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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 22:08:10 GMT
I always had an inclining the silver weren't "natural" coloured, but I didn't know white patched ones weren't, as they're still brown in colouring.
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Post by charliekhris on Feb 7, 2017 22:19:33 GMT
You would think that breeders would try and breed the healthiest animals, and not what looks cute... I love me a pug, but i know how bad their health is... Are pear shaped, big eared chins what is most like the ones in the wild? Just bringing the topic back ... To toic xD it's interesting to have a breeder present, never actually spoken to one
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 22:23:32 GMT
Woah hold on a sec! 😂 pugs are perfectly healthy if bred well, KC registered with 5+ generation history of perfect health checks, crufts champions and so on. You get what you pay for in the pedigree dog world. We have three pugs which we paid £1500, £1500 and £1750 for. You see people selling pugs for £600/£700 and that's just a big red flashing light, as they're probably bred from genetically not brilliant parents.
It really riles me up the bad press small short snouted dogs get. If they are bred well from strong genetic lines they're perfectly healthy.
Large pedigree dogs have just as many problems if bred poorly, just different ones. Joint problems, heart problems, spinal problems etc.
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Post by randomname on Feb 7, 2017 22:25:57 GMT
all I remember is that my beautiful poorly Dave chinchilla who passed away was the "wrong" type of rat faced chinchilla who should be put down immediately according to the breeders on a FB group I joined (not like I was gonna breed him any way) Once they're here, they still deserve a good life, jeez.
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Post by randomname on Feb 7, 2017 22:32:47 GMT
Did you know that pugs original breed standard was a straight tail? The curly tail became popular, was introduced to breed standards & became standard. Then xrays discovered the curl is a result of spinal curvature. Same with Boxers - many have severe epilepsy. The didn't have such deep barrel chests, after it became breed standard, they found out the internal organs have been moved to accommodate the new shape skeleton. German shepherds had no slope to the back, now they do & back-end arthritis is rampant. All this was in that dog programme. They also said most breeds of dog in this country only date back to victorian times as it was the in thing to breed your own type of dog specifically for the purpose you needed it for. No one had any clue about genetics or consequences. I love all breeds but it's mix breeds all the way for me!
Edit - they also showed a chihuahua skull - the skull is literally too small for the brain which gives them the pop eyed effect. They're so interbred to have tiny heads they have cranial deformities which result in behaviour & health issues. Actually made me cry.
The programme might still be on the Channel 4 on demand thing if you want to search for it, had that overly chirpy vet Mark Whats-his-face on it.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 22:35:45 GMT
Yeah I do know. The majority of dogs aren't as they should be ☺ but if you research where you're getting them from and their genetic history of the parents etc etc you'll get a healthy dog, like any animal. All depends what they're bred with.
Teacup animals are the WORST. 😭
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Post by randomname on Feb 7, 2017 22:47:42 GMT
sooo tempted to reply that no,KIDS are the worst! I agree though - teacups (or runts as they used to be called) are a horrible idea. I guess i see the whole thing in this way: in any animal in the wild, genetic mutations occur. For instance, in the wild rat population, hairless rats must be born occasionally. I'd imagine these don't last long & if they do, don't find another of their kind to mate with. Their genes are not passed. For good reason, they are not optimum for group & therefore, individual survival. Dwarf cats, or rabbits for instance will be born, but will not survive nor breed. Only in domesticated animals do we see this, & then mainly in domestic pets. It does not do nature or the individual animal any favours, only humans. I think that's what Darth was saying about chins in their post earlier, & on this we can 100% agree.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2017 22:52:52 GMT
Teacups aren't just runts. Teacups are runts bred with runts over and over and over to get TINY very poor health dogs which a lot of usually die before reaching 1 years old 😟
Yeah, we can 100% agree!
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Post by Emziedee on Feb 8, 2017 0:18:47 GMT
When our old staffy died, we began looking for another boy - and ended up putting a £250 deposit on a pedigree blue Staffordshire bull terrier. He was reserved and the breeder would update online photos of all the pups growing until the day they were old enough to collect. Anyway before that day came we wanted to visit 'Niven'.. we were shown the litter and they were kept in a cupboard!!! When little Niven hobbled out of the cupboard, it appeared he had a broken tail? The end was limp. Not sure if it was always like this as the online pics cleverly didn't show this. My partner had a strong word with this woman about her not being honest with us about this injury (she said another pup had bitten it). We then met a adult blue Staffy she owned called Blue, he had severely overgrown nails, the type that are genetic and the quicks are as long as the nails. All in all we left with a very bad feeling about breeders and pedigrees and overpriced animals in general. After a long talk we decided we didn't want part of this 'factory'. We pulled out and she kept the £250 deposit. We followed Niven on the site and watched him quickly find a new home and have his little tail docked. He seemed very happy and found a loving home thank God. After that experience though, we stumbled across a chocolate Yoda looking Staffy selling for only £200. The owner had the mum and dad and they'd had an accidental litter - she really just wanted good homes, but wasn't going to give them free to the wrong hands. We drove to Cambridge and were greeted by a warm loving family with children and puppy's and lizards and birds 😂 a real animal lover just like us. We fell in love with Riley and his mama Lady and Dadda Apollo. We still keep in contact with the family and a year after getting Riley, we saw on Instagram that Apollo had had an affair with his hoomans friends bitch, and that's how we got Rocco he is Riley's half brother. We absolutely love our non ped boys and they run for hours on the fields each day! Our old 'pure' Staffy could only run in short bursts. So after all of this, although there are good breeders out there of course -we will never buy from one again. Most breeders are just money hungry scum
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Post by goolover on Feb 8, 2017 0:45:10 GMT
I find this fascinating regarding 'fancy degus' and never thought about it really. Our first pups came from Joey (White patch) and Lula (agouti). The litter was composed of 4 girls and 2 boys, 1 girl and 1 boy were white patch, and 1 boy (who didn't make it through the birth) was a white patched champagne agouti, the rest are agouti. The second lot of pups produced 6 boys and 2 girl, 1 boy was white patch and 1 girl was champagne white patched, the rest agouti. Lula is pure agouti otherwise we wouldn't have given birth to any agouti babies. A champagne agouti is a form of mutation that affects the hair follicles to invert them, making them super soft but also very disfunctional. If you pull an agouti's fur back it is soft at the base and coarse towards the tip. In a champagne it is soft from root to tip making them more prone to saturation from water exposure therefore a champagne agouti has more difficulty keeping fur maintained = looks a mess when they get wet (playing with the water bottle) or haven't had a bath recently lol. It also doesn't seem to conform to regular coloring genetic crossing! I have never seen a blue grey around here so they may not breed them this far North. The nearest breeder I've ever seen has been Manchester.
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Post by darthchinchi on Feb 8, 2017 6:41:18 GMT
Just noticed - you have a chin named Madonna?!! That's sooo cool Mine have superstar names too! I loooove Madonna so that's probably the best name I've ever seen. I have to ask you to post 'photos of your chins when you get chance, would love to see them (especially Madonna) Actually she got the name because she was a little primadonna when she was a kid. Normally they make these cute baby sounds, but she nearly didn't say anything and was real primadonna like, so we thought the name Madonna was fitting
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Post by darthchinchi on Feb 8, 2017 10:23:17 GMT
randomname: To be honest I don't get why plant material you go out and find yourself is a substitute for pellets rater than hay. I would like it to be a substitute for both, as I know where my green came from and I know exactly what I'm giving. I also plan on having a few types of grasses in my garden. But I will never be able to have enough to feed only on this for an entire year. 5 years back or so, it wasen't uncommon to see fat chinchillas at shows here as size was the primary focus point. I do not agree that a chinchilla can not get fat on a pellet, even though I know some think this (not something people on here is saying, but I have heard this). It depends on the chinchilla and if people breed for animals with a tendency to get fat, it stands to reason that you get animals with a tendency to overeat = fat animals. Typically fat chinchillas will loose the hair under their armpits as it's rubbed off. And well, you are just not in doubht when you see a fat chin - or I'm not anyway I don't mind that you do not like breeding. That's cool. We need to have different opinions to get the best out of everything. IMO we need breeders with different ideas of what is good and what is not. The problem comes with people who just breed their animals to get cute babies, because they think it's healty for their animals to know where babies come from or people who just want to make a buck. That's how we get too many animals. I never breed more than I have spece for and the breeders I know does the same. By this way of breeding it's not really going to be a problem with too many animals. As for genetics, the Wilson White gene and the TOV/Velvet gene is lethal (as you said) on homozogous form. If you don't know this therm (homozygous) it's the term that describes how may genes that code for a specific mutation. Heterozygous (hetero) = 1 gene. Homozygous (homo) = 2 genes. The lethal factor is not a really big deal though. It's just not adviced to breed white * white or beige * beige as we do not know what long term problems we might get. Basically most lethal babies wont get past the embryo state, and will get reabsorbed my the mum. In theory they can get bigger and get aborted or even get born but not survide, but to be honest I've never heard of this. Problem with reabsorbing in the long run is that we don't know if mum can end up sterile or maybe get some infections.The latter is highly unlikely though. There's also the problem that lethal embryos = fewer kits and maybe they can result in healthy embryos being reabsorbed or aborted. Lethal genes are not really unique to chinchillas. It's actually quite common for some dominant type colour mutations to have problems on homozygous form. Like in dogs where the merle gene makes them blind and def in homo form. So not lethal, but basically the same problem with homo = not a good mix. In some ways you could argue we are the lucky ones as the bad animals never get out there for people to breed, like it's seen with some of the mutations in other animal species. I do not agree with the mutations having bad health as a standard, compared to the wild type. Some mutations do have a problem with healts like whites, in a lot of species, but there's a lot of diferent white mutations and not all are problematic. The problem often occur with recessive mutations, as people really want these new mutations but they take decades to improve and people thend to take the shortcut = recessive * recessive instead of recessive * wild type or other strong mutations (black velvet is as good as the standard grey problem is then you mix in an other mutation that give a new colour outcome = not keeping the new mutatiun "pure"). As the geenpool of the recessive mutations often isen't as large as with the wildtype, you get a smaller geenpool thus tendency to weaker animals. Normally farms who get hold of new mutations spend quite a lot of years with the mutation before releasing it. So problem comes when small breeders with only 20-40 animals get the mutation, and start breeding. If they do not focus mainly on one thing, they will end up with lesser animals (not to offend anybody) as they "forget" to do the breed backs to the wild types, as their herd just isn't big enough to support this type of breeding. I actually saw a person who didn't want to let people in on the secret to breeding Angora chinchillas. It's some of the most stupid info on breeding I've ever seen. There's not secret, just a basic understanding of genetic. I breed those rat faced chinchillas - lol. But I don't want them to look too much like rats. Madonna actually has kind of a rat face, so she does really well with males I deem too quare. Kids get so cute and natural looking. charliekhrisMutation is just an expression to explain a new trait in an animal. It is a mutation of the genes but this doesn't have to be a bad thing. New species and traits in the wild, that make animals cope, is also a result of random mutations. The problem with mutations (or morphs) is when people do not think when breeding them. As for shape it's more normal that the box shaped animal with small ears and a rather flat nose. This originates with the pelt buisness as you want pelts easie to work with. So nice dark colour with out the agouti band and square shape. When I see pictures of the wild ones they do not have this box shape to them, they look more like a degu with the big rump and a bit pointy nose. Eares are used to regulate body temperature. When I say big ears I'm not thinking big-big, just what I would personally think of as a normal size. They are getting smaller and smaller in the show lines. If I had my way, I would be breeding for blue eyes, curly tail and silky fur - lol. But I only have 1-2 breeding pairs at a time, so that's just not going to happen. I try to keep the recessive mutation out, but as I prefer the light standard grey with visible agouti bands I'm only really able to get good pedigree animals with recessive genes in them, as this tends to make them lighter, and I struggle a bit with finding animals in a size I want. Not always possible to get the mutations I prefer because of this. I do love the standard chinchilla, but they are near impossible to sell if they are not top show quality as people looking for pets want something different. I do have a standard I plan on breeding, but he's with a girl where I can't get any standards out of the pair and I hope I get some white animals with spots, as they sell better. No matter how you look at is as a breeder, you need to be able to sell your animals.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 11:12:13 GMT
Emziedee yeah there are a lot of bad breeders out there. You wouldn't believe how many we looked at and met etc before deciding who to go with. Some are very "business" minded in the wrong way. Ollie and Buster are half brothers and have the same mom, different crufts champion dads. We stumbled upon the ad for ollie and his siblings and I realised it was the same lady we had Buster from! And Buster is the perfect "specimen" of pug, temperament looks and health. So we had ollie from her too. She was very not so business like, I think she just enjoyed it more than anything, and only did two litters from her girl and that was it, no more breeding. Luckily we had a pug from each litter! Except ollie is a bit backwards and nothing like a perfect pug haha! But he's my favourite little mentally inept blob in the whole world 😍She had lots of other dogs too, and kids and birds lol. Very family orientated and I know all about breeders and the tricks they play using puppy mills in this country, they borrow a mom dog to go with the pups and put up a few photos of the dog and say it's the family pet and once the pups are sold the dog goes back. People are vile. The woman we got Daisy from was a business minded breeder, all done in the family home and she had 2 pugs, 2 frenchies, 2 mutts and two lovely parrots and goats etc etc. You could tell she loved animals but breeding was an important business to her. One of the pups had a heart murmur and she made sure to tell everyone, and offered her at a lower rate but only to someone who wasn't going to breed her and just wanted a loving pet as she'd most likely be fine health wise, just like humans with murmurs. I really wanted her and I cried all the way home with Daisy in my lap because I fell in love with this pup with the murmur (told us after I'd fallen in love) and mom and dad nearly took her for me but they didn't 😭😭 she was such a terror I loved her. I hope she's okay and has a nice home 😩. But yeah. I don't really love these kinds of breeders but much better than people who are entirely in it for the money and don't give a stuff or even like animals. It sounds like there's a fair bit of the middle ground in chin breeding. Wanting the best coats, looks, colours etc. I really didn't know it was like this. Are many other rodent breeders like this in terms of such sort of determination of getting these certain looks and colours and so on?
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Post by darthchinchi on Feb 8, 2017 11:21:31 GMT
I do believe it's the same with most animals you can show.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 11:22:04 GMT
darthchinchi this sounds much like the breeding process and snobbery in axolotls. It's a big business and getting rare colours is £££££. Your wildtype or leucistic axolotl will sell for £30/£50 depending on adult size, your mosaic will sell for £500+. I don't think there's too many problems in the morphs that are currently floating around in axolotls. But there's lots of trial and error and a hell of a lot of culling. You get a lot that hatch and swim in circles, have half a head, have two heads, and so on and they get culled pretty much immediately - I don't like this idea as there have been known for some to survive and make happy little pets - just sell them to someone who's not gonna breed. A lot grow up to not develop front or back legs. But they're too old by then for people to feel fine about culling. Baring in mind a female can lay up to 800 eggs a go lol. But yeah, there seems to be a lot of people now breeding willy nilly and people who really aren't educated on what the mixes are doing to the species. We've created different types of axolotl and mixes between lots and tiger salamanders, there's loads of different names I won't bore you with. Then lots of different morphs of each of these different creatures. But yeah I understand where you're coming from. It's really interesting to read your perspective as a breeder!
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Post by darthchinchi on Feb 8, 2017 12:00:17 GMT
Normally I do not condone culling, but I actually know breeders who try to figure out how it works especially with coat type mutations (long and curly) who did some inbreeding and culled. Normally this would pee me off, but with these particular breeders I actually do not mind, as they try to better these mutations and not just make a buck. There's a lot more to it but my English is not good enough for me to explain further New and rare mutations in the chin world often go from £1000-£2000. That's a lot of money. It's like in the cat and dog world. You have a few dedicated breeders but also breeders who just want to make money. They go out, but these expensive mutations and breed poor examples as they are only in it for the money. If someone can get an animal for £1000 in the lower scale of what's good, they can still make a lot of money on breeding bad*bad because people want these animals so bad. Chinchilla breeding can be big business.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 12:02:59 GMT
I've only ever seen a chinchilla once in my life at Pets at Home, I've never seen one since. I don't know anyone in real life who has them either. Seem very illusive around my area lol!
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Post by moletteuk on Feb 8, 2017 12:14:24 GMT
If you read our beginner's guide I recommend there that if people are buying degus, they only buy agoutis. Blue degus are known to be smaller and less robust, the blue gene is recessive, so you can guarantee there has been a lot of line breeding. (The best way to get a blue degu is to breed 2 blue degus together, 1 blue with 1 aguoti will only produce carriers for blue) Patched degus are a pattern, rather than a colour, I don't know too much about them but it seems like this may be a dominant gene because they have really exploded in the UK at least (especially from PAH) over the last 2 years. I think there are more health issues being reported with them. I can only say again that we recommend that you always look for rescue/ adoption degus first and if you have to buy, only buy agoutis. Buying patterns and colours encourages commercial breeders to breed for patterns and colours and this can involve euthanasia of undesired colours (agouti), as well as poor breeding practice.
I think there is some interesting information to come out of fur farms, however abhorrent I may find the concept. One thing to consider though is that fur farms don't care about longevity, so what is good for early life coat quality and health may not fulfill requirements for long term dental health. I believe that when they first started farming chins, they tried to replicate a wild diet and it didn't go too well, so perhaps this is a cautionary tail that it can be quite difficult to get right.
There is a homozygous white lethal issue for hamsters too, one combination produces non survivable foetuses, as described above for chins, another combination will produce eyeless, toothless white hamsters.
I think pets should always be bred for health primarily, but I do think some consideration should be given to temperament and sociability. If the pets are difficult to tame and difficult to pair or group, then this can cause dissatisfaction or disillusion in the keeper which is more likely to lead to neglect or rehoming in my opinion.
Getting back onto diet, it also occurred to me from what you wrote, random, that you are thinking of the forage as more of a replacement for pellets than hay. I see it more of a replacement for both, lots of people see a reduction in hay eating when they start to offer more choice of forage (in degus). I think the variety of nutrition in a variety of forage is better than the limited nutrition in hay. On the other hand you could say that the limited nutrition in hay keeps them eating more which is good for dental health. Hay has a particularly high silica content which is more abrasive on teeth than most other forage and therefore good for dental wear. So you could say the silica in hay is better for dental health, but the mineral content in mixed forage is much better for dental health, hay contains about 0.4% calcium, a variety of meadow plants comes out at around 1% which is ideal. You could make a case that hay was only ever chosen as the main forage for chins and degus because it is cheap and convenient for humans and doesn't contain any compounds that become a problem in large amounts. There are always things to weigh up.
I mentioned it earlier, but I just want to say again that there are advantages to fresh forage. It is not fully understood but more of the minerals and compounds are easier for the body to absorb and digest when the plant still contains its natural water content. Anecdotal evidence on Degupedia suggest fresh forage is very beneficial for caviomorphs with dental issues. Dry sources of calcium are thought to be the problem for caviomorphs sufferring kidney and bladder stones, fresh forage can elimate this problem while still providing the animals enough calcium for dental and bone help. Caviomorphs generally aren't programmed to drink very much, in the wild they get most of their liquid from the water content of living plants.
I can remember when we all started experimenting with forage for degus and all the traditional information said to be very careful because it will cause bloat. Most of us who proceeded cautiously with small amounts never had a problem. A couple of things did crop up with brassicas and/ or beans causing gas, which was noticeable as farting, rather than bloating and discomfort, the degus still sought out the beans and brassicas out to eat. The other case was Yasmin had a problem feeding clover, which did have quite a dramatic detrimental effect, I think there were kidney or bladder stones and perhaps bloating, I can't quite remember, but there is a thread on the forum. The other issue I can see is fresh forage that isn't very fresh where there may be excessive bacteria growing, or perhaps supermarket salad bags that have been sprayed with something. For most well chosen fresh forage that is introduced gradually to allow the gut to adjust, I can't really see a reason to expect problems, chins are living mainly on fresh forage in the wild.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2017 12:28:11 GMT
I genuinely didn't know patched degus were more likely to have health problems 😟 I read the beginner guide when I initially joined months ago, but I mainly focused on feeding and then cages and fighting problems. Is there any evidence or cases that demonstrate the ill health patched degus have? I'm not doubting you, would be interesting to read, I'm gonna do a Google in a bit, just wondering if you have any you'd like to share! I've never fed fresh forage, always dried. The only thing I have fed fresh is parsley stalks when I had some the once. Mine don't like anything that's "wet" either lol. With the fur farms moletteuk I was also wondering about their feeding technique and what it is based on, I also too wondered if they cared about longevity, unlike pet owners.
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Post by charliekhris on Feb 8, 2017 12:49:10 GMT
I'm very interested in mutations in general in animals, not nessesarily wanting them but how they appear and so on. I was very surprised when i saw a picture of a patterned degu, i didnt even think it was a degu xD we have a blue and two agouti (my agouti female gave birth to a litter of 4 agouti pups) , the blue is causing problems and has always been a bit mental. The blue is also very slim and shiny compared to the agouti... I was just interested in why they look so different while still are the same species xD I read that with pugs they are bread to have the flattest face possible, and that causes respiratory problems. In some cases when they get excited their soft palate collapses and they faint from lack of oxygen, the soft palate relaxes and they can breathe again... Basically faint from excitement xD also liver problems and seizures is what i've heard about pugs... But i've nit actually done any research in them so i can very well be wrong khris and his family kept pugs when he was a kid, so he's a very pug-loving person
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