Getting Fat

Well on the plus side I'm glad to see that the mix I'm trying out is doing it's job and Edmund is lovely and plump and definitely in show condition. The shebas would be too if they actually ATE the mix instead of picking the chaff out.

On the downside Ebony loves her mix and is rapidly leaving the land of breeding condition. So Ebony has gone on a diet. She'll still have unlimited hay, and large amounts of grass and veggies but I've swapped her mix out for oaten chaff. I'll keep an eye on her weight and I may still give her a small handful of mix in the mornings if she does drop weight rapidly. However I'd say all that will happen is she'll maintain at 1005g rather then continually gaining.

It'll mean Sterling might lose a bit of plumpness while he lives with her but as soon as I'm sure she's pregnant she'll get her grain back. Once I'm certain she's pregnant I'll also add glucose to the water to help prevent toxemia and giver her calcium daily to prevent hypocalcemia.

I'm still hoping to find her a sow companion at the Summer show. I'm not really sure on my plans though. I'd love a sheltie/coronet/texel/merino sow but can't say I've seen any available when I've visited the shows. It seems to always be peruvians. At the same time I wouldn't mind a short hair sow who I could show. So then I'd have more then one class to enter.

My plan for the year is basically to Breed Ebbie to Sterling (who'll be collected early Feb) which will hopefully give me a litter around late April/early May which I could table by August. And then if I'm managed to find another sow, breed this sow to Edmund in August to give me a November litter ready for the 2013 show season. If I don't manage to find another sow by then Ebony should be ready for a final litter. Longhairs typically have small litters so I would probably have between 2-8 babies for 2012. Which would leave me with four adult boars, one or two adult sows and two to eight babies. So seven to fourteen pigs. Eddie and Sterling can live together once Eddies show career is over, Ebbie and a companion can continue to share the sow cage, I can keep up to four babies in single cages to see how their coat grows and any others can live with Ebbie or the boys. So if I do by some miracle have eight babies born then I can spend the summer building additional cages for the 2013 litters.

I'm a little doubtful that I'd be lucky enough to have eight babies between two litters though. My luck with breeding has not been good. I do blame this partly on the fact that as a thirteen year old I had no idea what I was doing and really did leave everything up to mother nature. I bred five litters between 2004 and 2006 and had one 'accidental' litter.

I bred a cream boar to an older overweight cream sow. There were three babies in the litter, two were still born, the third died within twelve hours. The sow went toxic and died soon after. Wrong food and too small housing did not help.

I bred a young buff sow to a buff boar. Four babies were the result. Two snipey sows were as healthy as can be. One sow has severe cleft palate and died at 28 days even with constant care. The last was a boar with slight cleft palate. He survived and even won me my first Glimmer BOB. Worried about genetic issues he was neutered soon after to ensure the trait did not carry.

I bred the same cream boar to a petite cream bred PEW sow. One oversized 165g DEW sow. The baby was fine but too large and the mother died from internal issues.

I then sent an unrelated satin carrier cream sow to a friends to bred with a satin PEW. She was put with the satin as well as a satin carrier cream boar. She gave me a healthy litter of five bouncing babies, three were pet quality, one was a snipey PEW and one cream sow was breeding quality.

I bred the cream sow to the aforementioned cream boar. This time a litter of four stillborn creams. By this time I'd cottoned onto such things as glucose and the sow came through with flying colours. I started wondering whether there was something wrong with the boar. (As it turned out there was).

And the final 'accidental' litter occurred after I'd sworn off breeding. A rescue sow I was adopting was flown down to me. Turned out she was pregnant and delivered two gorgeous boars while I watched. It was the closest to an issue free breeding I'd had. There were genetic issues involved as the sow carried Demodex but they didn't come to light till the babies were a year old.

So basically I had a really bad run of it. If does go as badly as before this time round I do have a back up plan. I know enough longhair breeders that I can instead arrange to purchase babies just to show instead of breeding my own. However I'm confident that this time round I can do things properly. I've researched the cavies I'm taking and have many plans in place in order to prevent pregnancy related illness. I now have a car and a large vet fund and access to a variety of vets as well as an emergency 24 hour service.