Breeding Guinea Pigs - How we Pair up our Himalayan Cavies to produce show babies.

0:02 [Music] so this video is one i put together um for use between myself and my grandad so with lockdown um being in force uh the stud has been split so i can't go and see my granddad at the moment but the pigs need pairing so the himalayans i've taken videos of all the himalayan boars we have available all the himalayan sales we have available and then [Music] i've put commentaries on what i think about them and sent them to my grandad and we discussed them over the phone and from that then we paired them up

0:47 using the videos um so uh you'll get to see what i thought and the attributes of the guinea pigs and and why we're using witch pigs with which sounds so hopefully that'd be quite useful for you first off we have a young boy called marcus son he's unproven he's um only six months old but he's very dark so we like to keep a variety of bores in the stud this one's very dense and dark slightly darker body color than i would normally show um but in the breeding pen he's very good for counteracting pigs that have gone too light the shape of smut's fantastic the height of the head's very good uh the bigger the head the more you can show off the smut um he's just going through his show training so he's a little bit uneasy on

1:33 the bench uh but yeah he stands very well good shoulder these are things that actually i look for in a breeding boar um and that density is something i most definitely want to pass on throughout the stud so we will possibly use this pig if we can find a suitable saffron probably only use one side to begin with just to see what the babies come out me show there are no new um faults hidden in the background of this pig before we use them so here we have justin he's the opposite to marcus son um he's a much lighter pig still good shape of smart but it's not as dense as the um the darker body colored pig this one carries the best body colour out of all the boars and we use him to correct that fault in any of our saves it's also got a very

2:19 square head at the top which comes down to a slight triangle at the bottom but it does mean that you have a big area to show the smart off on um it stands very well again we look we like this hobby body and we're looking to always to improve the type on the himalayans of course it's got a decent eye not the boldest eye of all the boars but um i do like the way he stands and he has proven uh we've retained almost 90 percent of this one's youngsters so we will keep him and we will hopefully find some big smarted sounds to match muffins so this is marcus lagoya the 42nd um there's always been a marks to go in the shed ever since the early 60s um and our main stud board is always called mark's look this boar has the biggest smart the biggest eyes and

3:04 some well set ears um it's a slightly darker body but it doesn't throw that in the youngsters very dense points and you see the shape of smart is well between the eyes which is quite a big smut which is what we're looking to pass on to the youngsters again that copy body shape good shoulder excellent stance the the temperament on this pig is second to none um he lets me handle him every which way and pop him in any position i require that years of show training but also a disposition to the breed steven is uh one of our our boars um he's had a couple of litters with us and we've retained a lot of his youngsters um he's the brother to sally one of our better breeding sounds uh this boar has an immense smart and a

3:49 lovely square head lots of width on the jowl bringing up from around the side of the head and his ears are slightly wayward so we do look for a bigger side to correct that um and we also look for a nice white body color on the side uh this board brings density to the stud um if we're lacking that any of the cells this is where we go we use this board to correct those these faults and again stands very well lovely shoulder and a very well-balanced pig just apart from the areas like we say but uh every pig isn't without his fault and we use the positives to match up against the negatives and hopefully the youngsters have a sort of an even stance between them here we have all three boards together i quite often do this just so i can see the attributes um between them all

4:36 and sort of just gauge where each board stands within the stud for size they're all fairly even um you can see the body color difference uh on justin justin's much lighter you can see the density comes with the the steven marcus so now we've looked at the bores we can now look at the size that we have available uh this side is faith she's a maiden so um very big ears and a nice um triangle-shaped head uh very wide across the top and tapering down to the to the nose um she's got a decent well-shaped smart so we could use a couple of the bores here um again she stands very well so we're just looking to probably shore up her positive points against the boar of equal measure there's not much we can really

5:22 look to develop other than head shape and maybe a touch on the body color um but yeah i'm very pleased with this so we'll see what we pair her with destiny is the sister of faith um so this is also amazing saying uh similar attributes to uh to her sister uh nice bold eye um the smart density isn't quite as good as the assist there but the shape is still there so we could use a a denser bore possibly with um with this saying she's got good body color and she stands incredibly well which is a trick that i do like to keep within the himalayans we can keep that body shape going gloria is another maiden sound uh slightly younger a very dense pig and the ears are slightly weird on one side

6:07 if i'm being really critical but i mean i i think this pig is a very showy pig stands well um again the smoke comes up well between the eyes so we're probably looking for a boar with decent ears and continuing probably with a reasonable body color and a bowl as i as possible uh i like this pig a lot and i'll be very happy to see youngsters developing this stud so yeah very good hope is the sister of gloria again another maiden sow so the stud is going to be kept quite young um by using these maiden saves very showy so well balanced head nice eye good body shape excellent points um this pig is definitely a shea pig so

6:53 we can use multiple bores depending on what we attribute we want to uh pursue more so her head's very square so we could use a boar with a bit more jowl possibly um so yeah it gives us a lot of options on which way we want to go um depending on which board is available once we've paired everything up uh it's always difficult pairing the shows i don't normally breed with my show says but um we have to know so julie is a um a proven breed and so she's one of our body color cells um she carries a very square set head bold eyes slightly high set ears a good shape to smut and a fair density um again this fantastic shoulder and dome to the head and a good bit of width towards the jaw

7:38 she can be used with a darker bore um to sort of even things out in the litter i find if you go two pair two light pigs together you get problems and if you pair two dark pigs together you get problems so we try and match a lighter style pig to a dark stomach which you'll see later and then in contrast to jolie we have rose who has a proven sound she is a darker sir you can see the body color and the demarcation and contrast are not as clear on this pig again lovely set head big bold eyes um lovely ears as well uh the shape of the smell is very good but the demarcation to the body isn't this clear this happens as they get older anyway and she has produced some cracking youngsters a very self type head to her very very good across the top um which is something we're looking for so we'll probably pair this to

8:25 a lighter bore again to balance it out light with dark equals even that's what we're looking for so if you'd like to pause the video here for a second uh you can write down which boards you think go with which size just for a bit of fun um you know to see if if you've been uh paying attention on on what you think uh the best way of breeding these these pigs are uh so i had a big hand in this um usually the himalayan pairing is solely down to my grandad but obviously being a part he's had to go on my input um so hopefully i got it right but uh the final say was really with him so yeah you'll see um exactly which pinks go together because i i filmed them next to each other and

9:10 i've explained why we've paired them the way we have so uh yeah pause it here and uh make your predictions okay so if you remember justin is our lighter boar of the stud boards we use so we've paired off against our darker salmon rose we've also used gloria uh who whilst being a lighter side herself needs some correction in the head around the base of the smut so we're using justin to correct these features so then we use uh marcus laguerre with destiny and faith so obviously we're using marcus and faith together that's to correct the smart shape and with using destiny we're hoping to replicate very similar pigs the good body color of destiny against the darker body colour of maracas

9:55 should produce a nice even pig whilst retaining this matching so hopefully now you can see that we are pairing off faults and bad attributes along with good attributes so the good body color of hope against the darker body color of steven should even those things up and stephen should correct the base of the smut which is looking slightly narrower in hope it's not actually narrow it's just narrower than him but it should be good and we always like to use a unproven boar just to give him a chance to develop within the studs so we are pairing the dark boar of marcuson to jolie a good body colored sound um he's a slightly taller headed boar and she's a slightly uh wider-headed same so the offspring should be quite even and balanced which

10:41 is what we're hoping for his eye is slightly smaller her eyes very bold so all these attributes mixed together you should hopefully get all good attributes on one pig which is what we're hoping for alternatively you could get all the bad attributes in one pig so watch out i guess right um a little bit of fun there uh and uh i personally can't wait to see what the babies look like from these um job with himalayan babies they are born pure white and they take a long time to really come in to able to assess them sort of between three and five months is the best time so we have got a long time to wait but um that will be for another video i'm sure and as usual until next time this has been me greg with my guinea pigs and i shall see you again bye

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