It's really has been too long. This BLOG was meant to be a sort of online journal but what with computer issues, connectivity issues and a lot of distraction on my part (uni wise) I ended up completely forgetting about this. I suppose it hasn't been too bad in the sence that at the end of 2014 I picked up static lice and early 2015 the dreaded running lice. I has taken more-or less this long to eradicate it. but now that i have I can show a whole lot more... and I will.
The stud is a couple of years old now and the lines are begining to stabalise. It is now that larger issues with the line are beginning to appear. For example in the golden agoutis I have had only light issue finding nice boars to use (though I had to accept a couple with great ticking but bad crests) but I have been able to source decent sows, thus I was been forced to keep each and every sow born regardless of quality to breed back into the program. So now I have an issue where the babies produced are either nicely ticked boars (many with poor quality crests) or badly ticked sows. The nicest ticked sows I have come with red spots; Sandra (on the home page) was no acception. It's going to be another generation or two at least to breed out the spots and improve the general quality of the sows being born here.
We've had a couple of shows for this year so far. I've made a real push to get my Gold/Lilacs on the table. So far i've had all get 1st place, at both shows but at Queenbeyan the BOB went to Phil- for reasons that weren't really clear. Having had a good look at the BOB winner I can see it's merits. I'm quite sure all of mine had better feet. That said I did prefer it's general conformation and the even-ness of the undercolour. It's funny really because I remember in the article I had published on argentes that I advocated having a slightly pale undercolour to 'richen' the appearance of the ticking. And now I've been beaten by exactly that- It makes me smile. But I need to remember that Fireworks, who won BOB before, wasn't at this show due to a small abscess on his side. it's hard to know how things may have gone if he was in the lineup.
With the argentes I'd focussed my attention to breeding out the gold faces and ear folds. The result of this has been to breed in a darker undercolour instead so there's still a lot of work to be done on this to, still try and breed out the heaviness of gold of course, breed back to the evenness of undercolour. You can see it, in the photo, how dark his face is compared to his body.
below; Darwing Fireworks, gold/Lilac Argente BOB March 2015
The stud is a couple of years old now and the lines are begining to stabalise. It is now that larger issues with the line are beginning to appear. For example in the golden agoutis I have had only light issue finding nice boars to use (though I had to accept a couple with great ticking but bad crests) but I have been able to source decent sows, thus I was been forced to keep each and every sow born regardless of quality to breed back into the program. So now I have an issue where the babies produced are either nicely ticked boars (many with poor quality crests) or badly ticked sows. The nicest ticked sows I have come with red spots; Sandra (on the home page) was no acception. It's going to be another generation or two at least to breed out the spots and improve the general quality of the sows being born here.
We've had a couple of shows for this year so far. I've made a real push to get my Gold/Lilacs on the table. So far i've had all get 1st place, at both shows but at Queenbeyan the BOB went to Phil- for reasons that weren't really clear. Having had a good look at the BOB winner I can see it's merits. I'm quite sure all of mine had better feet. That said I did prefer it's general conformation and the even-ness of the undercolour. It's funny really because I remember in the article I had published on argentes that I advocated having a slightly pale undercolour to 'richen' the appearance of the ticking. And now I've been beaten by exactly that- It makes me smile. But I need to remember that Fireworks, who won BOB before, wasn't at this show due to a small abscess on his side. it's hard to know how things may have gone if he was in the lineup.
With the argentes I'd focussed my attention to breeding out the gold faces and ear folds. The result of this has been to breed in a darker undercolour instead so there's still a lot of work to be done on this to, still try and breed out the heaviness of gold of course, breed back to the evenness of undercolour. You can see it, in the photo, how dark his face is compared to his body.
below; Darwing Fireworks, gold/Lilac Argente BOB March 2015