Hi, this is Shawn , and a hobbyist breeder of Mandarin Orange Hamsters. Currently, I breed them for colour, temperament and also body size. Our hamsters are bred as closely as possible to the Winter White Standards of the NHC. However, we confess that what we know is quite lacking, however we strive to learn more, and to improve the quality of Dwarf Hamsters in Singapore.





Sunday, November 22, 2009

Basic introduction: Mandarin/Pudding gene



The Mandarin/Pudding colour is my favourite colour gene in Winter Whites.

Here are some the facts. This gene is a dominant gene (Me), and one pudding parent alone will give result in pudding babies. There is also overwhelming evidence that this gene is homozygous dominant, which means that babies with 2 Pudding genes will not survive. They either get reabsorbed, or they will not survive even inside mum. The Pudding gene can combine with other genes like Sapphire and Pearl, to produce different types of Puddings. So no puddings have 2 pudding genes. Thus no genetically pure puddings exist.

Below here is a Punnett Square, of a Pudding X Pudding.



Their appearance are mainly orange with an orange dorsal stripe when young, but this is what I personally described as their baby coat, which would change in the future. Other winter whites too experience this, with the babies having a different colour when it matures if one examines closely enough.
However, the adult coat would be either a range from yellow or even totally brown, with the dorsal stripe being a darker shade of colour. Can you imagine that, no other Winter White mutation has such a diversity of shades in the single colour alone, which makes it a truly unique mutation. This is the reason why Puddings are my favourite winter whites, and the reason why this blog was made! See my puddings above, they both are of a different shade isn't it.



This information is from a Russian Website stated below, and also from some observations of my Puddings, and also from Puddings belonging to people from hamster forums of Singapore.


http://hamster.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1520

2 comments:

Yuan Xin said...

I thought that pudding colour is a hybrid? The Mandarin colour comes from Campbell's Russian that looks like Winter White?

Or what you are breeding is actually a Campbell's Russian? http://www.hamsterhideout.com/breedscampbellcolours.html

Sorry I'm not really sure, but a lot of things I read said that Pudding is not a mutation from winter white but a hybrid of winter white and beige campbell. And that, hybrid comes with a lot of problems

Shawn said...

There has been alot of rumours that puddings are hybrids, well to be fair, most puddings are hybrids, but the ORIGIN of the colour is of winter white stock. Read this comment, from was a chairman of hamster standards of the UK.

http://www.madabouthamsters.com/showthread.php/10258-The-pudding-mutation?s=11d49cbd319fbc7a86d7f7995726e00a&p=155069&viewfull=1#post155069


Most puddings are hybrids, because someone thought they were campbells (beige), and bred them to campbells. Thus, most puddings are now hybrids.

Beige is a double colour mutation, so it is definately not pudding is.

Pudding is dominant lethal-homozygous, thus there is currently no colour in campbells where by it is also ornage and lethal-homozygous.

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