Violephire

[Viw]

The pic I posted is not the best quality and the colour doesn't come trough perfectly in it.
Blue diamond is very beautifull when seen live, I think this picture shows the colour best:
http://www.chilla.no/images/chills/1020/0_first.jpg

Megan asked about if someone has crossed blue diamond with a pure standard and used said offspring on violets and sapphires -> yes, that's how things are done by certain people and these double carriers produce both colours in their offpring.
This is also the way blue diamonds quality has been improved, there's nothing that beats using pure standards.

Personally I think that Niels Sörig is the best person to tell about blue diamonds and he has done a massive job with the colour.
I talked with him las year when I bought my violet SC pair from him and he has a interesting theory about producing competely white chinchillas trough tripple carriers.
Some info and Niels email can be found from here if someone is interested contacting him.

 

[Spoof]

Viw, the viophire in that pic above is not the blue diamond/viophire strain that is here in the US. It's either using the german violet, Tov or is a violet s/c.

Riven - Ronda bought out a chunk of Carole Kessler's herd, and after five years of hounding Carole has never supplied the information. The animals were kept in their original breeding configurations/locations in hopes that she would do so as the only identifier was order Ronda packed them and occasionally what Carole said they were as they were being packed. The parents of the first viophire were a violet male and standard female. Obviously s/c and v/c.

Ronda bought the herd because Carole was renowned for having some of the best mutations at the time and she wanted the violets. Had absolutely no clue what she was getting into. So yea, she got the equivalent of a flaming bag of poo left on her porch with chin genetics.

When you invest so much in a herd and get crapped on the only thing you can do is let the animals breed out and try to get your money back through wholesaling the offspring. Similar thing happened with the Wells herd she bought - they were paid in full then refused to furnish the pedigree information.

 

[kathiva]

The pic I posted is not the best quality and the colour doesn't come trough perfectly in it.
Blue diamond is very beautifull when seen live, I think this picture shows the colour best:
http://www.chilla.no/images/chills/1020/0_first.jpg

Megan asked about if someone has crossed blue diamond with a pure standard and used said offspring on violets and sapphires -> yes, that's how things are done by certain people and these double carriers produce both colours in their offpring.
This is also the way blue diamonds quality has been improved, there's nothing that beats using pure standards.

Personally I think that Niels Sörig is the best person to tell about blue diamonds and he has done a massive job with the colour.
I talked with him las year when I bought my violet SC pair from him and he has a interesting theory about producing competely white chinchillas trough tripple carriers.
Some info and Niels email can be found from here if someone is interested contacting him.

That one looks to me like a very light sapphire with a very solid color, not like it has like a gray tinge to the fur like normal sapphires, it is like a very light baby blue sort of

 

[Claire D]

You have to see a Blue Diamond "in the fur" in order to appreciate the colour, I think. A bit like the Deutsch Violet, photographs don't capture the colour very well at all.

I have seen some of the ones bred by Ivan Ongley here in the UK.

 

[Godins Chinchillas]

So why exactly is it hard to breed them?

 

[KissThis]

because you have to express 2 recessive genes at the same time, possibly more for the blue diamond. Also the quality on the sapphires and violets is not as good as it should be, so breeding a good one is even more difficult.

 

[Riven]

So from what I understand... once you get your carriers, basically it's just like breeding any other recessive right?

For example if I have one violphire, and I breed it to a standard, boom I have a std violphire carrier, so I take that animal back to the parent and I can produce violphires.

From what I've read so far, that's what I got. I like Jessica don't see the difficulty in actually producing a violphire. I'm not talking about a winning show animal, just producing one. If a person had one male you could easily have a full run of carriers within a year or year and a half if I understand correctly.

 

[Megan]

Well ****... I have a White Sapphire female here that is doing nothing (no male for her), and a run of violets.. Perhaps i can make the first white violphire.... KIDDING!

It really doesn't seem all that hard to produce one.. Perhaps one of quality.. Either way I have no interest. Then again I have no real interest in sapphires either. I have no idea why I even have my White Sapphire. Perhaps I should get her an s/c male so she isn't just taking up cage space.

 

[Riven]

Send her here Megan, I've thought about playing with sapphires. I think I'd like to see one, but I don't know if I'd ever care to mess with violphires either.

 

[Spoof]

If it wasn't hard to produce one you can bet $,$$$ that the many breeders who have and have been trying for profit reasons would already have one.

On the other hand if someone else would produce that would be awesome, would like to see some new lineage for outcrosses.

Jack Danko was the most vocal breeder attempting the cross, and for all I know Carole Kessler had been working on it for a decade and never seen one.

 

[Riven]

If someone wants to donate the animals I'll work on them, lol.

 

[KissThis]

I will say it again, the hard part is that it is not one recessive gene, but two that you are trying to express. So if you set up a punnett square, it will be easier to see. If you breed a violephire to a standard sc/vc the results are: a 25% chance of producing another violephire, a 25% chance of a standard sc/vc, a 25% chance of a violet sc, and a 25% chance of a sapphire vc. So it is by no means guaranteed that you will get a lot of violephires. It is the same reason that very few people have the patience to cross only sapphire carriers or violet carriers together when they are working with either of those two colors, you just don't get very many of either.

 

[KissThis]

Also if you just cross two double carriers (std sc/vc) together you have a 6.25% chance of producing a violephire........

 

[kathiva]

If you think about it, not many people are willing to produce this mutation because you sort of have to make it yourself from scratch, you have to have 2 unrelated sapphires and 2 unrelated violets, if you put them 2 pairs together, one sapphire and one violet, you have to wait for at least 4-6 months to get the babies, and you have to be lucky in that from the two pairings, that you get a baby male in one pair and a baby female in the other pair, if you get only males, or only females, you have to wait longer.

Then count the time that those babies would be ready to breed, at least 8 months, maybe a year, then those 2 babies, that are adults now, to have babies, that it would be another 4 to 6 months, plus, you get from that, standards possible sapphire and violet carriers, possible sapphire, possible violet, standard v/c only, or standard s/c only, or both, violet s/c, sapphire v/c, violephire, etc., and like kissthis said, it would be 6.25% chances in getting the violephire which is 1 in 16 chances of getting one, so you at least have to wait 1 year an half or more to get babies from this pairing to get the violephire, which most likely, you won't get one right away, and many people most likely would not be willing to wait so long to get certain color, and if you get it, the baby most likely will not be as nice quality, and after that you would have to work on improving the mutation, which is to put it with a pure standard,

and it you want to get another pair of standard s/c v/c, you would have to invest in getting other 4 chins not related at all to the other parents from the first pairing, and that would mean a lot of money to invest, specially if you wish to use good quality sapphires and violets to make your carriers, so myself I think it is a long process, not only to get the color, but to improve it, and also the wait time for the animals to reproduce it is long

 

[kathiva]

oops, I meant actually about 2 years to get some babies for a violephire

 

[mishalaa]

I would love to look at some violephire fur samples under microscope if someone would be able to mail them to me.

Also, like Cara, as of last year I have only been breeding Standard SCs to Standard SCs. In that time, I have gotten 12 possible SCs and one sapphire, and that's just trying to get two alleles to match up. The numbers to get four alleles to match up would be exponentially greater - if using Standard SC/VC pairs.

 

[Riven]

you would have to invest in getting other 4 chins not related at all to the other parents from the first pairing,

Actually there is nothing wrong with using line breeding to work on a color if you know that you're using good quality animals and they are healthy. This is how a lot of ranchers get their top lines by compiling the genetics.

Anyone worth working on them isn't going to mind the time. I wouldn't have a problem with the time, it's called patience, not making fast money. I've been working with rec. whites for over three years and have only gotten two white kits born here, and that's a single recessive. Anyone who cares about quality knows that it takes time.

 

[starleomach]

Thing is most people working on recessives see $$$ I know most people I have heard of wanting violopheres start off the sentence with do you know what they would be worth....

 

[kathiva]

Actually there is nothing wrong with using line breeding to work on a color if you know that you're using good quality animals and they are healthy. This is how a lot of ranchers get their top lines by compiling the genetics.

Anyone worth working on them isn't going to mind the time. I wouldn't have a problem with the time, it's called patience, not making fast money. I've been working with rec. whites for over three years and have only gotten two white kits born here, and that's a single recessive. Anyone who cares about quality knows that it takes time.

oh yes, I guess some experienced ranchers would do that if they know what they are doing, is just that I said that because almost every breeder would rather do that than experiencing with related chins,
Yes, that's what I meant, to breed for quality it takes time, and especially with such a rare mutation, I was just giving more of an example of how much time would take "at least" to produce this mutation and even more if you would like to improve and breed good quality viophires. I agree with you.

 

[aznmexaggie]

What is the purpose of breeding a violephire? Just to get a cool unique color that nobody else has? It is not a rare mutation; it is a combination of two recessive mutations in which the animal is homozygous for both... and it's by using two relatively weak mutations at that!

I just don't get what the purpose is... you would not be improving either mutation by mixing them with one another.