Cinnamon Pictures

[jennyb]

How do you tell if your chip is cinnamon? My male Bob has ginger fur around his back, its the only way I can tell him apart from my female.

To help you Ste and so i don't thread jack Barry's topic, i've made this new topic where members can post their Cinnamon pictures

Hi Ste, first i'll tell you about my experiences of owning them. First the mum was my very first Cinnamon i bought her for £60 in 2001 and she was in the shop with a boy Cinnamon, i didn't buy him. Two weeks later she had babies - four i didn't know she was pregnant so was a surprise. At first i didn't know if they were Cinnamon like her, they looked exactly like Agouti pinkies when born. When they started getting their fur they were looking lighter than Agouti, didn't have the ginger look though. I still wasn't sure until they had all their fur, they all were lighter than their mum. Sadly two died the surviving two Ginger and Hazel (in pics above) survived and they gradually got darker once adult and eventually looked the same colour as mum Sandie but it took awhile before the ginger colour came through. My Bailey i bought of Dayle C last March looked similar to Hazel and Ginger at 8 weeks old when i bought him at eight weeks old and as he neared adult he developed darker ginger colouring of the centre stripes and tail and ginger rump. But he always did have a gingery look when i saw him at Dayle's.

A Cinnamon looks like an Agouti with the same amount of stripes ect but the body colour is light brown or orange. The five black stripes of an Agouti are a chestnut brown. The brown stripes surrounding the centre stripe of an Agouti become orange. The white stripes of an Agouti stay white. The belly is white. The tail becomes orange or light brown. The rump near the tail is often a ginger colour. The eyes are the same colour as Agouti but they have white claws and often white whiskers. The face stripes are chestnut brown and white with white ring around eye like Agouti. The top white face stripe goes from nose to ear. The bottom face stripe eye to ear. The same applies with the chestnut brown stripes. The back of the ears are white. The colour is recessive just like Dilute White. They appear to be quite rare compared to the Agouti and the Dilute White.

Genetics of the Cinnamon (same as Dilute White)

The Cinnamon is a recessive colour like Dilute White and for what i call pure-bred Cinnamon's you need two Cinnamon parents. Two Cinnamon parents will breed true meaning they will not have Agouti in litter. An Agouti from one Cinnamon parent and Agouti parent are known as 'Cinnamon Carriers', they have the Agouti colouring but carry the recessive ' Cinnamon gene' which means in future they can have Cinnamon babies themselves if bred to another Carrier or a  pure-breed Cinnamon. I do find genetics quite complicated but i will try to explain below:

Cinnamon female and Cinnamon male - all babies Cinnamon
Cinnamon female and Cinnamon Carrier male - some babies Cinnamon, rest Agouti
Cinnamon male and Cinnamon Carrier female - some babies Cinnamon,  rest Agouti
Cinnamon Carrier male and Cinnamon Carrier female - some babies Cinnamon, rest Agouti.

If your boy has a ginger back end he could be a Cinnamon, would have to see pics to tell. I have posted some more pics of Bailey below so you can see better and some of Ginger and Abigail (Agouti) together

Pic 1 Bailey eight weeks old
Pic 2 Bailey 6 months old
Pic 3 Bailey a year old
Pic 4 Ginger and Abigail my Agouti together, pic abit small and can't locate origional image at the moment, i copied this of my website.
Pic 5 Hazel and Ginger on their birthday last year.
Pic 6 Ginger and Abigail mating (sorry don't have many pictures of the two together but does show difference in colour well.
Pic 7 Hazel in 2007
Pic 8 Ginger in 2007
Pic 9 Ginger in 2008 he was facinated by my fish screen saver lol
Pic 10 Hazel up by the air conditioning, she loved watching us from up high
Pic 11 Ginger R.I.P. photo 10.06.2009 (the wheel was his favourite)
Pic 12 Hazel R.I.P. photo 23.03.2010
Pic 13 Sandie and Hazel 2006
Pic 14 Bailey and Pearl 2009
Pic 15 origional photo of number 4 above 2009


Any pics younger than eight weeks old i can't help you, Dayle must have pics though. Hope pics give more idea of development of the colour.

<a href="http://i677.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid677.photobucket.com/albums/vv139/chirpiechipmunkz/SDC10762.flv" target="_blank">http://i677.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid677.photobucket.com/albums/vv139/chirpiechipmunkz/SDC10762.flv</a>

[jennyb]

A few more pics

1. Bailey 2010
2. Bailey in the sunshine
3. Bailey in the sunshine again
4. Hazel out for a run, shows tail well

Hope you enjoy the photos. Feel free to add your own Cinnamon pictures would love to see everyones Cinnamons 

[DayleC]

I certainly do have pictures     Lily's babies were born 25th March 2009 sometime before 1 o'clock lunchtime....They weren't there when I left for work so was a nice surprise when I arrived home    Hopefully the pictures are in order !    1st is babies 9 days old  you can just see the orange fur coming through...the other 3 are normal Agouti....the 2nd picture was taken on the 29th April so they were just under 5 weeks old. My Chippies all live outside but I seperate the females when they are pregnant which is why they are in an inside cage.

[jennyb]

Thanks Dayle for posting Lily's litter, lovely to see Bailey as a baby   

I have a few pics from today

1. Abigail my Agouti and Bailey. This is just before Abi chased him away i think he does look like he could run at any moment
2. Bailey in the sun
3. Bailey climbing
4. Bailey eating honey nut stick
5. Bailey eating honey nut stick 2
6. Bailey trying to eat the nut stick packet in my pocket
7. Bailey on my head
8. Bailey and Abigail
9 Bailey and Abigail eating

I also have a 10 minute video of Abigail and Bailey i'll upload once i change file type to WMV file and have uploaded it to photobucket.

Video finally uploaded, think it was too long in future i will do shorter videos, it took hours to upload to photobucket. Video shows Bailey being his usual hyperactive self and Abigail eating and being her calmer self.

<a href="http://i677.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid677.photobucket.com/albums/vv139/chirpiechipmunkz/AbigailandBailey.flv" target="_blank">http://i677.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid677.photobucket.com/albums/vv139/chirpiechipmunkz/AbigailandBailey.flv</a>

[ste6]

I have managed to take some pictures of Bob today. He has some scratches on his back but am pretty sure he has the ginger colouring on his rear and his legs.

[Jacko2607]

Here's a couple of Nutmeg I took this morning.

[jennyb]

Hi Ste nice photos i agree he does have a ginger colouring on legs and rump, do you have a more clearer picture as when enlarged it gets abit grainy and is difficult to see clearly. Does he have a lightish brown/ginger colour on his face and a gingery tail? My first thoughts are that he isn't a Cinnamon but a clearer pic may help but he is a more unusual colour variation of Agouti.

Thanks for those great photos of Nutmeg Barry, she is a beautiful girl

[DaveB]

Hi Jenny

lovely pics, I didn't know there is a cinnamon colour, just goes to show you learn something everyday.

I only got my two in feb this year, male and female which I'm hoping to put into an aviary at some point when I move house.

I noticed you have 9 chippies, do you keep them all together and if so what ratio of females do you keep to males?.

I was thinking of having either 1 male to 3 females or 2 males to 4 females, once my aviary is up, what do you recommend?.

Thanks

Dave

[jennyb]

Hi Dave, i learn new things all the time too being on this forum. I first saw Cinnamon pictures in one of my Chipmunk books but didn't see one for real until 2001, i got my first Chipmunks in 1998 and they were Agouti, i then got a couple of Dilute Whites in 2000 and finally my first Cinnamon in 2001 who was pregnant and had babies. I had a few unexpected litters which didn't survive but all were Cinnamon too. I had only two until last May when i bought Bailey, not long after my Ginger died and Hazel passed away March this year. I no longer have any from my very first litter. So only one remains and his mate is an Agouti called Abigail.

The nine Chippies are really five as four are Hermione's babies. Two Dilute's are kept together Pearl (female) and Asriel (male - dad of babies) in one outside aviary and they get on very well and my Abigail (female) and Bailey (male) live in the other outside aviary but Abigail doesn't like him much and prefers him to keep out of her way, they only get on great when she is in season. Hermione is in the house at the moment with her babies as she is not really very sociable at all, i hope she may get better as she gets older. So my ratio is one male to one female at the moment but this may change as i get more Chipmunks. It is best to have two females for every male. One male to three females would be fine and also two males to four females but of course you will get alot of babies, depends how much space you have really.

Jen

[hollysmithy]

heres one of petal n new baby
1st one is petal
2nd is new baby just over 5wks old
last one is scragg from last yr
i must admit the new baby does look light buthes not as light as scrag

[DaveB]

Hi Jenny

Thanks for the info, after seeing some of the cinnamon photos I had a look at my two and they both have ginger stripes on their rumps and in their tales so I'm wondering if they could have cinnamon in their blood lines ( hope so)  , I'll load some pics as soon as I get a new camera to USB lead and you could let me know what you think.

[DaveB]

Hope my pics have worked, do you think they have cinnamon in their genes.

All views welcome.

[jennyb]

Thanks for your pics Holly, yeah thats the pic of Petal i've seen before with her holding the baby, its a lovely pic.

Thanks for your pics too Dave, sorry i think Alvin in the pics is Agouti, Agouti's do have colour variations and the last pic looks similar to my Abigail, its a nice pic.

Heres what one of my Chippy books says about Agouti's with colour variations and Cinnamons:

SIBERIAN CHIPMUNK GENETICS-

The colours of the Siberian vary greatly but they are all basically a reddish/brownish/greyish colour commonly known as Agouti. It appears that colour variations cannot be bred because by mating two reddish animals together, there is no certainty that reddish animals will occur even in later generations. There is however one exception to this, and that appears to be an animal called the Cinnamon.
Over the past few years (book was written in 1998) this colour has appeared quite often in various litters and i believe that it may be decended from stock imported into the United Kingdom in the late 1960s and early 70s from the Japanese Island of Hokkaido. These individuals were slightly finer-boned than those of the mainland, and were described as more noticeably reddish/cinnamon. Unfortunately stock of this island race was not retained in separate populations from those of the mainland. Most animals in Great Britain are decended from animals obtained from Korea. However in recent years individuals have been born that are finer-boned and much more reddish/cinnamon in colouration than the normal Siberian. I feel that these may well be a throwback to the Hokkaido stock. As this has caused more and more interest i have attempted to gather some of these animals, breed them and compare notes with others. From this it does appear that you can develop a true breeding colour for Cinnamon animals but, in order to do this, you must have either two Cinnamon animals or a Cinnamon and a Cinnamon Carrier or two Carriers. This means that the Cinnamon colour is what is known as a recessive gene, that can be covered or masked by the normal Agouti.

Another one of his books says this about Cinnamons:

There are various different views of this colour, some people believe that it is a true mutation, while others believe it is a throwback to a sub-species of animal that was obtained from the island of Hokkaido in Japan. Basically it is an animal where a lot of the black in the coat  has been changed to a rusty brown and the brown in the normal coat has been turned to orange. The eyes are dark and this colour is also recessive. There are two forms of inheritance in breeding animals -recessive and dominant, the recessive being the most common form. A colour is known as recessive when it disappears in crosses with the original wild colour 'Agouti'. In the Siberian Chipmunk, this occurs with both the Dilute White and the Cinnamon. Let me explain. When a Dilute White is mated to an Agouti, the youngsters which result are all Agouti, like the Agouti parent. This proves that, in combination with each other, the Agouti is dominant and the Dilute is recessive. If mated together, the youngsters will give birth to 76 per cent Agouti young and 25 per cent Dilute. However, if you mate the same youngsters back to the Dilute parent, they will give birth to 50 per cent Agouti and 50 per cent Dilute young. So, with recessive inheritance, a colour is not neccessarily lost if it does not appear in the young. An Agouti born from Agouti and Dilute (or Cinnamon) parents can be 'split'. This means that it carries the gene for another colour. For example, if you mate an Agouti to a Dilute, the young should be Agouti, as this is dominant, as explained above. If the litter includes three Agouti and one Dilute, then you know that the Agouti is 'split' or a 'carrier' of Dilute. This shows what is known as a typical 3:1 ratio, which plays an important part in genetics. The fact that the Dilute does not reappear until the second generation need not worry the breeder because once it has recurred, the Dilute youngsters are true-breeding and will not revert to the Agouti if mated together.


I hope this helps because i find genetics rather complicated but i would think what Chris Henwood said is true that Cinnamons are what we call true-breeding, as Sandie was Cinnamon and the father of her babies in the pet store was Cinnamon and all her babies were Cinnamon too. Then when Ginger bred back to his mum, might have been sister (not intentional by the way) can't be sure as they all slept in same nest with babies the babies again were all Cinnamon. One thing for sure Ginger was a great father and Sandie, Ginger and Hazel were a great family but the breeding was an accident. I have seen variations in colouring in my Agouti's i have owned, Chip and Dale my first pair were quite reddish on the rump. Abigail has a sandy colouring on the rump but greyish colouring on the shoulders. Stripe was quite a greyish Agouti. Chirpie was similar to Abigail with a sandy colouring. I can't remember about Chipper.

Would anyone think it is possible for Chipmunks imported from Hokkaido in the 60s and 70s to still appear in Chipmunk breeding in later years or do you think the Cinnamon is a mutation like Dilute White? I myself am not sure i think it is a mystery.

Sorry for how long this post is.

[Jacko2607]

Very interesting post Jenny, answered a lot of questions.

Barry

[candyfloss]

One thing we do know for sure is that cinnamon's are very hard to come by! I'm going to put an advert on my local version of 'e-bay' to see if anyone on the island has any but i'm 99% sure that nobody has.
Would you mind jenny if i use one of your pics to illustrate what a Cinnamon's colouring is?