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Originally Posted by flowerfairy
How exciting. Why are yellows bred out? Are they not a good colour? Also what is the difference between yellows and creams? Hope you dont mind me asking.
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FF Yellow is not at all being bred out, what is being bred out is the Cream gene in my yellows which also carry the Black and Rust genes.
Cream(both black and red eyed) masks the yellow gene and produces a hamster which looks to the naked eye like a Cream but it's genetic make up causes it to produce like a Yellow hamster.
This last litter was done to continue improving the rust gene in reaching more of the standards of the NHC in the USA. Rust gene is slowly making a come back in the USA but more breeders need to focus on the improvements. It took me almost 12 years to finally gain rust gene hamsters and sadly the quality found left me with lots of room for improvements. This last litter for 2015 is the next step in establishing the Rust gene and actually having the ability (if the right genes combine between Sire and Dams genes) to produce ST's Hamstery's 1st Rust color hamster instead of a Chocolate hamster.
Yellow color hamsters are agouti in markings and the gene is sex linked only being found in the X sex gene. The under coat is a yellow ivory color and the top coat is a rich yellow gold color having black ticking, and rather faint black brown crescents and yellow ivory cheek flashes.
Cream hamsters on the other hand are self patterned being all the same color which is very close to the coloring of and apricot. Both under coat and top coat are the same color throughout the Hamster. Black eyed Creams have black/dark grey ears where if the hamster also has two genes of Cinnamon the eyes become red and the ears flesh grey.
The recessive Cream gene and recessive Yellow genes when combined allows the stronger recessive to over ride and "Mask" the weaker recessive so Cream will Over ride Yellow and thus you get a sorta false Cream hamster. On Tortoiseshell the cream over rides the yellow and will also over ride the Black so you could end up with a hamster which looks to the natural eye to be a cream when it is unknowingly a Yellow black or a Black Tort. Even a Tort or Yellow hamster who only has one gene for Cream will show it carries the cream gene when the Torts yellow patches are all solid cream colored instead of the proper Yellow color on the hamster.
Because of this masking it is esteemed unacceptable and not in good etiquette to purposely breed Cream to a Yellow mate. It is also important (if you choose to follow NHC standards) to work diligently to remove the cream gene in a successful Yellow line if at all possible.
In my case I had no choice but use Yellow lines to the Original Chocolate lines if I wanted any improvements on the original 10 Chocolate breeders that came to me in March of 2015. I had no documented on paper pedigree history on any of the Chocolates except the knowledge they were all heavily inbred, really small in size and all but, Swiss Miss, Abraham, Hershel, Maggie, and Qalila had VERY narrow and long head type. A few of the orignal 10 Chocolates flunked my evaluation check chart and were never even considered for breeding, because of weak temperaments, and two passed away from Stress related illnesses. We also learned rather quickly that their longevity length was very weak having most of the original ones used for breeding pass to the bridge between 10 months to 1 year.
I had up to 6 generations of pedigree background knowledge with my Yellow lines, and felt they would improve on a few major needed improvements(size and overall Body type which included the head shape, Temperament, and Life span length). Unfortunately with the resulting pups it was learned about 95% of the 10 original Chocolate hamsters carried the Cream gene in them. Thus we unknowingly bred Cream into the Yellow lines.
Now I and Erin R (who has been a saint for me and this project) have retired all of the original 10 Chocolate hamsters and will continue in 2016 with breeding Rust and rust combination color hamsters with the pups we kept from the breeding's we both did to strengthen the improvements, and eliminate those weak and not to the NHC standards using the G1 pups.
Hope this answered your Questions FF
What a Wonderful Present- L-15 Litter born
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