The babies are 12 days old now, and yesterday was the day they began wandering around the cage. POOR Eva. She feels a great responsibility to gather them all back up!
Yes, all 17 are still alive and healthy!
She is literally super-mom. She is not a big ham, and she is so funny laying on the litter, which is literally 3x her size at this point and growing fast!
A couple of times she has separated the nest into 2 parts, I think, to give herself a break and only have to take care of some of the babies instead of all. The first time it was alarming, because she left the others out for a couple of hours, so I made the decision to risk putting them back in. (Not recommended unless you know your hamsters!) The second time, they were old enough to make their own way back to her.
The fact that all 17 are still alive and doing very well says something though. She is doing very well as a mom.
There is 1 dove tort and white!!! Yay! There are about 5 black torts, 3 black tort and white, 3 black, 1 dove banded, 1 white banded, a couple yellow black, and... It's still a bit difficult to visually sort all of those wiggling bodies out to see how many of each type we have.
It is a beautiful litter.