Show Quality ……………….. by Paul Spooner

The letter in last month’s Gazette from Martine Tur brought back memories of joining the society for the first time and the enthusiasm in searching for knowledge about all aspects of the Chinchilla.

Much of this knowledge takes time to acquire and comes only with experience and study. There is no better way to learn than the practical way – this means attending every field day and show that you possibly can and asking questions of the judges and more experienced breeders. This is not to say, of course, that reading articles, books etc on chinchillas is of no use. These do give guidelines on what to look for, but it is essential I feel to be with successful with chinchillas to teach yourself what to look for with regard to quality. Only then, will you be able to make a reasonable assessment of your animals and to make decisions about the matings likely to produce the best offspring.

The following, I hope, will be of some use in guiding Novices and perhaps as a reminder to some of our more experienced breeders about what the judge is actually looking for on the show table. It is not meant to be in any order of priority although some judges do seem to have preferences for certain qualities. The “ideal Chinchilla” that we are looking for (and is highly unlikely we will ever find) is a balance of all the qualities. In practice outstanding animals seem to be good in most qualities and outstanding in one or two.

Remember also that the judge is seeing the animal as it looks at that moment in time. The chinchilla is a live animal continually growing and changing. Only as a young adult in full prime, for a short period of its life, will that animal be at its best. This should be taken into consideration when listening to the judges’ comments on young animals. Do not assume that the qualities are permanent, six months later the comments may be completely different for the same animal.

FUR QUALITY – The ideal? Silky, strong, stand up fur. That is what we are striving for. The problem – the more silky we manage to get the fur, the more likely we are to lose fur strength, and silky fur without the strength to hold itself upright lies back, becoming a weak fur or even worse a “woolly fur”. The hips are usually the first place any weakness in the fur can be noticed. The fur here is usually longer so more inclined to lie back with any lack of fur strength. If , because of this, we breed towards the stronger fur we have to be careful not to lose silkiness and end up with a courser type of fur, not nearly so attractive or with the eye appeal of silky fur.

DENSITY - Is the quality that helps most in keeping a fine fur type standing upright. Lack of density and the fur has room to lie back or to seem to lie in different directions. With greater density the fur is supported by the fur follicles surrounding it and just doesn’t have the room to lie down. Density is what the Judge is looking at when he says “a tight fur” – a mass of fur tightly packed.

One of the best recognised tests for density is laying the flat palm of the hand on the Chinchillas back. If the animal’s fur is dense, you should feel “cushion” or “bounce”, like laying the hand on a high quality carpet. The fur will spring back into the upright position – it has to – the fur is so tightly packed it has nowhere to else to go. A step down from this very densely furred animal would be the less densely furred animal yet with excellent fur strength, keeping the fur in an upright position. The palm of the hand test will show the difference. Lower down the quality line comes the animal with a lack of density and poor fur strength. The fur lies back in difference directions and when the “cushion” test is tried, the palm goes easily through to the backbone.

COLOUR – a bright , blue, glowing animal is our ideal, this is formed by the rich , dark under fur , a sharp white bar and a dark tipping (veiling) to the fur. A high quality animal with fur in prime condition will have a lustrous glow to it – it will appear to shimmer as it moves. A grade down from this will be an animal with a clear, sharp colour but without the blueness, because of its sharpness this animal tends to show any slight fur faults or lack of prime more clearly especially in the dark colour phase. Going further down in quality we have the “clear in colour” but dull animal and then the down in colour, “off colour” and “tinged” animals. At the bottom of the line would come the stained animal from dirty cages. Colour has a major influence on eye appeal.

VEILING COVERAGE – Quite often abbreviated to coverage by the judge. This is the dark tipping to the fur above the white bar. It can be wide , up to 3/8^th” or narrow 1/16^th” , the wider it is the darker the animal appears. What is most important is that the coverage is even. Very often it appears to fade (becomes lighter) over the hips or in the back of the neck or on the shoulders. The judge wants to see as even a coverage as possible. Veiling coverage is also a major influence on eye appeal.

FUR LENGTH – Many animals do well on the show table with short fur. It is easy for an animal to look smooth and well finished with short fur but when compared with a high quality animal with plushy fur there can only be one winner. The ideal fur length is 1” to 1¼”.

GUARD HAIR – If you look across the top of your chinchilla under a judging light, you will see that some of them have hairs longer than the rest of the fur, sometime up to 3/8^th” longer. This is the guard hair or sometimes called King hair. The amount of guard hair varies from one animal to another, many animals having none at all. The guard hair serves a useful purpose in that it is thicker and stronger than the normal fur and so acts as a support, it can be attractive and add greatly to the eye appeal of an animal.

CONFIRMATION OR SHAPE – Is nothing to do with size. An animal can be small yet be of good confirmation. What we mean by good confirmation on the show table is a well built or “blocky” animal with a full neck. Looking from above the animal should be broad across the shoulders, slightly wider at the hips but with no tendency for the hips to protrude and no narrowing of the neck. Looking from the side there should be no pronounced dip in the neck area. There should be almost a straight line between the top of the head and the back. The most common faults in confirmation are a long narrow shape, a wedgy shape, narrow at the shoulders and wide at the hips, hips protruding or hippy or weakness in the neck.

SIZE – all things being equal a large sized chinchilla will do better on the show table. If two exhibits were identical in every (which is pretty near impossible), the larger animal would win. In practice many breeders like to use males slightly smaller than the females as they tend to be more active and mate the females quicker. Females, if too large and overweight, in many cases seem to be slow breeders.

FINISH OR PRIME – New fur growth in the chinchilla starts at the back of the ears and passes slowly down the back of the animal like a wave, where it spreads into a familiar horseshoe shape around the animals back, with the new fur showing up as a slightly darker line (priming line) than the old. The horseshoe shape spreads slowly out gradually disappearing at the tail and flanks. How quickly this happens varies from one animal to another. The animal should be in prime condition when this wave of new fur grows out. However, in some animals a new wave seems to start before the old wave has finished and they never seem to come into proper prime, while others seem to maintain prime over a long period – it is the latter we should be looking for to do well on the show table. When in prime, the chinchilla will look smooth all over with no lines or breaks in the fur – at its absolute best.

PRESENTATION – Although a chinchilla sheds much of its old fur when it comes into prime, some of it gets matted up with the new fur and can detract from the beauty of the new fur, giving a dull appearance. To remedy this, the majority of exhibitors groom their animals in preparation for a show. This removes any dead fur and separates the fur follicles giving a nice finish to a prime animal.

Paul Spooner