Grayrose Cavies

No posts for a while but still here

Life gets busy, you know. We haven't been doing any shows this year, but we are still breeding, and have finally had our first litter of cream abbies. They are just now getting to breeding age, so we should be seeing more of these beauties in the coming months. If you are interested in getting stock from us, please drop me an email.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Thanksgiving is, perhaps, my favorite holiday. Today we will be celebrating with all the classics including a 25 pound heritage turkey and ten pies, mostly pumpkin. The pigs will be included in the festivities with their own feast. I picked up several pounds of fresh organic kale for them to pig out on.

A couple days ago a red teddy sow, Grayrose Camilla, had babies — two red sows and a cream sow. The father is a DEW, QT Snowflake (Lucky). I recently bought the parents from Tess of TT Cavies in Erie, PA. I had sold her Cammie a while ago, so it was neat to get her back. The babies all look nice and curly with short faces and fat tummies. I'll keep one of the red sows, so the other two will be for sale. About two weeks ago a cream teddy sow, Perle d'Or, had two babies, a cream sow and a buff sow. I might keep the buff, but cream will definitely be for sale. I also have for sale an intermediate DEW teddy boar, an intermediate red teddy boar, and two senior cream teddy sows. These are all nice, showable animals. I just have too many. The senior sows are about a year old and have both had good litters. I also have some agouti teddies, silver, golden, cinnamon, and lemon, in both boars and sows. If interested, please let me know.

No baby abbies for a while, although I have at least six sows that are expecting and due sometime in late December or early January. And I should have a flood of babies after that in time for the PaSRBBA show.

Please take a second and register for autmatic email updates for the latest new of babies, pigs for sale, and the goings on in our caviary.

Have a great day and don't eat too much. We all have a lot to be thankful for this year.

New Subscription Feature

I'm still working on the formatting, but this is so neat. You can now subscribe to Grayrose Cavies and have all of my posts delivered right into your email inbox. I don't know if it will deliver pictures, but at least you'll know when I post them here. Try it out. Hopefully, this will motivate me to post a little more often, too.

Enter your email address to receive the most recent pig posts from Grayrose Cavies delivered right to your email inbox:

Of course, it goes without saying that all email addresses will remain private. Let me know what you think.

New Pigs From Maine

We just got back yesterday from a week in Maine, visiting family. While we were there, I drove up to Bangor to visit with Katie Carter of Bandirose Cavies. I brought home three incredible boars and a fabulous sow. Bandirose pigs are awesome, and I am just thrilled to be adding these pigs to my lines.

The new pigs are Mullraney: a DEW senior boar. He is going in with my younger cream sows.
Mackinnon, a self red satin carrier. Mac is a Sweet Wheekers pig, about 2 1/2 years old and still eager to get with the ladies. I pulled my lovely satin broken boar who hasn't produced a thing for me ever and replaced him with Mackinnon, who was in piggy heaven with three sows.

The last boar is a Golden Agouti and Red roan boar with just about everything going for him, big shoulders, lovely coat, cute little nose. He is in with the Bandirose sow, Rosario, a DEW. According to Katie, the last time she bred this pair, she did get a cream so I am hoping to reproduce her results.

New Pigs From Maine

We just got back yesterday from a week in Maine, visiting family. While we were there, I drove up to Bangor to visit with Katie Carter of Bandirose Cavies. I brought home three incredible boars and a fabulous sow. Bandirose pigs are awesome, and I am just thrilled to be adding these pigs to my lines.

The new pigs are Mullraney: a DEW senior boar. He is going in with my younger cream sows.
Mackinnon, a self red satin carrier. Mac is a Sweet Wheekers pig, about 2 1/2 years old and still eager to get with the ladies. I pulled my lovely satin broken boar who hasn't produced a thing for me ever and replaced him with Mackinnon, who was in piggy heaven with three sows.

The last boar is a Golden Agouti and Red roan boar with just about everything going for him, big shoulders, lovely coat, cute little nose. He is in with the Bandirose sow, Rosario, a DEW. According to Katie, the last time she bred this pair, she did get a cream so I am hoping to reproduce her results.

Waiting for pictures

I just took pictures of the latest babies, but on the last shot, the camera announced that the battery was exhausted. So while it's recharging I thought I'd take a minute to catch up here.

I have completely rearranged the caviary. We have one super long pen for pregnant sows and junior sows and sows taking a break from breeding. Then there are five mid-size pens which each have a boar and three sows: Broken teddies; cream teddies; satin teddies; cream abbies; and other abbies. When a sow is clearly pregnant, I pull her from the pen, moving her to the big girl pen so she can move around and get more exercise. After she gives birth, I typically put her and the babies in a small cage while she's nursing. And finally are my stacks with a breeding pair in each.

The pictures I'm waiting to post are all baby sows, mostly agouti teddies.

Litters due in the next week or so: a cream teddy sow by a cream teddy boar, a solid sliver teddy sow by a platinum agouti roan boar (MT's Frosty) and a red teddy sow by a boar that I can't think of right now, but will look up. I'd better go do that now while I'm thinking of it.

Finally, I was sad to learn that my friend Carrie of Mon-Trav Cavies is not going to be breeding any longer. Sigh. She had the best eye for type. My best babies these days come from her lines.

News

I know it's been a while since I've posted.

My step father, Hartley Gurney, died on April 5, from complications from the kidney transplant. The complications turned out to be an antibiotic resistance bacterial infection that he was exposed to in hte hospital shortly after the transplant. More people died each year from these infections, which are almost always picked up in hospitals, than from auto accidents, AIDS, and breast cancer combined. And yet there is almost nothing being done about it. After everything that he had been through, his death was a hard blow.

We cancelled our trip to the west coast to visit my brother in July because my mother wasn't doing very well. But we did go to Maine last week to visit my in-laws. Pictures here if you're interested.

And Now: CAVIES

Some big changes. I am no longer breeding texels. I have one junior sow left. She was too cute to sell, white and chocolate with a chocolate nose. Here she is She's a sweetheart, and I will sell her if someone wants her enough.

My broken teddies just aren't breeding. I had one beautiful litter of three sows, including a Lilac, REO and white with beautiful type. I have one stunning broken boar, but he just isn't getting the job done. I'm not sure what to do at this point.

On the other hand, I am getting some really beautiful creams. Lots and lots of cream teddies, both sows and boars. And I need to start making some decisions. Let me know if you're interested in a cream teddy cuz I got 'em.

And now for my abbies:
I have a Salmon Agouti junior sow:

And a golden agouti roan sow:

And, born last week, a lemon agouti sow:

She doesn't look like much right now, but she seems to have all the rosettes and ridges in the right places.

These girls are NOT for sale. I'll try to post a list of what I do have for sale in the next week or so.

News

Spent the last two days massively cleaning and sterilizing cages. I'm about half way done. Hopefully the weather will start to warm up a bit soon so I can get some fresh air into the caviary and even let the piggies out to munch on the grass.

My husband and neighbors took great care of the herd while I was focused on my folks. But they didn't keep very good records. There are quite a few youngsters I don't recognize and several of my favorites that are missing. Noir, our gorgeous silver agouti Aby, died over the winter. And so did Mrs. Puff, a TSW aby. Noir was almost six; Mrs. Puff was four.

On the new side, we have some way cool babies. Maybe I'll get some pictures taken this weekend. But I also have to do taxes this weekend, too. And Saturday is baking day.

Back Home

We are finally back. My step-father was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic for a kidney transplant on Nov 7, 2005. The transplant itself went well, but a few days later his condition started to deteriorate. He has been in the ICU there ever since, until a couple weeks ago, when he finally started to improve enough for us to move him to a hospital closer to home. We are not out of the woods yet, but I am home now most of the time and will be getting back to breeding and, hopefully showing again soon.

In the meantime, I have some catching up to do.

First item. If you need a pedigree please email me with your address and info on the pigs in question, and I'll send those out ASAP.

Second item. I selling off my texels. I have two breeding trios for sale, plus four juniors (3 boars and a sow). Please email me for details. They will need to be picked up here until I can start getting to shows again. The adult boars both have done well on the show table, as have some of the sows.

Third: Cream Teddies for sale. Boars and sows. I will try to get more info posted about them by the end of the week.

Thanks to all who have checked in with me during this hard time. Your thoughts and prayers have helped so much.

School starts next week!

I finally understand all of the cartoons, comics and commericals about parents and school. I am so ready for summer to end. There is nothing to do this week with the kids. We went to the county fair this weekend (no guinea pigs – just rabbits plus all the standard live stock). We may do a matinee this afternoon after making a run out to the feed store.

I have so much catching up to do. We had two litters of teddies, a satin abby litter and a litter of texels this week. But we also had two miscarriages. And I finally have a list of everyone that I am selling. Most of them have been photographed. But my main computer is still in the shop, so I don't have access to my database of breeding records or pedigree info. Keep your fingers crossed that they can at least salvage my hard drive.

The new food, Blue Seal, seems to be working out great. Everyone loves it. And I love my new food dispensers. It has taken a while for those in the cages with them to figure them out, but they are now being emptied regularly. No more pooping and peeing in the food dishes. I am going to install these in all my pens and cages, except for the "maternity ward" cages, for now. Bass Equipement sells them for a lot less than the feed store.