We mated Princess to Dubaku, both Syrian hamsters, on 19th October 2007.
Although Dubaku was quite young, he certainly showed lots of interest in Princess, though he did get confused quite a lot and tried mating with her at the wrong end.
Princess had a trouble free pregnancy and became much chunkier all over, though we were still not totally convinced that she was expecting right up until the final day! From experience as breeders, I have noticed, both from our own litters and anecdotal tales from our hamster breeding friends, that the mother's behaviour does seem to change. Princess seemed to decide to wreck her cage each day, and became very destructive chewing the plastic of her cage.
We had decided, in order to make it as stress-free as possible, to keep her in her current cage to have her litter, but she became so destructive we moved her to one of our bin breeding cages. We placed this cage out of the hamster room and into our bedroom to make sure Princess got peace and quiet. We put in a large plastic house for guinea pigs and she made a huge comfy nest in this and gave birth on Sunday evening, 4th November. After this time she has kept her pups well hidden and only come out for quick trips to her toilet and the food bowl.
On day 5, 8th November, at 1.00am we heard strange noises coming from Princesses cage that didn't sound normal. We got up to look at her and, despite hearing her still couldn't see her.. I thought she might have gone back in her house, but couldn't see her there either, so gently lifted off the house roof (more of that later)...no Princess. She'd escaped! We were running around the bedroom to try to find her, until Arti (bless him) had the idea of taking out the drawers from the chest that her cage was on, and there underneath was Princess looking very confused.
We returned her to her cage (making sure she couldnt escape again), and I insisted on leaving the landing light on and door ajar just until I could be sure she was going to go back to her pups. It seemed the longest 10 minutes ever, but she eventually returned to nurse them.
Having taken the roof off the house we were able to see that we had indeed got pups, and in the morning, while Princess was having her porridge we took a photo of the pups.
We managed to take another couple of shots on day 7, and we can now see the skin tone changing, giving an indication of the colours we can expect from the litter. At this early stage it looks like the litter will be comprised of sable and sable roan pups only. If this is the case, it gives an indication that Princess, who carries the Umbrous gene, has inherited two copies of this gene (from her mother and her father) otherwise we would expect some cream and cream roan pups in the litter.
The pups are growing quickly and now, at day 12 have started to come out of the nest. Mum seems to have recognised that the pups now need solid food (or she may be just sick of them feeding constantly) and has moved them out of the house and into the corner near the food bowls. Hopefully we will soon be able to see exactly how many pups we have and what type!
Friday 16th November - Day 13, we have seen the pups more this evening and they have started moving about the cage (being dragged back by Mum when she notices) there seems to be at least 10 pups, but we haven't been able to count a final figure though it seems to be 12 or 13. The pups are eating solid food and have become much noisier today.
Monday 3rd December - Day 30. Apologies for technical problems that led to us being unable to update the site for a while. Since our last update, the pups have grown tremendously. Princess showed no inclination to either stop feeding her brood or to leave them, and as she was becoming very tired and thin we decided to separate her from the pups yesterday. At the same time we also sexed the pups and placed them into single sex cages. The pups have been handled daily since day 14 and are now becoming very tame, excitedly climbing onto our hands when we put them into the cages.
We have 2 sable and 6 sable roan girls and 1 sable and 4 sable roan boys. All are long haired and some are satin. The pups will be ready to go to new homes from 9th December onwards.
Update 10th December. On Saturday we took the pups to the Northern Hamster Club show and they were looked at by two very experienced judges. They advised us to keep 2 of the girls - a normal sable and satin sable roan. Sabine and Amelie will soon be making an appearance in the our hamsters section!
Some of the other breeders and exhibitors were very interested in the pups and by the end of the day we only had 1 female pup not taken. I had needed a female pup for a very sepcial someone's christmas present so I was delighted that the last one left was the one I had in mind to give as the gift! So only the males are still available (see pictures below right - taken tonight).
Someone who had previously had one of our hamsters, Kelv, took one of the male pups and promptly christianed him Darth Vader! The remaining pups went to our local reputable pet store. |
