Please note that HH does not encourage deliberate breeding of hamsters. If you wish to get more hamsters, consider adopting them from a shelter or the HH Adoption section. This section is to be used for answering questions relating to accidental breeding of hamsters and how to cope with the situation.
There are only 5 species of domesticated hamsters. They are:
- Syrian
- Chinese
- Winter White
- Campbell Russian Dwarf
- Roborovski
What is Cross Breeding? A crossbreed or crossbred usually refers to an animal with purebred parents of two different breeds, varieties, or populations. Crossbreeding refers to the process of breeding such an animal, often with the intention to create offspring that share the traits of both parent lineages, or producing an animal with hybrid vigor. While crossbreeding is used to maintain health and viability of animals, irresponsible crossbreeding can also produce animals of inferior quality or dilute a purebred gene pool to the point of extinction of a given breed of animal
Cross breeding is breeding hamsters of different Species (the above mentioned 5) together.
Why you CANNOT Cross Breed.
If you have noticed, you will know that all the 5 species have different body shapes, bone structure and size. The most common misconception is between Campbell Russian dwarfs & Winter White dwarfs because, many take them both to be the same species when they are not, it is because they are closely related and can technically cross breed while none of the other species can; but that it is right.
An Example of Cross breeding would be say a Lion and Tiger Bred it would then Become a hybrid : Ligers. Or if a Horse and a donkey bred it would become a hybrid : Mule
The breeding of a Syrian hamster and a dwarf hamster is impossible. These 2 species of hamsters don't "interbreed". The only species of hamsters that can "technically" breed is a "Winter-White" dwarf and a "Campbells" dwarf but they are [two separate species] and it ain't a good idea to breed them because breeding them will create "hybrid" pups, and "hybrid" pups will be subject to different health problems.
Both the Campbell and the Winter White are similar species but they are slightly different in their genetic makeup. They come from different areas of Russia, in the wild they would eat slightly different foods, and if they did meet in the wild they would ignore each other because they knew that mating to each other wouldn't really prove anything, as it would weaken the gene pool and weaken the stock.
Captive bred hamsters don't have that luxury, we choose the mates for them, we don't care if they carry or suffer with diabetes, kidney failure, glaucoma, cancer, missing limbs or ears, I could carry on, but here we have a breeder who totally disregards the rules of breeding hamsters and crosses the species.
So to go back to basics. The word 'hybrid' describes a crossbreed, a mixture of a Winter White and a Russian Campbell, which means that they will carry the characteristics of both parents. This is similar to a crossbreed dog rather than a mongrel, a crossbreed requires two different parents a mongrel requires the two crossbreeds mated again resulting in 4 or more different breeds. But and this is the big but, it can not be bred out, if you have a crossbreed or a mongrel you will not by selective breeding come back to a pure bred animal.
Mating a Winter White to a Russian Campbell can and probably will produce no end of problems, firstly any resulting off spring may be infertile, which is good to the extent that if they are the problem stops there, but this has to be proven, and there will always be the odd one which isn't.
The Winter White and Campbell are also constructed slightly differently, which in turn can cause problems in the production of litters, especially if it's the Winter White that is carrying, because of the slightly wider head of the Campbell the Winter Whites birth canal is not geared up for big headed babies, resulting in the possible loss of the litter and possibly the female too.
Secondly both species are flushing up various health problems, the biggest is diabetes in the Campbells and the Glaucoma in Winter Whites crossing these two species will inevitably cross these two illnesses.
In Conclusion, Do not cross breed, be responsible and do not cross breed trying to get new color mutations; Cross breeding is unethical and does nothing to help better either species of hamster.
