Sapphire?

[sweetie]

Hey I am almost positive that Sweetie is a Sapphire. Is she?

[queenofthenile]

It's so hard to tell unless you can see your gerbil right next to a lilac, or you have had a lilac gerbil before. She looks like a lilac to me, but as I said, it's almost impossible to tell from just a picture.

[andrea]

looks a little like a light slate to, has she got black eyes?. Lilac, doves and sapphires have ruby eyes. - I am assuming the red eyes are from the flash

Andrea

[crazycritter]

by light slate do you mean Colorpoint slate? I have a CP slate and she doesn't look anything like that.

[andrea]

not a light colourpoint slate just a light slate. CP slate and slate are a different colour. it is hard to tell colours when the photos have been taken inside becuase of the flash. she does look very much like our light CP slate pups before moulting just without the dark tail, feet etc. from the phto i guess shes about 5 weeks?. unless our pups are giant pups ;D The colour of the slates do darken slightly after the first moult. light slate is a different colour than slate.

The colour of the eyes will shed some light on the subject.

Andrea

[andrea]

Not sure if this will work but this picture shows, siamese, burmese, cp slate and light cp slate, you can clearly see the 4 different colours

[queenofthenile]

From Sweetie's other pictures, I'm quite sure she is either sapphire or lilac. I'm positive sweetie has red eyes:

Here's another pic with the flash, but all of my red-eyed gerbils' eyes look that way with the flash. The black eyed gerbils only seem to get the center of their eye looking red, not the entire eye. Ha ha, this is funny. We can't even seem to agree on eye colour . Gerbils can be so hard to photograph!

[queenofthenile]

Andrea, is the lcp slate pup the one on the far left?

[andrea]

He he.. if gerbils kept still and posed for the camera we wouldn't have a problem .. If everyone elses gerbils ar elike ours they either run away, hide, or attack the camera!! ;D I have taken many a photo of nothing or a slither of tail as they have run off just as the flash decides to do summut!!

I haven't had red eyes gerbils in a long time so i cannot really remember what it looks like ona photo when the flash caught it.. I am not so keen on red eyed gerbs, i dunno why ??

in the photo of the baby colourpoints, the light again doesn't help, but theres 3 siamese, 2 burmese, 2LCP slate and 1 cp slate.. the one that looks black is now our big fat cp slate boy - Sooty ;D the LCP slates look almost identical to burmese at this stage, but you can see the difference in the natural light.

unfortunatly I think our burmese female Piper will soon be retireing as the last litter she only had three but shes had lots of babies in the past, she will be a year old in the next few weeks.

We are going to pair up our very heavily marked male pup from Maddies litter with a burmese female in pipers current litter - hoping to get mottled burmese

We are going to part shep and magpie, as i do not want to have to many breedng pairs at any gievn time and this pairing are only produced very badly marked blacks and pied blacks. Maddie and smudge are coming out with a great selection of colour ;D

Ooops rambling on.....

Andrea

[queenofthenile]

)
I remember your commenting on a pup I thought was lcp slate. You said that your lcp slates were closer to burmese than siamese. In my experience, what I *thought* were lcp slates (ie: take my word with a grain of salt ;D), were about midway between siamese and burmese. (The pics don't make it look that way :

Here's a picture:

From upper left going clockwise:
Burmese, siamese, siamese, lcp slate, cp slate, lcp slate.

What do you think?

[andrea]

You have a better photo there queen ;D - boy my camera must be pants...

I agree with you on which pup in your pics is what colour. I think different people describe different colours in a different way but in the end you tend to be talking about the same thing..

Andrea

Anyway back to sweeties sapphire - Sorry for hijacking your thread ;D

[sweetie]

No problem Hijacking!! I have been guilty of this myself. It is all very interesting. I learn alot through other's conversations. Sweetie is red eyed. I actually looked on the color pallette and thought she might be lilac also but when I look at the sapphire, it looks almost identical. That is of course to me and I have really no experience with coloring. You all amaze me with your intense knowledge of genetices.

Is there any color I can use as a bask drop to get you all a better picture to help you indicate color? She is so gentle and tame the I can hold her and take the picture. SHe is very cooperative. Unlike Blackie and Cowboy.

[sandy2]

Here is a picture of my gerbils showing Lilac, Sapphire and Dove (all unspotted):



Hope this helps!

[sweetie]

Thanks for the picture Sandy. They are beautiful. All yours?
I love your bottom pictures as well

[sandy2]

Thanks! Yup, all mine. I have about 21 adult gerbils and a large number of pups. I think I am the biggest gerbil hobby breeder in BC at this time (probably in most of WA as well). I've phoned around to see where the gerbils are coming from and some are shipped in from somewhere. Other than people giving pet shops their accidental pups or the odd hobby breeder having a pair, I'd say the show is all mine.

I'm excited to say we're moving into some fancy colours. My pied light apricot (a very lucky rescue!) had 2 litters of pups this summer which I will use to breed ee and gg gerbils. I also noticed a very odd spotted dove gerbil that faded to white, I bred her and now I am breeding her pups for that unknown gene! Its exciting!