This article was printed in the Fall 2006 JACBA. It has now been five years. Those who read this then, and took the advice to heart, how are you coming along? The 2011 version has large sections that are the same as 2006 with revisions. I’ve also added some sections.

The advice in this article is for the serious breeder (new or veteran) who want to succeed at breeding and exhibiting high quality animals. The advice within will be hard hitting on some do’s and don’ts. Do not take this personally. I do not have any individual breeder in mind. If anything, I am guilty of about everything in here! This article has nothing to do with the exhibitor who wants to buy some pigs for the pure love of being at shows and enjoying showing a couple animals. Large breeding programs are not for everybody.

This article is not intended to rebuke 4-H’ers and youth members who are buying one or two to show and do not have the caging or the years to run a large breeding program. I understand well a youth member and 4-H’ers needs, and I fully expected them to show what they bought. That is the nature of the 4-H project, where care and upkeep of the animal are of utmost importance, not the raising of 300 cavies.

This article is also not intended to scold a person who wants to try a new breed and purchases a couple to grow out and show, etc., to see what it is like, in order to make an informed decision on whether to seriously raise the breed.

This article is intended to help the serious breeder avoid mistakes I’ve made or have seen others make, which set back the breeding program months or years.

Learn from our mistakes. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES Yes, I make mistakes, many, but I try to learn from them. A good friend taught me a valuable lesson many years ago—the value of a five-year plan. My friend stressed that buying and showing and buying and showing, instead of breeding the animals, just wouldn’t get me anywhere. She recommended I do not show the guinea pigs I purchase. In 1991, this lesson of only breeding what I purchase was reinforced to me at a show in Marana, Arizona. It was held in a small building located beside a cotton field. As it turned out, the building had no cooling and it was a hotter than expected day. It didn’t take long for the humid and cramped showroom to become quite warm. I proudly handed my friend a black Abyssinian boar purchased from out-of-state. This was a very promising show boar, which meant it was also valuable in the breeding pen. Knowing I wanted to seriously raise Abyssinians, she asked me why I had taken such a great risk to show this fine animal. Basically, why take the risk of losing it by exhibiting under such conditions? My friend was right. It wasn’t worth the risk. If I lost the boar, my breeding program would be set back many months, more likely years! This animal wasn’t replaceable under any circumstance as the original breeder lived well over a thousand miles away, and she had sold him to me as a favor to help restart my Abyssinian breeding

program. To make the lesson all the more pronounced, the boar won his class, but did not win his variety, and therefore did not win his breed as was my goal. Even if he had won, was it worth derailing the future of my breeding program...possibly for years? What win would be worth such a heavy price? No, not even Best in Show. With the loss of that Best in Show animal, how many future Best in Show animals are lost? From that time onward, I promised myself to never risk my breeding program this way. To keep the promise, I was required to turn down the request of a fellow Abyssinian breeder who sold me an excellent boar the next year. He wanted me to show it just once to see what it would do. I never did exhibit this boar, but his son won Best of Breed at the 1994 ACBA Specialty Show in Macungie, Pennsylvania. The generational offspring of both these foundation boars have won numerous national Best of Breeds and a Best in Show at the 1999 ARBA National Convention, and a Reserve in Show at another ARBA National Convention, and these genes are still core of my current Abyssinian breeding program. If I had lost the original foundation stock by showing them for a year before breeding, I seriously doubt I would have had nearly the success later.

Unfortunately, showing a young pig a lot often stunts the growth, weakens the animal, and then it may not perform well in the breeding pen. I have found this especially true in Abys. The animal sometimes even dies as a result. One common scenario is the purchased sow is shown and shown, then put into breeding. About two weeks before the expected due date, she dies! At this point, all future show and breeding generations are lost. With the sow are lost all future wins her babies and grandbabies would have won. My goal in writing this article is to help the new exhibitor to avoid making of an easy error. I am encouraging the new breeder/exhibitor to learn from my mistakes. In the past, I was very guilty of having done exactly what I write about. You see, in the 1970’s I almost always showed what I had purchased. The stock was quality and the animals did well at the shows; however, my breeding program never took hold. Inevitably, the stock would age and the sows would often die in breeding, or never breed at all. As a result, I kept having to purchase new stock, which I tended to show, thus compounding my mistakes. The wins the animals achieved were not all that satisfying to me as these were ‘other’ people’s creations. In fact, shows were frustrating because my purchased stock kept beating what little I had bred myself. Finally, I was able to turn the corner after the 1979 ARBA Convention. At that show I purchased new animals and bred them to stock from a top Tucson breeder instead. This time, I did not show what I bought! That was the key! Within months, instead of years, the result was show success and finally the personal satisfaction that I had bred my own winners. GIVE YOUR BREEDING PROGRAM TIME TO WORK A breeding program isn’t built overnight, even when buying someone’s entire caviary. The purchase of a working program or

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Learn From My Mistakes: The Value of a Five-year Plan, 2011

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A by Robert Spitzer

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just foundation stock is the beginning of what will become at least a five-year road to success. It often takes at least that long to learn the in’s and out’s of a specific breed/color, to put unrelated lines together, find out what breeding matches are working and which are not, and then culling and purchasing complimentary animals to continue moving forward. Yes, occasionally a first-born does very well; for example the Macungie boar mentioned above, but that is the exception. A successful program isn’t one winning show animal. It is a continued string of success over the years. A five-year plan is just that, a long-running road map to success. When purchasing animals for the breeding program, why make the plan take ten years, or maybe impossible to reach by showing your purchases, just for the personal gratification of show wins in the short term? The one good reason I have heard for exhibiting purchased stock is the new exhibitor has nothing else to show and wants to participate, and to learn from what the judge has to say. In either case, consider just showing the animals once and try to get others’ opinions at the same time. Or, invite a local guinea pig ‘guru’ over for dinner. Dinner in exchange for a wealth of knowledge...this is a fair exchange and may well create a lasting friendship. While waiting for babies to reach a reasonable show-age, continue attending the shows, learn from those in attendance by asking questions, observing, and asking more questions. Want to get the most knowledge out of a show? Consider clerking. Clerking is the center of all the learning-action. I heard a wise exhibitor say once, “Until that person learns to breed what they’re always buying, I won’t have to worry about competing against them.” The more I thought about these words of wisdom, the more I realize this is so very true. People don’t often sell their very best, which means only culls are being purchased anyway. Most breeders expect the buyer to create their own winners, and they do sell the genetic blue-print to do so. Never know...when purchasing that next foundation boar or sow, you just may be holding the beginning of what will genetically become a future national convention winner. HOW TO BEGIN THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN 1. Deciding you are willing to take five years to do everything it takes to piece together a winning breeding program. Just by deciding you are going to be a serious breeder means you are well-ahead of other exhibitors. So, step one is making the commitment to give your new breeding program five years to succeed. Success doesn’t happen overnight. I have seen many give up a year into their new program, not understanding the pieces take time to put together on one animal. Now I have abandoned programs too, and for good reason. In one case I was working with a line of animals that were rife with lumps. Every single one of them would get giant abscesses and those I sold stock to were getting them too. I was told these had a propensity to get the lumps. In other words it was in the line, just like some families have a greater risk to get certain kinds of cancer, or in my family—appendicitis. It doesn’t mean every pig will get abscesses, but the genetic weakness is there to get it. I also did not want selling animals with abscesses to give me a bad name

(Don’t buy from “him” or your whole herd will come down with…). Though my other breeds never showed signs of lumps, I did not want the problem to spread to them either, so I disbanded the line. 2. Who to purchase from: Buy quality stock from the best breeders you can find. You may well see a pattern when searching. Everyone who is successfully exhibiting a certain color within a breed seem to get their stock from the same person, or two persons. This is who you want to go to. For example, years ago I found that everyone in Texas and Oklahoma, who were exhibiting quality TSW Americans, all purchased their stock from one breeder. When I bought TSW American stock, this is who I first contacted. This person not only allowed me to have my pick of his babies, but also gave me a very short list of names of who else I should consider purchasing stock from, and I did. I drove to the ACBA Specialty and purchased average looking stock from a top breeder (the genes for great patching were definitely there, going back many years, and I fully understood the breeder must keep their best). In addition, these breeders gave me advice on how to breed the stock, what should be culled vs. kept. In other words, they gave me valuable knowledge on how to continue the success they had achieved in the breeding pen. To begin the breeding program, I purchased several animals from three lines which were all top breeding programs. This could be dangerous. Normally, I don’t recommend purchasing from outside breeding lines because mixing gene pools may not give the quality you want. I generally recommend the new exhibitor only buy from related breeding lines. This way the animals are guaranteed of genetically being a successful match. You see, breeding unrelated lines will often bring out some strange traits that could be problems. Now when I put together another breeding program, I already knew my sources were very inbred. I didn’t want to continue another five years of inbreeding, so I purchased animals from two more lines (one related and one not). One sign of inbreeding is the animals tend to not breed too well. As predicted, the inbred animals took their time breeding and gave me few babies. That was when I sought out the third line, which was blessed with very aggressive boars. When I was at this breeder’s house, I noticed every sow was heavy with babies! I decided right there I needed those aggressive genes in my line. It worked! Though I took a step back in quality for a time, I solved the virility problem of the other two lines and had lots of babies born. 3. Assemble Parts of the Puzzle: So, in the case of my family’s TSW’s, why did I buy from three unrelated lines? Basically, each

line had a part of the puzzle I needed. I didn’t just look for patching. I bought animals from three lines where each animal had a strength. One line excelled in patching, but those animals did not have good heads and bodies. Another line had better much better heads and bodies, but depth of color was a problem. The third line excelled in depth of color! I am not saying each line “only” had one positive trait. I am saying each line “excelled” in one of the traits. The key is to put all these traits onto one animal to create that Best in Show pig. This isn’t

When purchasing stock, please understand a breeder cannot sell their very, very best. This one’s parents did not look nearly so nice, and were simply two parts of the puzzle. The result was this boar.

DON’T MY PIECES FIT TOGETHER

NICELY?

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easy, and it does take five years, or may take longer, or...may not be achieved at all, but the goal is to put all the perfect traits onto one animal, then have more and more of this animal born. Again, one show winner does not a successful breeding program make! Normally, I recommend you buy from one person to start. That one person will likely have animals which exhibit the individual strengths of what will make the perfect animal. You need to buy those pieces from that breeder, then assemble the perfect animal in the breeding pens yourself. It isn't often the breeder will sell you the “perfect” animal, and when they do it is probably because they are expecting you to breed it. As stated before, do this and you will likely have generations of success instead of a few show wins in the short term with someone’s creation. So, depending on what breed and/or color you wish to raise, choose the most important three or four traits to create the perfect animal, and try to assemble the parts of the puzzle. Are ears important in your breed? Breed for great ears! Do you want Best in Show? It may be ears which keep you from winning it. 4. Boar, Boar, Buy a Boar Boar: If you want quicker success, look for and buy a good boar first. You can put five sows with him and make lots of babies to cull from. However, I routinely have people come to me and only want to buy sows. They never seem to get as far as fast. One sow will have a litter of four in the same amount of time a great breeding boar can produce twenty. I don’t get it. At many shows, I often only sell sows. How in the world these people are able to work sows with sows...I don’t know. My sows don’t work that way. This is why I have boars around. 5. Sow, Sow, Don’t Show a Sow, Sow: If the sow is good enough to show, don’t! She is needed in the breeding pen to make more of herself. Showing sows later is a luxury you will benefit from by breeding sows now. Personally, I almost never show sows. Now I am talking in long coats and Abyssinians. Boars in these breeds are just as competitive as sows. Certain other breeds, this just isn’t true. Americans and American Satins, for example, are dominated by sows for top awards. Yes, two months ago gave a lovely American Satin boar Best in Show, but I am talking on average. On average, certain breeds are dominated by sows, and so these breeders tend to put them in breeding later. Young sows simply get bred easier. Older sows are wiser. Older sows are stronger, trickier, and often take a lot longer to get bred. This is part of why I am against delaying putting sows in breeding. Show sows are often eight months, or more, before being put in with a boar, and there they sit, and sit, and sit… One person called me up a year after buying a “breeding” sow from me. He showed her for a full year, and finally put her in breeding about six weeks before he phoned me, all upset, that my stock wouldn’t breed and he wanted his money back. I won’t print here how our

conversation went. You can imagine for yourself. Bottom line, I never sold him another pig. 6. Pairing up the Breeding Pens: Again, par ts create the whole. It isn’t often you can only breed strength to strength, and when you do breed two perfect pigs, the babies born are not often perfect. So, what went wrong? Well, I don’t always know. If I knew that, I would be winning every show. Yes, I definitely want to bread strength to strength, but this isn’t always possible. Many times, you will end up breed strength to weakness (the boar and sow have different strengths), and this does work well. In the plant world they call these hybrids. You cross two specific qualities (great depth of color with great patching for example) together to create the perfect hybrid. However, don’t breed a animal with a specific weakness to another with the same weakness. You will only reinforce that weakness. That is probably the biggest no-no. One example is depth of color. Don’t breed two animals with poor depth of color together, as that will reinforce the problem. Instead, breed that animal to one with great depth of color, but which may have a fault in a different area. Another example is double rosettes or swirls on Abyssinians. If a specific rosette or ridge has a

problem, don’t breed it to another with the same problem! Find an animal with that strength for a breeding match. 7. Culling the Right Animals: Often people don’t know which ones to keep. They get rid of the wrong ones, then wonder why everyone else is winning with what they bred. You have to know your line. Some lines mature differently. They go through what we call the uglies. Be patient and let the animal grow up. American boars for example, often look lanky and long nosed at four months. At a year, the boar may be in his show prime. I have seen lines where

pigs are in show prime at five months, others at eight, others at a year, and some where true prime is at sixteen or eighteen months. Be patient.

Your goal is to get closer and closer to having perfect babies born with each generation. But this doesn't seem to always happen. Great show pigs may skip generations. In other words, you must keep the babies of a great animal and breed those. What often happen is you get parts to the puzzle born, and the key is to learn which ones to keep breeding back into the line. Most Important: If the animal has one bad trait, don’t throw it away if it has other traits your line desperately needs. Also, if you have an animal with basically only one trait you need, and you really need that one trait, don’t throw it away. For example, in Blacks, you need excellent depth of color. I will gladly keep an animal with perfect under color though it lacks a good head because because perfect depth of color is so hard to get. I will then breed that depth into the animal with the best head and body to take me one step closer to the perfect animal.

And never, ever, forget the smallest detail to create the perfect animal. Best in Shows are lost because of a few stray hairs of foreign color, a double rosette, faded color, or too small/misshapen ears. So breed the weakness on this animal to one with

NOBODY BETTER CALL MY PUPS

CULLS, OR I’LL NIP THEIR FINGERS!

MOMMY, WHAT’S A CULL?

PHOTO BY AMANDA THOMASON

the strengths to overcome it. 8. To Breed or Not to Breed Those Babies: In cer tain breeds, long coats for example, a choice must be made early in the life of a guinea pig of whether or not its career will be as a breeder or a show pig. In many of the long coat breeds, once the baby is weaned, it must be housed alone in order to keep its coat from being chewed by cage mates. Then, it must live alone until the end of its show career. This could be more than a year. Basically, as stated earlier, if a baby is important to your future breeding program, then probably don’t show it. Show your seconds. Now over time, your seconds will be better and better and better, often much better than other exhibitors’ best animals.

Other breeds, this luxury just isn’t available to you. Abyssinians are a prime example. Perfect Abyssinians are rare to get, and it is nice to be able to show them. What I recommend here is to show the great animal in a limited manner, and then get it into breeding to make more of itself.

In a five-year plan, the breeding program must come first. Do you take a bunch of wins now, or for the great baby born, a couple now and a bunch more later by way of children and grandchildren? 9. A Live Pig is a Better Breeding Pig: I know there are many rolling their eyes at this one, saying, “Duh!” But consider this. Why do we keep around the constantly snotty-nosed rattling thin pig? The temptation is to keep sickly animals because of a very good trait in the pig. Well, this may be where you must make an exception to the rule and breed for health first. I am going to give you a personal example from my own herd and nobody else’s heard. I am still going to be slammed for this because I mention the S word and the S word sets people off every time because it just does. For years I tried to raise Aby Satins and long coat Satins. My lines were not healthy. I am not referring to anybody else’s line of Satin anything and I highly respect many Satin breeders. I am only referring to my pigs at my house. I am willing to openly admit the satins I raised in Abys and long coats had problems and I ignored doing what I should have done from the beginning, and I paid a heavy price for it later.

I bread my Aby Satins for rosettes and ridges, and yes, that is what you do when raising Abys and Aby Satins. Because good Aby Satins were rare to have, when a good one was born, I did everything I could to keep it alive. I dosed it with anything and everything, even probiotics to help that digestive system along. Earlier in the article I mentioned breeding in a propensity for specific weaknesses. Here it is. I had size problems, I had length of life problems, and these pigs would inexplicably fall over dead. Yep, they wouldn’t make senior weight, were lucky to live eighteen months, and would be healthy the night before (held the pig and weighed it to verify), and it was dead the next morning. I would sell these pigs and they would just plop over dead too. I fed them well, clean cages, proper environment in the room, no other breed had these issues, and yet the pigs would just not thrive.

Because I totally ignored breeding for health, I had many weaknesses in my line. This is an extreme example, but I couldn’t keep good ones alive long enough to really build up numbers to cull for health. Thus, in your breeding program, I highly recommend, from the start, cull for vigor and health. Any health weakness, cull out ASAP. Be reputable and find homes for them with people who have no intentions to breed the animals, otherwise known health problems will plague them. This is true for any genetic weakness. In dogs it is hip dysplasia, rabbits it is reclusive teeth, etc. I do not keep snotty nosed pigs, those with lumps (no lumps

forever now), genetic DQ’s such as pea eye and extra teats and angel wings…and on and on. I am proud I do not have many of the problems which seem to plague some lines.

Breed for size. If the animals are growing very slowly, and it is obvious they won’t make senior weight, find homes for them too. What happens is, over the generations, your line grows smaller and smaller, and may not make senior weight, or not make it until a year old. It is illegal to show pigs over six months of age as intermediates, over four months as juniors.

10. Do not Buy Up the World: The temptation for new breeders is to buy lots of everything. This is a huge mistake. It is much better to research what you want to raise, then go after that. In my humble opinion, a solid number for a true long-term breeding program is fifty animals (purely my opinion based on my personal experience). I do not mean fifty pigs of five different breeds and four different colors for each breed. I am talking fifty roan and brindle Abyssinians to form one Abyssinian breeding program. The reason for fifty is I need about ten or twelve boars and plenty of sows to go with those boars, and some set aside for show, babies growing up… This number will not get inbred so quickly, maybe never. Working with two boars and six sows, you are very limited and become inbred more quickly. You also don’t have the pieces to fix major flaws in your line.

Honestly, few have room for fifty cavies and do not want fifty. I understand and respect this. If you can have room for twenty-five, then go with twenty-five, and consider a breeding match that will give you two of something to show (cream Americans work with white Americans, Peruvians in broken and TSW, etc.). Be aware you may need to seek animals to outcross more often than a larger program.

Avoid twenty-five animals where you have five American TSW’s, five American blacks, five Abys, five Peruvians, five teddies, and five White Cresteds. None of these can be bred to any of the others. If your goal is to put together a competitive breeding program for the long term, consider beginning with one breed with one or two complementary colors to begin with, then expand into a second or third breeding program later. Understand, fifty Abys, fifty Peruvians, fifty American TSW’s, fifty black Americans all add up very quickly. And you better have a good pet outlet because you are going to need it. Do not just go out and buy a hundred pigs. For a new exhibitor, this is a great way to get burned out fast. 100 animals takes a lot of money, time, and care. Start small and build up. I recommend two or three breeding trios to begin with, again, that can be bred together. This gives you room to keep babies and cull and keep, cull and keep, cull and keep. Then, looking at the babies, see what you need to improve the lot. Go buy that.

Those beginning six or nine animals will turn into your twenty-five or fifty in not too long. Honestly, having a few breeding pens is great, especially if you have a show partner raising the same thing. Now you just doubled the population. I have done this for years with my Abyssinians, and our 1999 ARBA Convention winner was a product of this partnership. That proves it works, and having a close friend in this with you is great. When you get over eighty in one breeding program, you probably are keeping lesser quality that you just don’t need. Cut down and give a new exhibitor a good start with your extras. You just might gain another show partner. Remember above where I mentioned Oklahoma and Texas had many breeders with great TSW Americans. I think this was why. They traded stock around and helped each other. Now this was fifteen and twenty years ago. People come and go and an

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area’s strength changes.

11. Do the World a Favor and Breed for Attitude: As a judge, I cannot even begin to handle a nutty animal that is attempting to fling itself off the table to hard cement below. This also isn’t fair to the judge to go through the guilt of this kind of animal being injured on their table. Yes, we often get blamed by the owner.

There have been many pigs I have tried to judge, and felt they were probably very good, but I could not truly see this because they refused to sit still long enough for me to find out. It greatly helps most breeds to sit still and pose. Long coats must sit on the show board to display their coat. You get the idea, as judge, I must be able to properly handle the pig! Some of this can be corrected through the owner handling and training the animal (yes, I even practice checking teeth so the animal is used to it when it is the judge’s turn). Nutty pigs also make lousy pets for others. It is very unfair to knowingly sell a mean animal to a child.

This summer I remember seeing posts about a guinea pig biting a child. No, the child wasn’t mean to the pig. The problem was the animal. It was vicious. It was vicious to everybody, including the breeder upon closer inspection. In this situation, the breeder went out of their way to help work with the child’s family and got them a new animal. My compliments to the breeder for doing all this.

I cull vicious animals from my breeding program as they tend to brutalize others in the pen too. No, I am not talking about sows nipping at each other while determining pecking order. I am talking about the sow which nips and bites and lunges at all her cage mates running them all around in a circle spraying shavings everywhere. And it isn’t for five minutes or an hour, it goes on and on and on. I see this as no different than an abusive person, a playground bully. Keep in mind, according to the ARBA Standard, biters are to be removed from the show table.

It isn’t proper to knowingly show biters. I was clerking years ago when a pig clamped down on the judge’s hand (yes, the owner knew it was a biter and this animal had bitten other judges). It would not let go! I was right there and immediately grabbed hold of the pig behind the shoulders and worked to pry it off the judge’s hand. Several stitches later…

12. Ask questions! Ask questions! Ask questions! I am always found that those who have exhibited some other show animal, and is now looking into cavies, goes all about it differently than a person who have never raised anything. The veteran exhibitor, whether from the cat world, dog, rabbit, or horse background all tend to ask

lots of very good questions. They thoroughly research the top breeders, the kinds of caging they want, proper show etiquette, etc. The veteran is also less likely to buy up the world. They tend to buy fewer animals of higher quality, and go from there. Learn from this and do your homework before buying a new breeding program. Yes, this even goes for a veteran like me. When I consider raising something new, I need to do my homework too. That’s right, there really is no such thing as a stupid question.

Learn from the cavy veterans. Write down a list of questions and research the answers, whether online or word of mouth or in books. Most veteran cavy breeders are a wealth of knowledge. Find out who the breeders in your area truly respect, and go to them for advice. Listen to that advice! And then ask some more questions. Hate to say it, but not everybody is so free, or accurate, with information. Seek out a good mentor. 13. Patience, Patience, Patience: Building the great breeding program to produce the perfect show animal isn’t done in one year, and it doesn’t stop with producing one successful show animal. At times you will go stretches of time where what is born just doesn’t seem to be working. Again, think five years instead of next week. You are going to get frustrated at times. We all do. Look at the pieces being born. You may be closer to success than you realize. Then, the next go-around, or two go-arounds later, those same breeding pairs give birth to what you want.

Abyssinians are a great example for allowing a breeding pair to be given some time. A breeding pair will have a great litter, the next set are so-so, as are the next, and then the third litter following is the same quality as the first! Sometimes it takes shuffling the animals in the breeding pens, and it means adding one or two more animals to the breeding mix. It means searching for a piece of the missing puzzle to breed in. Bottom line, take time to let the animals work their magic. I will gladly take a Best in Show Aby being born every tenth litter (this is very wishful thinking…). Best in Show pigs are not born very often, especially in certain breeds and colors. 14. It’s Show Time! Patience and self-discipline are rewarded with lots of wonderful babies born, and they are all perfect! Well, sometimes perfect. Or, as I have found, rarely perfect, but I have plenty of young-un’s to pick from. And thinking back to the 1970’s, it is a whole lot more fun watching a judge judging animals of my own creation, than watching a judge judging other people’s pigs that I purchased. And careful how much you show the pigs. I learned the hard way showing a pig to death is of no help to anybody. I judge animals all the time which are tired. They are old. They are old and tired, and they look it. Years ago when I had lots of pigs in show coat, I learned that I needed to exhibit them in limited numbers of shows. Shows are hard on an animal, especially a long coat in senior coat. And so I gave them shows off. I gave them road trips off. True, I did have the luxury of enough pigs in senior coat to do this, and I benefitted greatly from it because I extended the show life of each animal. And when it was their time for the breeding pen, they weren’t a rack of bones. They bred well for me. Purchase and Read the Standard of Perfection: It helps to know what perfection you are supposed to be breeding towards. In the 2011-2015 ARBA Standard of Perfection, the cavy section begins on page 218 with the “Cavy Glossary.” There is a color picture of each breed on page 224-227, how to handle a show cavy on page 230, general faults and disqualifications on 233, variety descriptions on pages 234-241, and breed standards on pages 242 to

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I HAVE A QUESTION. WHY ARE YOU

TAKING PICURES OF MY NOSTRIL HAIRS?

267. Each breed standard comes with a schedule of points, notes on judging the breed as well as faults and disqualifications specific to the breed. The value of this is to see where the bulk of the points are located for the breed and variety you are raising. I have stressed it is good to consider perfecting all areas of the animal. However, bad ears on a perfect White Crested might only dock you two points out of 100 possible on the entire animal. In other words, don’t throw away a very good animal for something minor and repairable in the breeding pen. Do you need a standard? See the ACBA Cavy Store on

page 48. The cost is only $17. It’s a family thing! Many of our long-term members started out with children in youth shows and 4-H. These members took on their children’s animals when they left for college, and continue to this day, because they loved having the animals around so much. Do not discount the benefits of the parent raising something too. We have many families in the ACBA. It is an affordable hobby for Mom and Dad to do with the kids. The road trips help educate the children as well. But, this is another whole article for another day. CONCLUSION Take your time on deciding what you want to raise. Do your homework and ask lots of questions. Start small and grow your herd naturally. Do not overextend yourself going to too many shows. It is disheartening to see promising exhibitors leave the fancy because they burned themselves out by going too big too fast. My goal is to see you around five years from now, ten years from now, having great success on the show table, enjoying the fancy, and striving to help the next generation. Why? Because I love to judge quality animals. There is nothing more fun than to have a large class of quality animals, and then the breed, where I must strain to pick the best of the best.

JACBA V15-I4 Fall - 2011 Page 29

HUSH! IT’S RUDE TO

TALK DURING A RECITAL MY MOTHER HAS

THIS FIVE-YEAR PLAN FOR ME, AND I HAVE TO FIND CULTURE

Sing us a song you're the piano man Sing us a song tonight... Well we're all in the mood for a melody And you got us feeling alright... It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday And the manager gives me a smile.

MY FATHER’S FIVE-YEAR PLAN CALLS FOR ME TO FIND A

JOB AND MOVE OUT!

SING US A SONG… WOW, THAT BRUCE

SATINSTEIN CAN SURE SING!

PHOTO BY AMANDA THOMASON