Chinchilla Mutations

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PinkRayven

New member
Joined
Apr 12, 2019
Messages
4
Location
Weston, FL
Can anyone help me understand chinchilla colorations? I have owned chinchillas for years and I have done a lot of research. I have seen TONS of pictures with explanations about chinchilla mutations. Still, most of them look the same to me. Is it just me? What am I missing?
 
I'm not sure what you are wanting to know. The mutations are for the most part just different fur colors. So a beige chinchilla will look the same as an ebony chinchilla, except the fur and skin is a different color. Grey with a black back and white belly is known as the standard grey and is the natural color of chinchillas, anything else is a mutation of that.

I do know there are also several mutations that the difference is very subtle and hard to see from photos if that is what you mean. For example pictures of a violet, blue diamond, and sapphire all look the same to me. :unsure:
 
Thank you. Yes, I have a hard time distinguishing violet, blue diamond, and sapphire. Also, some shades. Like when does a "medium" become a dark? I always shocked when I see people post pictures of kits that are only a few days old saying they are violet. They all look grey to me.
 
Yeah the shades especially can be hard to tell from a photo, especially when looking at them on a computer screen since you may prefer your screen brighter or darker. Some of it is genetics, so unless you know what the parents were it's nearly impossible to know what the kits are. In the case of a violet as you mentioned they know the parents so they know what color they produced.

In the case of ebony, you have "light", which is grey, "medium", which is dark grey, "dark", which is dark grey/black, and "extra dark" which is black (requires both parents having the ebony gene to get an extra dark).

This is pretty simplified but you can play around with combos and get an idea of if you breed one color with another what you can get. http://www.silverfallchinchilla.com/genetics/ChinCrossCalculator.aspx
 
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