Silver gray genetics

kylieblue · 01-03-2016, 04:30 PM

I'm curious about the genetics of my little silver gray Syrian hamster, Sasha. (The color genetics fascinate me.) I've been studying but I have some questions about the effects of multiple colors. If you're willing to explain ...

Sasha is a silver gray. I think she's a homozygous silver gray because she doesn't (to my untrained eye) have a creamy or buttermilk or sepia cast to her coat. What do you think?

So if she is homozygous silver gray without carrying cream, that would be SgSg EE. (Using "E" as the non-cream wild gene. Some people put "+" instead. And "e" for the recessive cream gene.) If she was SgSg Ee, she'd be "homozygous silver gray, carrying cream", but would she look the same, or would cream show in her coat just a little bit? Or would the cream not show in her coat unless she was homozygous cream - but then, would it show for homozygous silver gray, or just het silver gray?

Is Ee enough to cause cream to show when combined with silver gray, or do both recessive cream genes need to be present?

So what is the visible difference between SgSg EE, SgSg Ee, SgSg ee, and Sgsg EE, Sgsg Ee, and Sgsg ee? Here's my guess (please correct me if I'm wrong):

SgSg EE (homozygous silver gray, not carrying cream) - would this be what she is?
SgSg Ee = homozygous silver gray, carrying cream but not showing it?
SgSg ee = homozygous silver gray plus cream - would she show the cream? Would this look like Sgsg ee?
Sgsg EE -- no cream present - would she look like SgSg EE (unless some other color was present)?
Sgsg Ee = ?
Sgsg ee - het with cream - this would show the cream, right?

Thank you for any answers you can give me.

xbuttons94 · 01-03-2016, 04:54 PM

I'm not sure about the genetics but my little one looks very similar but she has a little bit of a light brown tint to her coat and more white. Your little one is beautiful! I always wondered what sort of coat she has. Hopefully someone will know a lot more than I do!

kylieblue · 01-03-2016, 06:34 PM

Thank you, xbuttons94! Your little one is beautiful!

I realize there may not be clear answers ... but anything I can learn would be so helpful.

Nancy's Hamsters · 01-03-2016, 09:13 PM

SgSg EE (homozygous silver gray, not carrying cream) - would this be what she is?
This is what she appears to be as she has crisp clear silver coloring.
SgSg Ee = homozygous silver gray, carrying cream but not showing it? No she would have cream tones in her gray and not be the crisp silvery gray she is if she carried for Cream.
SgSg ee = homozygous silver gray plus cream - would she show the cream? Would this look like Sgsg ee? This would be Silver Ivory. A pinkish cream gray colored hamster if Hetero Sg and an almost white hamster with Black eyes if Homo Sg.

Sgsg EE -- no cream present - would she look like SgSg EE (unless some other color was present)?
Sgsg Ee = ?
Sgsg ee - het with cream - this would show the cream, right? She'd be a pinkish cream in coloring with grey tones to her coat making it look pink grey.

I've only worked briefly with the Sg gene as I found it very over powering and was producing nothing but grey color hamsters. I currently have 1 Het Sg band LH girl who I will be using in my Rust lines later this year. The ones I know about that you asked I filled in with the answers as I experienced them. The unanswered one will need a breeder more based on Sg then me

jemmalg · 01-04-2016, 04:42 AM

Silver is a funny weird tricky gene, it doesn't seem to act like it should all the time! And as Nancy said, it's very dominant.

I'd say Sasha is SgSg. This is what your want from a silver, definite grey, dark flashes and eyeliner. If you go heterozygous for silver Sgsg, the colouring becomes less grey and more brownish. If you add in other carried recessives (cream, cinnamon), this is when you get your muddied 'silver sepia' which you tend to see in pet shops, similar to xbuttons' hamster. The less "pure" Silver you go, the more brownish/cream it will look, because the cream tries to wash out some of the agouti markings and dark colours. So the effect is still there with EeSgSg but less pronounced than on EeSgsg. That said, I've seen perfect Silvers who carry for cream, so apparently it doesn't always show!

If you add in double cream, you'll generally get Silver Ivories. Gracie in my display picture is a decent Ivory eeSgsg (although her ears should be darker, I suspect she may carry something else). Here the cream has totally washed out the all crescents/flashes etc, but the Silver makes it greyer than a cream. In theory, eeSgSg should give you black eyed whites. Again though, silver being funny, I've seen ivories who are SgSg, and I've seen two black eyed whites together produce silvers and ivories, rather than just BEW as you might expect.

So yeah, haha Silver is odd, but you generally have the right idea!

aly · 01-04-2016, 09:42 AM

I am still clueless about genetics, but Sasha is beautiful!

vidasmile · 01-04-2016, 10:48 AM

I have also a question about Sg gene. In a photo you can see 2 pups (boys) from my second litter.
Mother - black tortoiseshell and white (aa Toto Baba)
Father - black diluted (aa Sgsg Baba)
All the litter: 2 blacks (girl and boy), 4 balck white girls, 1 black white boy and 2 brown white boys.

Thirst of all I thougt that I get 2 yellows (I was aiming for one), jus 1 of whem heterosygous silver grey on the top (ToTo Baba and ToTo Sgsg Baba).
But now I see, that they have very poor agouti markings, so maybe they are cream and cream silver grey (ee Baba and ee Sgsg)?

What whould be your oppinion?

Nancy's Hamsters · 01-04-2016, 10:36 PM

First you have to remember that a Tort will produce 50% non yellow and 50% Yellow offspring. The two lighter colored pups in the first photo ARE Yellow but the bottom pup also gained two genes of Black and is a Melanistic Yellow or Yellow Black Band where the top pup is a Silver Black Pearl band which is Sg + Black+yellow. The rest are just unlucky gene selection and you ended up with no Tort girls and beat the odds that would normally occur which is half the girls should be Tort and half Non Tort. A very nice looking litter even though you only seem to have gotten two Yellow Band boys one with Sg one without.

kylieblue · 01-04-2016, 11:42 PM

Thank you so much, Nancy - I was hoping you'd respond. Your genetics explanations are always so helpful and informative. And Jemma - more useful information! Thank you both!

vidasmile · 01-05-2016, 03:39 AM

I am sorry for one more question, but if my two little hamsters are Yellow - it will be first time I see Yellow hamster. I could not pick which hamster at the store is Yellow and which is not, thats why I started from buying a Tortoiseshell female

If I understand correctly Yellow Black differs from Yellow according to this:
1. Yellow should have Agouti markings, and Yellow black is a solid color?
2. But Yellow black should have very dark top coat, and my little hamster without silver gene dont have it? Or will he have it in the future, for instance in 4 months?

I put 2 photos of Black Yellows (one of them has extreamly dark top coat) and a link from internet where I found this info:
Gallery of Hamster Colors - Dixie Dust Hamsters

Nancy write a lot about Cream in Tort litters and about Goast Yellow, there Yellow meets Cream. How do you know that they are Yellows and not Creams, or not Goast Creams? (I know that according to the odds 50% of boys in this litter should be Yellows, and I would like that it would be true. But I want to be as much certain as I can. Talking about the odds, I think you all remember the litter in this forum where all the babies were black. This fact really broke all the rules and odds.)