BABIES ARE HERE!!! SIAMESE TOO!!

[callimico]

I'm soooo excited right now- my siamese girl just gave birth (the 21st- right on time )! I'll have to check how many of them their are in the morning, I'm sooo HAPPY!!

This is her first litter- first spotted and colorpoints born here, she was really heavy today I was going to take pic's, lol..

I checked the nest, everything was quiet then she popped her head out of the bedding and a bunch of squeaking protests started up , I got a glimpse of one little baby as she went down again- I can't wait to see how many their are, what colors and everything!!

I'm going to take a lot of pics once they're a little older. ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Ritzie/Admin]

Congratulations! ;D

[callimico]

woah! I just checked in on them mom and dad finally moved to give me a glimpse at the litter, they were all in a neat circle.

I counted EIGHT ;D, there may be a couple more, but wow, eight babies for her first litter, no wonder she was so huge this week!! ;D

The pups are really small, much smaller then my other litters- is it because she had so many? I hope this doesn't mean I'll lose one... I looked fast they all seem to be dark-eyed. Mom and dad take turns eating so someone is always in the nest directly over the pups. Dad keeps poofing the nest up again, but I can't get mom to eat any peanuts/catfood/or scrambled eggs...though dad doesn't have a problem helping himself

I can't wait for the fuzz to come in and see how many spotteds, how many siamese/burmese I have ;D ;D ;D. There's also a chance for CP and LCP slate, but I'll probably need help distinguishing the colors

[sandy]

Woohoo! Congrats! Now for the really hard to wait stage, waiting for fuzz to come in. What colour is the dad?

[callimico]

Dad's a spotted Burmese- he carries Ee and Gg. The mom is the daughter of DC's Sorka 2004 colorpoint champion, so my girl's parents carried GG and Gg, so I'm hoping there's a chance of CP and LCP pups ;D lol, not that I'd be able to tell the difference until they were past 6 weeks anyway.

I'm hoping I'll be able to see faint distinctions betwen the spotted and unspotted pups soon, even if I can't tell which ones are siamese vs. burmese.

[queenofthenile]

It's actually quite easy to tell the siamese, burmese, lcp slate and cp slate pups apart once they start getting fuzz. You will see four different shades of colour. Siamese is the lightest, followed by lcp slate. Cp slate is the darkest and burmese is the second darkest.


Upper left and going clockwise:
Burmese, siamese, siamese, lcp slate, cp slate, lcp slate

[callimico]

thanks for the pic queenofthenile!! That really helps- lol the last lcp slate and Burmese have very similar coloring. How early were you able to distinguish colors?

I love the little siamese pups- they're so cute, now I really can't wait until they mature;D ;D

[queenofthenile]

I can tell the difference about day four, when the fuzz comes in. Check out the development page of my website, and you should see that its quite easy to tell the difference, especially between burmese and siamese. The burmese are kind of brown (duh ), and the siamese stay pink for longer.
www.gerbilbreeding.com/develop.htm

Here's a pic that shows the difference between burmese and cp slate better. I hadn't posted it earlier because there were no lcp slates in that litter.

From L-R:
siamese, siamese, burmese, burmese, cp slate

The cp slates are conspicuously dark. If you have a cp slate in the litter, you could probably tell at 3 days because they are much darker.

[sandy]

A member of another gerbil board said that light colourpoint slates and colourpoint slates have beige nails, and siamese and burmese have dark nails (claws). That could be a big help in distinguishing them. I'll soon have this nice problem too, distinguishing all the lovely colourpoints from each other! I've already found out that its hard to tell them apart when they are 8 days old, and even when they are 6 weeks old and the points have not developed!

[callimico]

Your site and ags, were the 2 I used the most when I was researching gerbil breeding ;D I skimmed over the difference in burmese and siamese though, because I didn't think I'd find any colorpoints avail close enough to me... they were a nice suprise- they lived so far away I couldn't drive to pick them up, but they came via the "rodent railroad", hitching a ride with chinchilla/gerbil breeders and arrived safely here after an 8 hour drive

The pups will be 2 days old at 11 pm, tonight, I keep thinking they're older. But there's already a small difference- some of the pups have gotten a slightly darker shading, and the others are still "translucent pink". I'll check them all Wed/thurs for a cp slate pup- (I'm still overly cautious with pups, lol, I always think I'll distract mom's from caring for them if I pick up the pups within the first few days, even though they never seem to mind). I'm usually better once they have their second litter

I'll take a pic and post when they're a week old, would you mind checking to see if I got all the colors right?

thanks Sandy, I'll try the nail method- that should make sorting the slates out a lot easier! What color are your colorpoint pups?

[sandy]

lol so far the only colourpoint types I have had as pups have been burmese and spotted burmese, and colourpoint agouti/spotted colourpoint agouti. BUT 2 gerbils are pregnant right now that have the potential to produce siamese. I have the light colourpoint agouti pair from Crazycritter that both carry recessive a and g, so they potentially could have siamese, burmese, light colourpoint slate and colourpoint slate as well as DTW, light colourpoint agouti and colourpoint agouti too! I'm hoping that at least one of the pair does not carry the p recessive. I guess we'll see!

[queenofthenile]

Unfortunately, sandy, the lcp agoutis from Crazycritter are both Pp. Their genetics are Aa CbCh EE Gg Pp.

[callimico]

I'd like to have colorpoint agouti someday, BEW or gray agouti to- white/gray gerbil with dark eyes are beautiful. Do you know if it's possible to tell if a self gerbil carries c(chm), by subtle lighter or darker coloring? say a slate? I know it is for sapphire, DEH, and some golden agouti's have darker coats then others, but haven't heard about some of the colors.

I checked on the babies today, their getting bigger but I'm going to wait until day 7 to do colors for sure, and 10 to sex them. I couldn't resist picking up one of the little "girls" though , a siamese, with head spot and neck neck spot, I think "she" has faint collar markings. She was next to a solid burmese, and solid siamese, but I didn't look closely at all the babies, just checked that all 8 were still healthy ;D

But none of them are quite as fat as other litters I've had, at that age. I want to make sure that it's likely just because mom had 8 of them? But also, I haven't been able to get her to eat as much protein as I'd like her to, she just wants to get out of the tank up my arm if I hand feed her (she'll take one peanut then try to get out).

Out of the tank she'll eat sunflowers but not cat food, eggs, or peanuts. If I drop protein food in the tank dad eats it first, before she's interested. If I take dad out of the tank with her and the food in it, she gets jealous and jumps up and down .

She gets plenty of alfalfa hay though, and I could give her monkey chow but I'm not sure how much of what those are made up of...anyone else know? She's also eating a mix I got from another breeder that's supposed to be good for pregnant moms- so I guess I don't have to worry about the extra protein....

[sandy]

Ok Thanks Queenie, I thought it quite probable. I don't think I will breed them together long, just long enough to produce a selection of assorted recessives as they are siblings and it would be good to outcross at this point. But they are lovely, and they surprised me by getting pregnant so fast! The little guy is still quite small!

[queenofthenile]

Yeah, I wish they had been PP too, but the only male gerbil Devon had that was ChCh was her PEW, Thorne (AA ChCh EE GG pp). He was bred with Asha (cp slate from my kennel) who is aa CbCb EE gg PP.