Volume 1, Number 7
December 17th, 2002

Chinchillas.com Newsletter

Auction Update
Promotional Category
Pure Standards
Dwarfs and Minis

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We would like to wish a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of our clients, and visitors to the site. We hope you all have a great holiday season, and we wish you the best with your chinchilla herds and breeding programs over the coming year.

Auction Update

This week on the auction, we have a homozygous violet and homozygous ebony wrap-around violet female. She would be a great addition to any herd aimed at achieving TOV wraps, TOV tan/violet wraps, violet wrap and white hybrids, etc…We also have, for the first time, and ebony and white hybrid female. We have an extra small mini standard male, and two females; a standard and a pink white, that would be good additions to a mini-producing herd. The two standards offered this week are both good quality pure standards, and would be an asset to a breeder’s quality mutation lines.

Promotional Category

There have been some excellent prices on chins in the promotional category over the past month. This category is our way of advertising, and promoting the auction. It often provides a chance for buyers to acquire high quality chinchillas at a lower price.

Pure Standards

We often notate a standard as "pure" in the animal description on the auction. This notation means that the chinchilla is out of a pure standard line, meaning there are no mutations in the background. These are often the most prepotent chinchillas for passing quality on to their offspring. High quality pure standards are the backbone of any standard or mutation breeding program. When breeding mutations, especially hybrids, there is always an exchange of quality for quantity (quantity of color genes). That is why it is so difficult to produce a top quality TOV violet (3 mutation color genes), as opposed to a high quality mosaic (1 mutation color gene) The number of genes in one animal also accounts for the price being higher for a high quality hybrid than for a single gene mutation like black, white or beige. However, it takes top standards to produce top mutations, whether they have 1 color gene, or 4. High quality pure standards maintain good prices because a significant portion of a breeder’s herd must be dedicated to producing them, with no mutation offspring to help offset the cost of maintenance.

Dwarfs and Minis

I am often asked what weight constitutes a "mini." The weight is subject to sex and color, as well as condition. A standard female is generally going to run larger than a mutation male. In general, a standard female of around 1 pound 4 ounces would be about at the top end of the mini scale, and a male should probably not exceed 1 pound. Minis are safer to breed than dwarfs as far as avoiding littering and fertility problems, if the breeder is cautious to use males that are smaller than the females they are breeding.

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