Bob discovers pasta! Video inside!

[Spuds Mum]

Its all basically genetics Gus.If Bob is a tortoiseshell (forget the banded bit for a moment) what it means is she has inherited one yellow gene (classed as To) from one of her parents. It just means that one of her parents was either a yellow hamster or a tortoiseshell hamster (Mum only)

Yellow(To) is a sex linked gene. What this means is that this colour is attached to the X chromosome. Males are XY and females are XX. With me so far?

Okay - so if you take a yellow male hamster and mate him to another colour hamster the male will give half of his genes to make the new hamster, and the female will also give half her genes.

Say the other hamster was also yellow - the hamster pups would all gain one To gene from Mum (on the X chromosome). It is the male that decides on the sex of the pups and some sperm will carry X to marry with the females X and make girl hams and some will carry Y and marry with the female's X to make boys.

So boys only need one To gene to make them yellow. If they dont have one To gene they will be non-yellow. As Mum has given a To gene to all pups - all the males will be yellow!

Females, having to X genes, need two 'To's to make them yellow (shown genetically as ToTo). In our example above, the girls will also have inherited Dad's To on his X gene as well, so all females will be yellow too.

If one of the parents does not carry To however, there are other possibilities for females. For males, he either gets a yellow or he doesn't. He only needs one as I said.

For females, they can inherit ToTo (they will be yellow) no To (they will be non-yellow) or one To....
they will be tortoiseshell and show patches of yellow.

Depending what colour they also inherit this affects how the yellow appears from a bright yellow to a grey/peach. Here are some pictures from a breeders site just to show what I mean. They are special only in as much as good ones show a beautiful patterning and can be quite stunning!

Hope this helps!

[Gust0o]

I got the drift of that, but I'll admit it's a long night!

So she's on 'To' as we classify things - in as much as she's not yellow (ToTo), but reflects this gene by having selective patches of peach on her fur.

Her pattern is beautiful - I did comment as much to Al, when we first got her; she's a far cry from Hammie, whose fur wasn't half as lustrous.

Thanks for the information Spud's Mum - I'm trying to learn, as you might have gathered!

I suppose the next logical question is - should she be shown? You mentioned they were popular, and even my layman eyes have noticed she looks great.

She has a small nick in her ear, from a past fight as a baby - will this affect her chances?

[Holly]

Interesting pictures Teresa - I must admit I've only ever seen the Black Torts at shows, I had no idea yellow could appear in patches like that on other colours (though obviously it makes total sense that it does).

Gus - the fact that she's got some Tortoiseshell patches probably doesn't mean a lot for Bob in the showing world (I'll explain why in a mo!) BUT I did think when looking at your video that she is a nice chunky shape and has a nice "type" face - these factors would help her a lot more on the show bench.

Golden Banded's and Tortoiseshells are both shown in the same class - Patterned - so whether she is or isn't a Tort doesn't change her class. I'm no expert on patterned hamsters but from what I've read and seen the judges are looking for even patches of colour all over. With bands they are looking for a band approximately one third the length of the hamster's coat and ideally it should be unbroken (very unusual and difficult to acheive as unbroken bands don't breed true). Colour and markings are a only a proportion of the marks awarded - Size, Type, Fur, Eyes and Ears and Condition make up the rest of the marks allocation.

Pet shop hamsters don't always do well in shows but some do - the first hamster I ever showed was a good old pet shop Grey and he did well and came third in his class and second in the novice class - I was delighted!

Showing is a bit complicated to understand initially, though simple once you've seen it and understand all the terms - if you are interested in showing I'd suggest you get hold of a copy of Hamsterlopaedia by Chris and Pete Logsdail (great intro to showing) and come along to a show - there's one in your neck of the woods in March!

[Spuds Mum]

Yes I love the pics Julie - they are from a site called Hammy's world.

As Julie said, it can be quite hard to get a good banded show hamster, and can be just as hard if not harder to get a good tortoiseshell and white as there should be even sized patches of the three colours, the main colour (ie golden for Bob) should conform to the standards for that colour, and you've got the band too!

I would agree that probably going to a show would give you more information on what the judges look for. At each show there is usually a pet section too, where hamsters are judged on tameness and condition only. Entering Bob in this would probably be a good idea at the start as you can then talk to the judge(s) and other breeders to get a good independent view on Bob's potential.

If you did decide to do that you would certainly be welcomed by club members - the Northern hamster club covers your areas, and Holly and I are members of this, so you can at least be assured of two people who would coo over Bob!