2003-01-19 - 11:30 p.m.

Squeaky Noises

I forgot to mention that Amanda Panda had her litter of babies late on Jan 9. As I sit here typing this a chorus of squeaky-toy noises is issuing from the left side of my desk.

The babies are ten days old today. I've been making a big point of not annoying Amanda since I was a little concerned that she's be a jumpy, nervous mom. She wasn't really tame until a couple of weeks before she had her babies. Black Bear hamsters are supposed to be very mellow, but Amanda seemed rather nervous, until she suddenly decided that I was okay to pick her up. However, she seems to be mellow with me looking in.

That's one of the odd things about hamsters - taming them seems to be a digital process. One day they are wild, the next they don't mind getting picked up. Who knows why?

I was kicking myself for buying a Black Bear hamster for breeding - genetically they are rather powerful. The last time I had a litter from a black bear hamster it took two generations to breed the dark fur out of them. I really wanted more gray hamsters to continue the line, but the black fur would make it impossible to tell which were carrying the gray gene.

Well, I finally got a look at the babies today, and it seems that I was worried over nothing - they all seem to be brown banded, and there seem to be at least two gray babies. Of course I won't be 100% sure until they're a bit older.

The other thing is that this seems to be a rather big litter, LOTS of baby hamsters. Lily was able to count eleven, and there may be more. It's really tough to count them when they are all wriggling in a pile.

Cool! Good job, Amanda Panda!