I'm finally at the end of a pretty hectic few weeks. Assessments are in, show is done and I have a few weeks just to get caught up again with uni as well as preparing for the ACA show.
So, the pigs. The show was great fun though I didn't do spectacularly. Laertes was beaten by the gorgeous Dallie sow again, but he did win Best Junior Marked, so that's something. Ebbie wasn't even looked at in the pet class and Mannie didn't sit still long enough to be presented, so it was a bit of a waste of time with those two. Piggles (more about her in a sec) won a first but no BOB.
I also collected some pigs as well. Chantilly Wilbur has come to stay for a month so he represent the gold/lilac argentes at the ACA show. Rosie gas returned after a hopefully successful date with Piggizpatch Rock n Roll a golden agouti rex. Finally two lovely ladies, Piggles and Pebbles, have joined the Samsara crew.
Piggles is a drool worthy crested sable. I am just so in love with her. Sables have always been my absolute favorite color, but I've always been resigned to the fact they were extinct, those that could be found carried so many different problems that there was no point breeding them. Piggles reignited my passion so off I went to research and lo and behold, sables can be CREATED. All you need is a himi and an agouti dilute. I was very very overjoyed to discover this. So I'm going to use Piggles to show and get familiar with the breed. Piggles is too old for a litter and has some fairly undesirable genetics (such as Abyssinian and longhair) in her background, so she's just for showing. But I fully intend to pursue sables. I'm going to breed one litter of Dallies because I already have La-La and Nia and I think I need to try one litter. However Sables should at least give me more showies then a line of dallies would. Sables breed like creams, sable x sable gives 25% dilutes, 25% himis and 50% sables. I also ahve a friend who can supply me with both a himi and a dilute so it's all systems go.
Pebbles is Piggles' cagemate and she's a chcolate tricolour, though to look at her she could actually be a sable tricolour...
I also have one final new addition who I'll be collecting in September. Shemelle Charmer is a coronet boar carrying texel (and possibly satin). He'll join my crew of breeding boars and hopefully give me a line of merinos. But he is absolutely my last breeding boar, I need sows, sows, sows not boars! LOL.
Considering Manny's horrendous performance at the show on Sunday, plus the issues I'm already having with him I'm coming to the conclusion that he simply isn't cut out for showing. There's no point showing an animal that can't even sit still. So he has the ACA show to go but I'm leaning towards returning him to his breeder after that. He has always been a loan, just so I'd have a long to show but now I have Piggles I might just show her and wait until I have some Samsara longs to start entering the longhair classes again.
Ayanna's baby/s also began moving today so she should litter before the end of the month and hopefully finally give me Samsara animals.
So the litters that are planend for this year are... Ayannas litter (due late August), Rosie's litter (due late September-early October), Nia's litter (will be due mid November). Then I'm hoping to put Ayanna back to Edmund in November which should give me babies by late January so I have something to show at the National. Oh and if I do breed sables that litter would be due about mid December. It's all very open though. Ayanna's looking like she's only going to have one baby, and Rosie's babies are all going to the boars owner, though I may keep one. So if Ayanna does only have one baby she'll be put to Eddie after she's been rested, but if she does have a large litter I won't breed her again till next year. Not sure what I'll do with Nia's litter yet, but since they'll all be short hairs it's not hard to keep them. The longs of course need to be separated if I'm going to show them.
I'm also planning cages too. I have heaps of empty space at the moment, but with so many litters planned I need to expand a bit.
The girls are going to move outside into a big run. I'm going to dig the base out so I can bury wire mesh, and then refill with dirt so there is no chance of critters digging in or out and no chance of injuring the girls feet. It should be a big 2m x 2m space where I can keep most if not all the girls. Pregnant girls and any girls under 3months will stay inside though. I'm also looking at putting in another set of boar cages. If I can get the shelving here it'll give me 8 more 60cm x 60cm boar cages. Plus I still have room for more dog crates
So if I do install all of that I'll then have for caging...
2m x 2m outdoor girls run
2.4m x 60cm indoor girls run
2 x 1.2m x 60cm breeding cages
2 x 90cm x 45cm pet store cages
3 x 50cm x 75cm dog crates
2 x 60cm x 60cm cages
8 x 60cm x 60cm cages
1 x 120 cm x 75 cm dog crate (for the shebas)
Assuming I stick to my usual rule of 4 square feet per pig, that gives me housing for 25 pigs indoors and 12 outdoors. Though honestly in the two big sow runs I could probably fit a few more pigs in. Even by the C&C standards I could fit 5 girls in the indoor cage and 15 in the outdoor cage (they use 0.7 square metres for first and 0.2 square metres for each additional pig). So anyway we'll see, but I'll certainly have a lot of space.... I'll also still have room to add in three more small dogcrates, bringing me a total of 40 pigs in 160 square feet of space.
No comments:
Post a Comment