About Chinchillas
Breeding chinchillas is going to be my new project. So far I have managed to create chinchillas by breeding a white/lilac argente with a pink eyed or dark eyed white, but these sometimes produce chinchillas with white patches. It is best to only keep the ones without white patches and use these for future breeding, and stick to using pigs with ticking. I have also produced chinchillas by using a pink eyed white with a black fox, but I have decided this is not really ideal as you are introducing the plain gene from the fox. The matings above have all produced silver chinchillas, if you wanted to produce cinnamon chinchillas, this would be possible using a white/beige argente or a chocolate fox with your respective self white. I did get a couple of cinnamon chinchillas from my black fox sow, but I think this was because she had chocolate fox in her breeding. My next step has been to breed chinchilla to chinchilla and this has produced some chinchillas and also (unfortunately) some dark eyed and pink eyed whites, and also some self chocolates. If I keep breeding only chinchilla with chinchilla, I am hoping only chinchillas will be produced, and they will breed true, and this will produce the chinchillas with the correct genotype (AA). I have also found that the silver chinchillas with the best colour, ie not too dark, are those that are carrying the chocolate gene (Bb).
The proposed genotype for the silver chinchilla is AABbcrcrEE and for the cinnamon chinchilla AAbbcrcrEE.
Here are the guidelines for describing a chinchilla. These must be taken to a show and given to the judge when showing chinchillas in the New & Emerging section. Please feel free to copy this if you need to take the notes to a show. These have been decided by the RVCC and BCC and we have had to change the description of the colours to the ones below. I will find it hard to change my description, they will always be silver or cinnamon chinchillas to me!!
CHINCHILLA GUIDANCE NOTES
A cavy with long ticked agouti-pattern all over the body except for white or cream areas that must be clearly defined and distinct. These are restricted to eye circles, nostrils, jowls, chest and belly. The belly should be wide and just visible when the cavy is viewed from the side, but not a crisp line against the ticked side of the body. The Chinchilla has a paler base colour than the normal Agouti, to be as pale a shade as possible without losing the desired grey pigmentation on skin, ears and eye rims. Too dark a shade of body colour is a fault.
Allowable colours are:
WHITE/GREY CHINCHILLA: pale grey base with long white ticking, white markings.
WHITE/BEIGE CHINCHILLA: beige/mink base with white ticking, white markings.
CREAM/GREY CHINCHILLA: pale grey base with long cream ticking, cream markings.
CREAM/BEIGE CHINCHILLA: beige/mink base with long cream ticking, cream markings.
Here is Leia, a good example of a silver (white/grey) chinchilla.
Here is Leia again and her sister Topsy, when they were about 6 weeks old.
Here is a picture of two brothers born in June, sons of Mandy and Maxwell, Mozart is the one on the left, Magnus on the right has gone to live with my friend Anne. They look very similar to Leia and Topsy above at about the same age. It is better to keep the lighter (whiter) babies as they do get darker with age and gradual turn into the correct colour.
This is Troy he is a cinnamon (white/beige) chinchilla and son of Topsy and nephew of Leia. He belongs to my friend Jackie.
Here is a young cinnamon (white/beige) chinchilla, brother of Luke at about 6 weeks old.
Here is Pickle when she was young, she is a lemon (cream/grey) chinchilla.
Here also is Pickle's half brother Mylo, he is a cream/beige chinchilla. He belongs to my friend Jackie.