Rodents Return

Came to the conclusion recently that I will probably always have rodents in my life.  The blog will continue.

I acquired a very large Syrian female 3 weeks ago and she already had a litter.  This wasn't even intentional, we probably had some hamster no pants dance going on while I was busy finishing up with the new move details.  I recall them all being on the table at one point while I cleaned, but I don't remember mixing sexes.

How irresponsible of me as a hobbyist.  Regardless, we will know who the daddy was in 2 weeks.

After feeding 2 male pinkies off to my recently found and absolutely starving Gecko (he lived in my PC sub-woofer for months and we just found him), I have 4 babies left.  All of them appear to be male, which I already have too many of.  Time will tell if I feed them out.

As always, if you are interested in a pup or two please email me.

Almost over

   I only have Pipa left now.  I was trying to practice my singing and started coughing terribly after freshly changing the bedding out for all my critters early in the week and decided to give them back to the local pet store (non-corporate) so I can have clear lungs again.  Pipa is living in her own 20G and will join Spinal, Priss and Houdini when I eventually move in with the GF.  Nothing to report though. 

I will be updating this blog only with pictures of the remaining creatures in the future.  Thanks again

The colony continues...

  Bub has gone to a new owner who requires his breeding prowess.  A good handful of babies from Pipa's last  litter have found new homes with children and the rest live on.  I still have two young males, 3 young females, Pipa, Priss and Spinal.

Bubby waves goodbye to his fans.  

  To display the young ones for sale, I had all the females and males in one tote.  Recently after a sale, I placed the remaining females back into the main tank since the young males have started gyrating profusely on the females.  I know in the past this can be risky business, so I wasn't too surprised when someone had some battle damage.  The fattest of the young females tried to interrupt the pecking order after returning to the tank and this is the result:

Ms. Harvey Dent hamster.

So I will name her Ms. Dent, since she can't close the left side of her mouth anymore.  She is very healthy though, still running on the wheel and even storing food in the other cheek as if nothing is wrong.  I will proceed to spoil her rotten and make sure she heals.  Here's some more pics to cheer you up if you got queasy from seeing that:

Lil Turd.  King of the late night wheel.

Gizmo, currently in my girlfriend's possession.

This female is quite the princess, almost hand tame.

This runt sold to a little girl.  She managed to get her  to calm down, something I never achieved.
Can't please every ham....

An end to all things

I have decided to stop breeding entirely.  My girlfriend had a litter of her own and we are currently sitting with about 15 young ones, and then our original 2 studs and 3 does that generated everyone you see in this blog.  We are currently in the process of rehoming, if you are interested in adoption here is the link:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/pet/3264606605.html

For the time being, I will be sparsely posting pictures of the remaining hams, so faithful viewers fret not! Here's some new pictures of what's left of our "colony":

Midnight snack for Bub (send me a macro of this if you are into forced memes)

HAMSTER OVERCLOCKING! (psu tester on ground was searing hot, lol)

NOTICE THE DUAL CORE  WITH AIR COOLING!

SWEET ASS COLD CATHODE LED LIGHTING!

Coat Variations

Just some custom pictures of what the different types of hamsters I have are:

Priss (F):  Syrian Hamster
(The white undercoat makes this hamster an agouti, as all Syrians possess this trait.  Because she is Aa and Bub is aa, the majority of her children came out as Syrian and the minority as Champagne)

Bub (M):  Black Eyed White Self Hamster
(Self is the opposite of Agouti.  Bub is all one color besides the tan colored sheen to his coat) 

Spinal (F):  Black Syrian Hamster
(Black is a recessive trait in Syrians, and has no ticking on the coat.  Since the most recent parent was an Aa   Syrian Male, she only had <25% Diluted Black Syrian pups.  When she mated with Bub who is aa, the majority of the babies were Diluted Black or White due to the majority of traits being recessive.)

Tragedy of Scar Face the 2nd

**SPOILER:  THIS POST HAS A HAPPY ENDING, BEFORE YOU GET TOO HORRIFIED**  
   I was photographing the Adonis of my litter and unfortunately after placing him back in with his mother, she lashed out.  I don't know if she smelled something foreign on my hand or was just stressed out from the amount of teeth constantly gnawing on her teats, but it resulted in some rather gory imagery:

Had a nice photo shoot of just him

Moments after placing her back in the tote, Spinal didn't agree and she tore into the pup, breaking its first layer of skin from just under the right eye all the way to its right hip with her large teeth.

Four days later, the scar had healed up 50%

Six days later, the scar had healed up 75%

Eight days later, the scar is nothing but 2mm of missing fur.  Hamster is in full health and spirit.  I remain amazed by how quickly these creatures regenerate from massive trauma with nothing more than Hydrogen Peroxide to sterilize a wound.

HUGE Litter Development Update: (Spinal x Houdini) LONG POST

I'm behind on updates, its hard to get 14 clear shots of babies as well as keeping them all in line.  I am going to just machine gun a ton of photos on this post and let the captions do the talking:

The two coats for the 14 pup litter:  Dove Grey and Syrian (click to enlarge)

Early on, all the babies look grey / black.

Just days later, more variation in color can be seen.

Spinal had a hell of a time keeping 15 of them  nourished.  She only has 14 nipples.

Talk about a full time job.

The majority of her litter are Syrian, as we see here.

The remaining 3 of the litter are Dove Grey Hamsters .

These three pups have the most prominent ticking for a Syrian.