thinking of breeding oscar

[Mollz]

Originally Posted by Bunsey

p.s. where did you read about the genetics holly? was it just online or can you recommend books? simple explanations are good

This is a good place for genetics: http://hometown.aol.com/theriverrd/genetics.htm
I have found a few other good places, but can't think what they were called at the moment!
Sue will probably have an unrelated line, I can't imagine all, or even most, of her hamsters are closely related.

[souffle]

You can get BEC carrying cinnamon. To be cinnamon you need two p genes (pp) as it is recessive. Cream is also a recessive so you need two e genes to be cream. Bailey was a cinnamon carrying cream (ppe) and Nelson was a BE cream carrying cinnamon (eep) so in the litter we had BE creams who would also carry cinny (eep) cinnys carrying cream (ppe) REC eepp and goldens (ep) It is the luck of the draw what the babies get.
A LH BEC female mated to oscar would only give you LH babies.

[Spuds Mum]

Well, just to add my 'tuppenorth' if you assume (reasonably from his parentage) that Oscar is eePpUu and you mated him to a red eyed cream eepp you would be likely to get an equal ratio of:

sable carrying cinnamon (eePpUu)
black eyed cream carrying cinnamon (eePpuu)
mink (eeppUu)
red eyed cream (eeppuu)

so a nice mix of pups. You wouldn't expect to get cinnamon as each pup would inherit a cream gene from each parent, meaning that these would combine with any cinnamon to make the REC/mink.

if you mated to a BEC you would likely only get sable and BEC, unless you could be fairly sure from the pedigree that the Mum also carried cinnamon, when again the minks/RECs could appear.

If your Mum was also a satin, 50% of the pups could be expected to be satin, same as if you chose a banded or a cream roan. the only thing I would say about roans, from my last litter, is that some show only slight roaning, some of mine could easily have been mistaken for a normal sable, apart from when I looked at the ears which were lighter, and noticed a sprinkling of white in the coat. From what I remember of Oscar (not that I examined him really really closely) he didnt look roan, but if you are worried I would look for those signs).

Hope that helps somewhat?

[Spuds Mum]

Sorry - the edit button has gone again!
I note that we also have related hams = my REC also has Benedictine and Absinthe as her grandparents!

[Holly]

From my BHA standards:

*Mating a pure Sable (UUee) to a BEC (ee) would produce 100% Sable babies (UUee).

*Mating a non-pure Sable (Uuee) to a BEC (ee) would result in 50% Sable and 50% BEC.

Now obviously that doesn't take into consideration if both are carrying the Cinnamon gene (pp)...would the cream (ee) gene then cause the cinnamon to become REC?

Obviously the numbers and proportions are all theoretical - it states in my literature that you need to produce hundreds of litters to see the "correct" proportions - you might get 80% Sable and 20% BEC .... or vice-versa ...what makes it all so interesting!

[Bunsey]

mating him to a SH BEC sounds like a good idea to me, then in theory i'd have 25% SH cream, 25% SH sable, 25% LH cream and 25% LH sable. then i'd have the troublesome job of deciding what to keep! the bigger mixture of colours i had, the more i'd want to keep cos i'd want one of each! i'd probably not keep any LH sables, cos i have oscar.

[souffle]

Just be sure you BEC carries LH to get the LH hamsters. If one of her parents is LH she will carry it.

[Spuds Mum]

well, how I understand it is, both parents are ee so each pup will get an e from each parent. Therefore all pups will have a phenotype that includes the ee gene.
If they also get a cinnamon p gene from each parent, then they will also have a phenotype that includes the pp gene.

Both these genes are recessive so in order for them to show on the animal they must have inherited two copies, one from each parent. In breeding half of all the parents genes on each loci will be given to each pup. At the e loci an ee parent must give e to each pup as she has two of these. or p if she has pp. etc. etc.

So, although the pups could have a pp gene, usually meaning cinnamon, because they also must have ee too, you can't get cinnamon pups.

In Souffle's litter, Bailey was a cinnamon carrying cream, Nelson a cream carrying cinnamon, and so there was a chance (as happened) that the pups could inherit, either 1 x e or 2 x e, and 1 x p or 2 x p. if the pup inherited 2 x p and only 1 x e that would make the cinnamon, but is why, if you start of with 2 animals both showing cream based colour combinations (e.g. BEC/REC/sable/ mink/Ivory) then you will always get a cream combination out!

Hope that makes sense. It does to me, but its hard to explain on a post!

[Spuds Mum]

sorry, tried mating Vala and Yowie half way through posting so my post doesnt make any sense as things have moved on - but put it after Holly's and it does

I agree a BEC LH should give you a nice, non-confusing selection.

Can't wait to hear if it happens Amy, (Arti has just reminded me about concentrating on agoutis for us now - I think he could imagine my little cogs turning lol)

[Holly]

It makes perfect sense to me, Teresa!

It probably means that we won't get any cinnies in our litter (Mink to BEC hopefully carrying REC) but we might get REC and Minks as well as Sables and BECs (all LH and some satin).

Bunsey - if Smarts doesn't carry REC we could have very simillar litters from two brothers!