 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | Breed Info | Cyclic Breeding Info |
| Cyclic Breeding for Dummies We've gone 'round and 'round about the meaning of the Gloucestershire Old Spots Cyclic Breeding System. It's a bit like a Round Robin, trying to arrange breeding partners within your eager pig herd. So, the resident pig dummy at our farm, moi, decided to decipher the charts and prose so that even our Muriels could foresee who their next breeding partner might be. First, with all due respect to the British pig breeders who developed this orderly system for minimizing inbreeding among these pigs, most of us are color blind when it comes to our pigs. Even so, all pure Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs belong to one of four color groups: Red, Blue, Black, and Green. No, the pigs are not actually that colorful, nor do their ear tags reveal their color identity. If your pig has come from the 1996 Kelmscott importation of GOS, it will have one of 15 possible names (Muriel, Princess May, Star, Star Antoinette, Bluebell, Countess, Dolly, Princess Joan, Dahlia, Josephine, Muriel, Princess, Ellen, Primrose, Princess Ann, and Princess Freda. These names are divided into the four color groups so that a Muriel belongs to the Green Group and a Dolly belongs to the Black group. (See Fig. 1) So now your pig has two identities: a standard GOS name and a color group. Many breeders specialize in a particular color group and keep females of that line and one boar of the color group that can breed with the chosen female line. Pigs get their names (and color groups) in one of two ways. If you're a female pig, you get your name (and color group) from your mother. So if your mother is a Muriel (Green), you are also Green AND your name is Muriel. Male pigs get their color groups from their mothers and are given the same name that is given to all male progeny of their mother's color group. Take our herd for example: we started with a Muriel, a Josephine, and a Princess, all of whom belong to the Green group. Our boar Patrick's mother's name is Dolly and a Dolly belongs to the Black Group. So Patrick is Black. Now the British have organized these color groups into a circular affair, with certain colored boars always breeding to certain colored females. For us, it means that Patrick (Black) always mates with our ladies of Green. (Muriels, Josephines, Princesses, and Dahlias). Just to test our understanding, let's look at our litter from the breeding of Patrick with our Josephine. We had three sow piglets who take the name of...........yes, Josephine, the name of their mother. And the one boar piglet takes the name of........yes, Gerald, the name given to all male piglets born to Green group sows. So now we have three new sows in our Green Group and a Gerald boar. The official name of our sow piglets is Kelmscott (farm name) Josephine (color group) #1 (Sequential numbering of piglet born). If we wanted to sell our Gerald boar, we would need to sell it to an owner of a sow from the Blue Group (Ellen, Primrose, Princess Ann, or Princess Freda.) You might ask whether our new Green group piglets may be bred back to Patrick, their father, when they grow up, since he is of the "right" color group. The answer is no. They should be bred to any other Patrick: remember, any males borne of Black group sows will be named Patrick, and will be Black also. Are you confused? Look at the chart now and it should be as simple as black and white. 
|
| Home | Breed info | Members Page | News and Links GOSA c/o Lisa Dachinger, River Valley Farm, 345 New Lenox Road, Lenox, MA 01240 Email GOSA |