[Gpdd] GPDD: (Misc) Different Varieties of Piggies, I am still trying to figure this out

Penny Charlesworth piggyfriends at tesco.net
Sat Nov 28 08:03:46 EST 2009


Ellen,

Unless they come from a specialist breeder, I think that most of our precious piggies are a mixture of breeds. Here we call the mixed breeds Dolly Mixtures or Liquorice Allsorts. These are little sweeties ( candies ) with all different shapes and sizes.

Here is a pigture of two of my herd, Roscoe and Shadow. Roscoe ( on the left ) is a Rex. He has a short crinkly, wiry coat and curly whiskers. Shadow is a Texel. He has recently had a haircut in this pigture but if left his coat will grow into ringlets.

http://s720.photobucket.com/albums/ww201/Piggyfriends/?action=view&current=HPIM0656.jpg

Janneke's Igor is a very handsome Texel and I am sure that she will not mind me linking his pigture so that you can see the curls.

http://www.guinygirlz.nl/WinkyGang/Igor%27s%20PLAY/Play-GuineaPigs.HTML  Look at the top and the very bottom of the page for Igor.

The piggies with "cowlicks" are called Abyssinians, though they never came from Abyssinia!  For a pure bred one, the rosettes ( as they are correctly called ) should be arranged symmetrically but many pet piggies have a few rosettes so are part Abby.

A random mating of piggies can produce all kinds of coats but this is not the place for a lecture on genetics!! My late Ginger, who had a middle length coat with a few random rosettes had four daughters. Two were Peruvian, one was a Rex and the fourth is a Texel ( Gingerbread is still with us - the matriarch of the Piggyfriends clan.) I never met their father so I don't know what he was like.

At one time Rexes were called Teddies in the US but I believe that now these are a separate breed, the Teddies having a softer coat than the Rexes and someone told me that Teddies have straight whiskers. Someone else will know more about this than I do.

Hope that this is of some help.

Perhaps you could upload some pigtures of your piggies for us all to admire. It is lovely to see the other piggies from the GPDD.

Penny and the Piggyfriends.


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