| British Hamster Association Standards July 2002 Feature | White Banded [Judging can be found below.] In the Standards this Syrian pattern is referred to as White Banded, but almost no one calls it anything but Banded, and this is its accepted name. Patterning is included in the Colour and Markings category which accounts for 30 of the possible 100 show points. Standards copyright and reproduced with permission of the
British Hamster Association | 1. The White Banded animal shall have the appearance of a coloured animal with a superimposed White Band. The White Band shall completely encircle the body and be centrally placed and not skewed. The width shall be approximately one-third of the body length, completely unbroken with sharply defined and parallel margins. The belly fur shall be White. 2. The White areas shall be White to the roots. 3. The coloured areas shall conform to the recognised full colour variety. 4. EYE COLOUR: As for the full coloured variety, also ruby/red eye or eyes permissible. 5. EAR COLOUR: As for the full coloured variety, also flesh or partly flesh coloured permissible.  | Ivory is a Banded Sable belonging to The River Road Hamstery. The front and rear margins of her band are straight, and the width is good. The small midline spot is a defect. Note the associated ear mottling. | | Spot is a Banded Black hamster from The River Road Hamstery. She has a band that is very close to 1/3 of her body length. Her band illustrates a very common defect in that it is "broken", that is, broken with color. This is not often seen on the show bench since bands are fairly responsive to selective breeding. |  |  | To the left is one of Lorraine Hill's photos of an unpatterned hamster which she has editted to show an ideal band. Of course, no real hamster would ever look so perfect (or strange), but it makes for a good model. (Reproduced with permission of Lorraine Hill.) | | Sometimes, a band is so underdeveloped that only a triangle of white is seen extending up from the belly on each side. At the other extreme Bands can be selectively bred to be so wide that color remains only on the head and near the tail. This is done to increase the chances of good bands in the offspring since it seems the tendency (without selection) drifts to poor bands. | | That's it! Now go take some pictures of your favorite "best banded" hamsters, and upload them to the BHA Standards Photo Gallery. No camera? Surf the web for photos of hamsters with great bands, and submit a link on the BHA Standards Links List. In your post be sure to indicate which hamster you're entering on the linked page in case there is more than one. If multiple people submit the same link, credit will go to the first. (No links to hamsters at AAA Hamsters, The River Road Hamstery or the California Hamster Association.) Only two entries per member per month please. Questions? Post to the BHA Standards Message Board. Remember - enjoy your hamsters, and... | 
| Have your Standards! | | Linda and Jan Judge's Page by Linda Price When judging a banded Syrian, there are a number of factors to look at. You want to look at: 1. The width of the band and whether the width stays constant.
2. The straightness of the edges on the band.
3. The amount of color (if any) within the band. Any deviations on any of these three criteria result in points removed from the 30 total points for color and markings. Remember that we are only looking at banded markings for this month. Thus, we will entirely disregard any comments or points on color. | The winner for this month is again Millie. Let's talk through how we would score her points. First, her band is not of a consistent width. It narrows on one side. This would cause a 1 point deduction in her score. Second, her edges are not entirely straight. This wouldcost a 1 point deduction for each edge - top and bottom. There are no spots or color within her band, so there would be no deductions in that category. That is a total of a 3 point deduction. |  | | There is a tie for runner-up between Alexis (left) and Squirt (right). |  |  | For Alexis, we will ignore the tri-color aspects of her judging and judge just her band only. The band is a good width and seems even (can't see the far side), so there would no deductions for this item. The edges are fairly straight (except where the color moves in at the middle of the band. There would only be a 0.5 deduction for straightness on each edge. There would be a further deduction of 1.5 for both top and bottom edge for the color in the middle of the edge moving into the band. Thus, there are total deductions of 4 points for the band markings.
For Squirt, band width is the key issue. The width appears even, but he would lose 2.5 points since the width is too narrow. The edges are not entirely straight, so that would cost him an additional 1.5 points. Since there are no spots within the band, there would be no deduction there. Thus, he would lose a total of 4 points for the band markings.
Congratulations to our winners! |
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