, all together. They are all just so gorgeous

Well I didn't do well with guessing their names. I had a Pomegranate and I had Potato (close but not close enough to Potoooooooo. If you ever have any more P's, I have a huge selection written down in my notebook from my wrong guesses

Haaah - I thought all the names were easy enough! I'll definitely message you if we do another P litter.

The pups are doing so well. Many of them are super sweet. We have a few who are a bit more skittish (Cashew is lovely but he's shy) so I've been working hard with them. I took photos last evening or the pups with my tiny teddy bears. Not everyone was overly enthused, but I did get some good shots.



I'm planning to send Pavlova home with a lovely little girl who has been away at camp all summer. Unfortunately, her hamster passed away and her mother reached out to us. Her father went to vet school at Ontario Veterinary College, so I know Pavlova will be in great hands. She's one of my absolute favourites, and I would have kept her had Seven not won the "head" contest.



Paprika is one of the biggest pups, and very much likes to burrow. I'm excited to see her as she gets darker.

[Fluffagrams]

Originally Posted by Hekomi

When I select for keepers, I base my choices around these factors, in order:
- Temperament when handled. Do they react well to handling? I've never had a pup bite me, but you can absolutely tell when pups are more or less skittish. The two keepers I selected, one for myself and one for Hathor Hamstery, are both very laid back and easy going. They're still jumpy as most pups are, but the best choices.

- Type, specifically head shape. This young it's hard to assess the overall body, but I look for a broad head shape, with wide set ears. In North America, we have particularly bad type, so I've been working as hard as I can to bring in some nice type hamsters. Luckily Cordelia and Cashew both have lovely type.


- Size, though that can be trickier to assess. However, I won't knock a slightly smaller hamster with a nice temperament and type. I've actually done some size reduction on my lines because they got a bit too big.

- Colour & sex, though usually this doesn't matter in my litters, it does with this specific one. I wanted for sure extreme dilutes to perpetuate the lines. I also wanted to eliminate cinnamon best I could from my gene pool. Both keepers have a chance of being cinnamon carriers however.

It's interesting to read how you select your keepers as I often used to wonder how breeders decided. It wasn't until I had to do it myself that I realised that it wasn't always easy. I remember that out of my first litter, one had a nicer colour and slightly better temperament but the other had a better type and I ended up going for the one with better type.

(Very cute little ones BTW )

[flowerfairy]

Oh Paprika and her spotty teddy bear!!!!!!!

[Thin Lizzy]

Absolutely stunningly beautiful and those little teddies are so cute.

[Hekomi]

Originally Posted by Fluffagrams

It's interesting to read how you select your keepers as I often used to wonder how breeders decided. It wasn't until I had to do it myself that I realised that it wasn't always easy. I remember that out of my first litter, one had a nicer colour and slightly better temperament but the other had a better type and I ended up going for the one with better type.

(Very cute little ones BTW )

I think it took until my third litter or so before I started getting really critical. Without shows here, it's so hard to learn type when you're just seeing photos. Now, I'm finding it much easier.

I do preference temperament over type, only because of our lack of shows. I'd rather my adopters get a well tempered, ratty-headed hamster, than a perfectly conformed bitey ham.

That being said, I've been doing my best to focus on type when and where I can, and I did choose Seven because her type was better. Her temperament has turned out really smooshy so I'm lucky.

Pluuuuus we're hoping to hold a show this autumn.

The pups are doing well and turn 4wks tomorrow. That means mumma Cordy gets the boot. I have been so busy with work I haven't gotten a lot of photos, but they're all growing like weeds and are adorable.

[AprilPearl]

Pavlova and Paprika are both stunning lottle fluffs! So nice that Pavlova will be going to such a good loving home