Curious to know,Does the UK breed for colors?

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ccChalieAndSpruce99chins

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ive been wondering about this.

i added bunch of chinnie friends on facebook, cuz i love to see my homepage fillled with animals/chinchilla photos.

usually the USA breeders dont post pictures as often as the UK and the other countries, and when they do, its either high quality chinchilla or super high quality chinchilla. its very eye appealing to me. and makes me wanna improve my chinchillas.

but iv also realized that the UK and other countries breed for color, i could be wrong tho. their chins are so colorful, they tend to like the black and white ones, cuz ive seen a breeder post a picture of one and it got 20+ comments. and also the quality isnt as great as the USs

but again i could be wrong. to be honestly, i rather see good quality standards than bunch of colorful small poor fur quality chins.
i hope it is okay to say these on this forum, and im sure there are a lot of UK breeders on this forum, so i hope i dont offen anyone, cuz this isnt my purpose, im just reallly curous to know. one thing i know tho is that ppl breed chinchillas to improve the species.
another thing i realized that when i post a picture of my chin a standard chin i usually get 'likes' from US chinnie friends, and when i post a picture of a homo beige/ ebony mosaic i get likes from both US chinnie friends and UK chinnie friends.
i like good homo beiges and good ebony mosaics but not the ones with so many different mutation parents that dont compliment each other so the offsprings quality is just pooror. i do like all chinchillas, but if i had to choose i would choose a good quality chin as a pet. im just being honest here.
 
At every show I've been to, it's been mainly standards, and relatively small mutation classes (with some very good quality mutation chinnies). I think it's purely that being in the US, you haven't had a full opportunity to see the chins we have over here. :))

If you have a look at Etherdale Chinchillas website, for instance:
http://www.edchinchillas.co.uk/
you should see some pics. of nice chins.

When it's said breed to improve the species, aside from breeding for health, really it's talking about breeding for qualities humans want in chins (based on standards derived from the fur industry, which is exactly the same for our show standard here in the UK even though we do not have a fur industry here).

Of course, some breeders will breed mainly just for colour, but that's the case in the US, too. I would think they wouldn't do particularly well at shows (assuming they did show) if that was all they were focusing on.
 
It is more a case I think that UK breeders tend not to publicly post photos and show off.

Pretty much every mutation breeder I have met goes back to standard, they don't tend to breed mutation to mutation.

To say we don't breed for quality is a bit harsh. Make a trip over to the National Show and I think you'll have a surprise. I saw a 1200+ black velvet national champ and she was better than the pics I have seen from the USA.

The senior top breeders don't tend to be as tech-savvy so they don't have sites.

I assure you we have stunners too -you just haven't seen evidence of them.
 
The UK and Europe do have high quality chins, Etherdale is one such breeder but they are not active photographers. Same with most of the top-placing breeders here in the US, Hummel doesn't even have a website.

I do not believe European breeders receive the same backlash that US breeders do for breeding all the colors under the rainbow - there are plenty that do that here in the US too, they have just learned not to be so public about it, but you can find them on craigslist and hoobly.
 
I don't think it's a case of "showing off" but more of who is tech savvy and who has time to post all of that. I know the older guys over here either flat out refuse to do anything online, or if they do, they provide a poor representation of what their herd has.

There are quality chins on either side, but I think the people that tend to post a lot of photos of every color baby under the sun are the BYB's and they are much more common online than the quality breeders. Frankly, we don't have a lot of time to post pictures of everything born or fun things going on. I get asked frequently if I am still breeding simply because I have not had time to update my website the past year or so.

So, I don't think it's about what quality is in the US versus the UK. I think both have stellar animals. It's about there being even more poor quality breeders on both sides that are more interested in breeding for colors, showing a stronger presence online.

To say we don't breed for quality is a bit harsh. Make a trip over to the National Show and I think you'll have a surprise. I saw a 1200+ black velvet national champ and she was better than the pics I have seen from the USA.
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As she mentioned several times, she did not mean to offend anyone, it was a genuine question about what she is seeing on facebook. I know of the breeders she is talking about and they are not some of the better breeders of Europe if you know what I mean. They do show a very strong presence on facebook though and post photos VERY regularly. Granted, the wording could have been better, but it's not a personal attack on breeders and quality chinchillas in Europe.

I'm sure the quality stands up on either side of the pond, but saying one is better than the other based on pictures isn't very accurate.
 
Wouldn't it be awesome if all the different chinchilla organizations worked together to put on a World Championship Chinchilla Show. It would be really interesting to see the top quality US chins go against the top European and top South American and top Asian chinchillas. Honestly, I have no idea who would win. Even getting judges together to agree on top quality would be difficult. The standard by which top quality is judged differs slightly between all the chinchilla organizations around the world. Quite a few years ago, some of the top breeders in the US took their show animals to Europe and competed at their shows. They did well, but did not dominate the show and win all of the top awards. Things have changed a lot since then and it would be very interesting to see who really has the top quality chinchillas in the world.
 
mark miller said:
Wouldn't it be awesome if all the different chinchilla organizations worked together to put on a World Championship Chinchilla Show. It would be really interesting to see the top quality US chins go against the top European and top South American and top Asian chinchillas.
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I think that would be great! I'm sure it would be a logistical nightmare though :p But I must say I would love to be able to see all the chinnies from the different parts of the world and possibly enter a few myself into the competition!

Cheryl
 
It would be nice to see, but will never happen. Very cost prohibitive and what would you gain for all you would put out and go through to transport animals and do all the traveling.
 
I know and I agree for the most part but you got to admit just the idea is awesome to just imagine... I dunno show/world conference breeders from all over the world could have a chance to hear speakers, show animals, establish contacts with one another... maybe if it was long enough and had enough activities...eh ya never know maybe someday... Has anyone from overseas ever flown in to participate at Nationals???
 
Randy, can you imagine the demand for your animals world wide if you made a big impression at a World Championship chinchilla show. As a example, my Grandfather sent a few of his chinchillas to Argentina several years ago. The ranchers there had never seen his animals before. One of his animals won their National Show that year. He then had South American ranchers contacting him and flying to the US to buy his animals. His yearly sales more then tripled and he couldn't fill all their orders. You could literally name your price for your animals if you were to win a show like that and people would still be lined up to buy your animals.
 
Mark has a good point! First identify where it would be easiest to fly animals in/out of, have video broadcast...the possibilities are endless. Could always start a site or a facebook page for input/ideas from everyone. I am not saying it would be easy but possible...I think so. People import/export animals all of the time. Heck maybe we could even get some true charcoals back in this country.... Question is how much demand/participation would there be??? That is the only thing...would enough people care???
 
The event would have to be planned and organized properly. You would need some sponsor's to help pay for such an event as well as putting up prize money for the top awards as added incentive to bring in the top breeders. You would need support from many chinchilla organizations to schedule, advertise, and put on such an event. It would probably take 2-3 years just to organize, promote, and pull off such an event as this. Obviously, it wouldn't bring in all the top animals in the world and would primarily be set up for the larger scale top breeders that have money to attend such an event with the possibility of promoting their product on a worldly stage. Who wouldn't want the title of "Home of the World Champion Chinchilla" next to their name. For the couple thousand dollars you would probably spend attending such an event with your animals, you'd make 50 times that in sales from the publicity you'd generate winning an event like that.
 
Probably would need an international version of an organization like MCBA established.... has anyone ever tried something like that???
 
Since I am assuming the idea of increased sales is in the pelt sales, why not have a world show of pelts, seems easier and cheaper to set up that trying to have live animals.
 
Dawn the increased sales would be in selling breeding stock as people supposedly would want the worlds best breeders animals in their own herds. Only problem with those thoughts in my opinion are would you get their best if not seen in person. And just because you have one animal that's the best in the world does not mean your whole herd is the best in the world. Also I am thinking it would take more than a couple thousand dollars to fly me and my animals to another country. But that aside the location no matter where it is held is going to favor those that are closest and that have the least amount of stress to their animals to get them there. You can tell the difference in animals in just the traveling to shows here in the states when you have them on the road for a couple of days before the show. Then judges and politics would probably play into who wins more than likely with the money on the line. Another thing is that some of the smaller breeders have some real nice quality animals but how could they afford to go and with their limited production they would not stand to benefit near as much.
 
Do different countries have different standards as far as what is a perfect chin? Or is there some universal standard?
 
As hard as we try in both ECBC and MCBA to have judges that judge to the same universal standards we still get a varied opinion with many of the judges. I would venture to guess the same is true overseas.
 
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