Winter White Genetics

Are you one of hammie owners who would like to know as much as possible about your hamster but there is no one to explain some things to you? I had this exact problem finding out infortaions about WW genetics; but after asking some breeders and vet, I gathered few informations and decided to share them with you.

# WW hamsters come in only three colours: Agouti, Pearl (dominant, D) and Sapphire (recessive, R). There are colours in dwarf hamsters known as Pudding (Mandarin), Merle, Moscow, Imperial and so on, but they are not registered for WW hamsters. WW eye colour can be only black (blue), and red eyes in "WW" hamsters shows that it's actually hybrid, also known as "Pudding hamster".

# Some standard show that Pearl is in fact pattern gene, not colour, but this system works out for Pearl as pettern as well.

The following formulas can help you to determain colour of possible hamster colours if you know paern't colours. Remember that genetics are much more complicated and this isn't 100% true in all cases since a hamster may have combination of many genes due breeding different colour mutations earlier in family line.

Agouti (D) + Agouti (D) =Agouti (D)
Agouti (D) + Sapphire (R) =Agouti (D) (with Sapphire gene(R))
Agouti (D) +  Pearl (D) = Agouti (D) + Pearl (D)
Sapphire (R) + Sapphire (R) = Sapphire (R)
Sapphire (R) + Pearl (D) = Pearl (with Sapphire gene(R))
Pearl (D) + Pearl (D) = Pearl (D)