A piggy breeder who got most of her stock from me, wrote me about a red-eyed white baby who seemed blind. At my urging, she checked him out thoroughly and he is also deaf and missing teeth-- a typical "lethal" roan that occurrs in 25 percent of babies born to roan x roan breedings.

Because the roan gene is dominant and what you see is what you get-- if a pig is roaned, it carries the roan gene heterozygously, that is: Rn rn. If it is not a roan, it is rn rn, and lethals are dominany homozygous, or Rn Rn. What we call a lethal is a white pig who is usually blind, deaf, has missing or misaligned teeth, and may have internal problems as well. They rarely live to adulthood and are usually sterile anyway. Most roan breeders try to avoid breeding roan x roan for this reason, or euthanize these babies at birth. Because the roan gene is dominant, there can be no non-roan "carriers."

That said, it's not so simple. I had a dark-eyed white boar who, when bred to a roan sow, produced a lethal. A thorough physical check of the boar showed a couple black hairs-- he was a "silent" roan, or a roan with so few colored hairs that he appeared white.

The parents of the lethal I mentioned in the beginning are not roans either. The mother is a mostly-black brindle, out of two other brindles, "I" and "B". "I" 's maternal side has roans.

The father of the lethal is a -- suprise-- tortoiseshell and white, also sired by "B" and his dam is a self black out of no-roan lines. We'll set her aside.

Of the father's parents, "B" is a mostly black brindle who was sired by a line of TSWs. His mother is a patchy red roan. The father does have some intermingling of red and black hairs on his rump patch.

OK, go figure. The pigs' owner swears there's no one but this father who could have sired this litter. In fact he was the only boar she owned at the time. If this is true, he must be a genetic roan, right?

Insight invited!!

I gave a couple Texels a bath last week and used a detangler on them. It seemed to work well on the bottom of their rear sweeps. The shampoo cleaned off the sticky urine that seems to cause a lot of the matting, and the detangler changing the texture enough so they didn't seem to get sticky/dirty as fast. However, it tended to weigh down and straighten the hair along the spine, so I washed them again this morning, sans detangler and they seemed a bit curlier again. Let's hope they can refrain from peeing on their sweeps before Saturday. But for inbetween shows, I'm using the detangler. I really think they matted less often or not as badly after I applied it.

I still have to decide which adults I'm bringing for sale, besides the reserved pigs.

<Edit>Oh, and for the raffle I might bring the full series of Harry Potter books, or "Twilight" series, or both. Wonder if anyone would be interested. I don't forsee getting a chance to actually shop for stuff.

I was just taking pix of some babies for prospective owners. One is in my album, it just came out really cute, mostly because she is young and sat still!

So, shooting these babies, the Teddy was rambunctious--I had to squish him down with my hand and take it off at the last minute to get him to stay still. This movement can make me blur the pix, of course, not to mention the piggy doesn't look his best. Oh well. We can't all be models, LOL.

The one Texel sow was almost as bad but when I squished her together she sat there for a few seconds so I could hit the shutter after I'd taken my hand away and not during! She was one of those who want to look into the lens and I have a lot of weird big-nose blurry shots.

The other Texel sat quietly after I placed her back a few times. Her picture came out nice and she's the one in the album.

After shooting I fed them hay. All the Teddies are standing on dishes, each other, etc. as close as they can to where I'm gonna put the hay in. A couple adults aren't bothering to wheek, since the youngsters are screaming enough for all. The old girls aren't quiet as excited--they look up and maybe stand up for a second but are pretty patient for Teddies.

One young sow continues to wheek even after I put her hay in, because she sees me still feeding the others. What do you want from me, caviar???

The cage of Texels wave their heads around but they don't wheek and they don't freak out and push and stand on each other. They wait pretty patiently and are on the end so they're almost always the last to be fed.

The differences are inherent in the breeds. Texels can be quiet to the point of boring, and Teddies can be too rambunctious, but a young Texel cuddled in your lap is such a cutie, while the same age Teddy will be licking hands, nibbling zippers, etc.

I love both their temperaments. Pigs just wanna have fun.