Breeding chinchillas and lines to use successfully

[Godins Chinchillas]

So I kinda want to get a general consensus on who you think pairs well together. I've got a couple ryerson animals that have worked well with my Shoots animals. But I'm always in the market for more females that would pair well with my shoots lines. So who do you go to when pairing shoots, ryersons, Somavia, miller, etc? What lines work best together?

 

[Becky]

Who knows! I was told by Woods and Hummel that their animals didn't cross well, but I had one that took reserve section male at Nationals from that combo.

 

[Godins Chinchillas]

Do you think a shorter furred animals works well with a longer type. I had one pair, ryerson and Rolfe that didn't pair well. She had medium length dense fur, he was shorter ok dense fur and what I got was 3 poorly dense short type fur. Luck of the draw?

 

[mark miller]

I think it's all pretty much trial and error. We always tried to work with lines seperately. We had our lines we developed and we would occasionally bring in an outside line to keep from getting too closely line bred. Sometimes the animal brought in would work well and sometimes not. We never had much luck when we tried to breed a Shoots line animal into our established lines, but I was told by Gary Neubauer who has both ours and Shoots top animals that he is producing some of his top show animals crossing the 2 lines. What doesn't work well for some might work great for others

 

[Godins Chinchillas]

it's just hard to swallow spending so much money on a quality standard for her/him to not pair up well with the others you are looking to improve. I know going to Nationals I will be looking to pair up a Somavia black to some standards but I'm at a loss on where to look. I haven't worked with his lines for many years so it's going to be a crap shoot for me. I know what I need in females just whose lines would be best to work with has me on edge.

 

[mishalaa]

I've pretty much kept Shoots to Shoots lines. I bought a Shoots/Woods pair that hadn't produced, split them up and now the Shoots male has produced with two females, and I think the Woods female may be pregnant. Woods/Ryerson/Longenecker/RAF/DJX/Hykes in any combo has worked well for me.

I have not worked with any Somavia animals myself, but there are a few in the backgrounds of a couple of my breeders. He has been paired with Hummel and Bowen.

 

[Dreamlite]

Its soo hard to tell what will work well together without waiting for a kit. It does make it harder for us smaller breeder cause we don't have the names like the larger breeders. I have been unable to sell to breeder cause they don't recognise me like they do woods or shoots. Even though I have done well on the show table. I go more by the traits the individual has than by a breeder name and grow out what kits I can and deside based on that.

 

[Riven]

I've had some Hummel to Shoots, and some JAGS to Shoots luck, but even within one large ranch, there are so many lines.

Some ranchers will tell you lines don't matter, bred based on what you see. I wonder if those people are just suppressing new breeders, lol. I tried this, didn't work well! I learned about breeding lines, and I've seen greater improvements.

I had a chin that was QS x Merritt combo who was nice.

 

[Encantadora]

I don't have a lot to add but I have a nice Ryerson/Hummel standard male. He ended up with great vieling, decent size, nice short dense fur. As another perk he has personality to boot. And takes excellent care of his girls. He's all around a great guy.

I'll keep my eye on this thread as I'm curious about the same information.

Also, is it just me or do certain lines have more of a standard look/type than others? So, breeding some lines may have more variation going into a pairing than say a line that has a very "textbook" type/look that has been established?

 

[VolunteerChin22]

I agree on the look - I can spot a shoots animal a mile away - something about the eyes that makes them all look similar to me.

I have successfully crossed Ryerson/Jags animals and gotten some really nice section champs, but that's about as far as I've gotten with this particular male and his pairings so far. Ive yet to see offspring from my hummel/jags pairing but I'm hopeful they will be nice animals and add the size that seems to be the missing link.

 

[Claire D]

Line bred chins (or chins from a relatively closed herd) will look similar because the breeder will be 'locking in' certain traits (homozygosity). Out-crossing is always going to be a challenge but that's just part of breeding your own lines imho. *shrugs*

 

[poetrue]

Do you think a shorter furred animals works well with a longer type. I had one pair, ryerson and Rolfe that didn't pair well. She had medium length dense fur, he was shorter ok dense fur and what I got was 3 poorly dense short type fur. Luck of the draw?

Jessica I've worked quite a bit with crossing long furred animals with shorter furred animals with differing success. One of the main lines I've established within my herd all has nice long stand-up fur, but is lacking some of that density. I've found that breeding a very long-furred chin to a very short furred chin has not worked out great for me on the show table, but breeding a long furred chin to a nice densely furred medium length coat chin has worked great for overall improvement.

Line bred chins (or chins from a relatively closed herd) will look similar because the breeder will be 'locking in' certain traits (homozygosity). Out-crossing is always going to be a challenge but that's just part of breeding your own lines imho. *shrugs*

As for breeding certain lines together I wonder if breeding a chin from certain lines like Shoots, where there has been extensive line breeding to really cultivate an overal look and line, is more difficult than breeding a chin that has alot going on in the pedigree. Like Mark mentioned:

We had our lines we developed and we would occasionally bring in an outside line to keep from getting too closely line bred. Sometimes the animal brought in would work well and sometimes not.

Thus a line such as Shoots will have more uniform genetics and will more easily pair up with another similar chin. Pairing that chin up to one with completely different genetics most likely wouldn't work well.

Cheryl

 

[Claire D]

One of the obvious issues with line breeding is locking in undesirable traits like genetic problems (e.g. malocclusion) etc.

Thus a line such as Shoots will have more uniform genetics and will more easily pair up with another similar chin.

:yes: That was my point really.

Pairing that chin up to one with completely different genetics most likely wouldn't work well.

I don't believe that is necessarily true.

To me, breeding one's own lines is about pairing up chins from 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation and seeing the cumulative effects of the previous pairings. I wouldn't want my chins to look like (for example, since others have used the name) a Shoots chin - I would want them to look like a Davidson chin, no matter how many generations and out-crossings that took. That's what other breeders have done in order to develop 'their' lines, as Mark has illustrated.


General comment:
Surely the challenge of breeding chinchillas (apart from breeding for health, longevity & all the other attributes we discuss on the forum) is to develop both an eye for what's a good pairing (regardless of breeder's name - so not necessarily Shoots to Shoots animals etc) and to develop one's own lines with certain traits?

 

[designer chins]

It's been very interesting working with Dark Star and Somavia chins the past 2 years. I have a QS black male that has produced a Grand Show with a Shoots female & a National Grand Show with a female that goes back to Blue Vale. Those females were carefully chosen for him based on the kits they produced previously & the phenotype of the females, & they knicked well (thank goodness!). I have a Dark Star male that crosses well on everything so far, and boy do I like that kind of versatility and consistency! I'm finding the uniformity of the line bred animals very rewarding thus far. I have worked with several Hummel animals that crossed extremely well on my ebs. Those HUML animals had a specific fur type, however, which I believe contributed to the success of the crosses. I know what type of fur I want to have on my animals, and I keep working in that direction. For me, the beige are the trickiest! I really enjoyed the line breeding article in the last MCBA magazine. Thought provoking!

So much work to do....but so fun and challenging!