CHESHIRE STUD

ONE OF THE UNITED KINGDOMS LEADING STUDS OF PINK EYED SELF GOLDENS FIRST ESTABLISHED IN 1964

JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF THE END OF THE RAINBOW (THAT ELUSIVE POT OF GOLD)

The enjoyment is always in the search for that beckoning pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; to find it is impossible but the thrill is in imagining you might get pretty near. My journey looking for the ideal self golden started in 1964 and the enthusiasm still continues today as hopefully also does my learning curve.Sometimes you get a glimpse of that gold and you get a real "good un" but more often or not you are just travelling along that never ending road with your enthusiasm periodically accelerating and decelerating. Unfortunately a considerable percentage of enthusiasts at some stage decelerate absolutely, come to a standstill and completely leave the fancy in search of pastures new. Breeding cavies is not only a personal challenge to prove something about yourself but it is also a vehicle to allow you to establish friendships with a wider group of like minded fanciers and comrades; this is what we call the cavy fancyThe majority of fanciers that have most influenced my time in the fancy are not those that didn't stay the course but most definitely those that fall into two groups, i.e. an ever increasing brotherhood who after a life time of dedication have sadly now passed away and thank goodness a second group of comrades that are still standing the test of time. My earliest memories were of Bert Ellson (Peruvian club secretary) and Sid Jeffries (National secretary) who both lived within cycling distance for a twelve year old; neither kept self goldens but both had an enduring influence. Uncle Bert everyone's ideal granddad figure (truly a Mr Sandbach and Mr Cheshire of the cavy world) took his Peruvians really seriously, we all need someone to encourage us, someone we can look up to and someone to infect us with that unreasonable enthusiasm we have for these quite insignificant animals. Uncle Bert had a friend in the Leicester area (I think his name was something like Groves but my memory is going), he went to a lot of trouble getting me an u/5mths boar from this chap, one he had seen shown and had won well a month earlier. This pig was a good rich dark shade of golden (too dark for some people's taste at that time) with a very broad masculine face. When I agreed for uncle Bert to act as my agent (to this date I don't know what his fees were) I didn't actually know what the colour I was getting looked like. Several months later I paired this pig with some rather mediocre sows I was able to buy and get railed from a lady with a double barrelled name in Chester(Roger Bebbington has kindly jogged my memory MISS BALE-WILLIAMS).Of course I've introduced stock over the years since then but those genes still exist somewhere in my present stud. Two interesting facts about those original goldens of the 60's firstly the boars were the typey pigs not the sows (not typey in what I would call a beautiful way but massive in size terms and very broad what I would call very masculine) and secondly the baby goldens were all born golden in colour the same as the adult colour. For years I could not understand what people meant by chocolate coloured babies and I didn't like to ask. In my early teens I travelled to a lot of shows very nearly one each weekend something children of my age could not be allowed to do safely nowadays. My main competition at that time came from two quarters one being Roger Bebbington's reds (classification in those days always went Black/White or Cream/ Red or Golden and AOC) and the other from a very unreasonably typey P E Golden sow shown by a gentleman called Harold Skilleter from Birmingham.Harold was the first of a procession of Midland Cavy Club secretaries all of whom majored in our breed. For several decades keeping self goldens seemed to be the major requisite or qualification for the secretariat of this club in its heyday. I must have locked horns with Harold Skilleter's pig about twenty times in those early years. I rarely got the better of it, even though the type had a lot to recommend it the colour in my opinion was too light and had none of the richness which I so preferred. It was probably then twenty years since Dr Kerr had first introduced us to his new colour of self from what I can now remember and what the old ones told me at the time gold was in those earlier days at the lighter end of the spectrum. If you look at a clean shiny golden sovereign this is quite a pale shade of colour but it does have lustre and a good shine. My memories are beginning to dim but I do remember the following advocates of goldens at this time; Joan Radeglia, Peter Parkinson, Terry Holmes, Alan Sole, Harold Skilleter, Tony Haddon, and Frank Clarke another stayer who we will come back to later in this ramble (this is not a definitive list of golden keepers but those that in someway left a notch in my grey matter). The first five years of the seventies were spent at vet school. My mother kept my goldens going at home on the farm in an old railway carriage with pens on the floor (actually after I returned to Cheshire and took what was left of my stud back five years later the empty pens were never cleaned out, the railway carriage was dismantled only two years ago; 30 years later the bedding looked very little different). Interesting fact here when I first went away to university I didn't want to give up my pigs but I didn't know how they could be kept going. In desperation I put 20 sows in one floor pen (7x4 feet) and 12 boars in another pen. When I returned at Christmas they were all well, all intact and very fit on their deep litter. Surprisingly a pecking order must soon have been established and no pigs seemed any worse for ware. When I emerged back into the fancy in 1975 of course things had changed, the names had changed, and inevitably the golden picture had moved on. The fancy in the North West and Cheshire in particular was close to its zenith. This was the era of Jim and Mabel Tenner and son John, Peggy Crosse, Roger Bebbington, Margaret Pearce, daughter Melanie, Brian Pauley, June and George Brighouse and the early years of Bryan and Vivienne Mayoh. The hot bed of Goldens in the Midlands had evolved from Harold Skilleter and Tony Haddon down in the Black Country and moved a little to the north east to be centred on a fast developing stud owned by the new Midland secretary John Bates at Ashby de la Zouch. This in turn at the end of the decade produced another hot spot further to the north centred around Alan Cooper and the licentious Barry Berry. The North West had its enthusiasts also, George Howard registering three champions with the NCC in 1971, and two in 1975. Brian Pawley in Chester (unfortunately one of our drop out merchants) developed a very typey strain of self goldens which were way ahead of their time. These pigs could have dominated for years to come but as with so many advocates suddenly Brian was to leave the fancy.One afternoon Bryan Mayoh and I visited Brian Pawley, acquired the stud, split it in two and shared the pigs out on a one by one basis. This input gave me a much needed injection of type. Over a ten year period my stud of goldens had evolved from being represented by a large group of massive raw typed boars to now being fronted by the odd more typey sow. There was still great controversy at this time on what shade of colour a golden should be. Many judges were quite entrenched in their views and showing wrongly not only depended on the quality of your exhibit but unfortunately also on the whims of individual judges. Perhaps there really was a greater variation in shade at this time but what I had in my mind and what I thought we should be really looking for was richness of colour. To me richness doesn't mean darkness or depth it means the pig having lustre or shine. It is difficult to describe but some pigs when seen on the judging table look completely matt. They may be even, their under colour may be solid right down to the skin but putting it in a different way the colour has no excitement or life about it. To an enthusiast like me that is all wrong. Peter Parkinson (a fancier I had a lot of time for and admired in many many ways) wrote in the ESCC handbook "Goldens in various areas of the country tend to differ in colour quite a lot but no one has yet been able to say to me that a specific colour is the correct one. So, we have to put up with the state of affairs as it is. That is why I say to prospective fanciers of this colour breed for type." I don't agree with Peter's statement. As far as I'm concerned colour carries the most points in our standard. I believe you should never shy away from problems. You should keep embracing them until a solution is found. On a personal level I had better goldens in the late 70's to those in the late 60's but they still weren't good enough - perhaps I would have tried harder if Tony Tipper and I weren't having such a good run with the Abyssinians. In general Goldens at this time were making great strides forward. If you studied the annual league table of Best in Show wins they were still well behind the blacks but well up on the whites. I for one used to look forward to this annual feature in our magazine, we have less shows now but I think summaries of achievements and trends within our fancy always generate a lot of interest. Sometime in the early to mid 80's I passed into what I call "my wilderness years", and became one of those oddities that keep cavies but don't go to shows. But in actual fact I also think people that go to shows and don't keep cavies are also oddities. But if you really think about it you have to be an oddity to have anything to do with cavies at all. I didn't give up my goldens but really just passed into a time warp. Yes I did very occasionally dip in to see what was happening, judged the occasional show but in effect took a fifteen year sabbatical from the show scene. A lot happened in the self golden world during this time. The 80's boasted a whole host of fanciers making a name for themselves with the self golden. Those that spring to mind are Bernard Wiles, Noreen and Pete Handley, Jackie Driver, Dave Morgan, Alan Cooper, Gerry Harvey and Lee New, Steve and Debbie Edwards, the Mayohs; many of these are still household names to this day. Then in the early 90's Everest was finally conquered with Noreen Handley winning the coveted honour of Best in the show at the Bradford Championship Show with a self golden for the first time. I missed that great day and I will never know how good that cavy was (though I was to come very near twelve years later) if ever I attain that height I will never know how my pig in the future will compare to this. Around the turn of the century Mark Rubery was to scale those same heights. The pink eyed self golden had at last come of age. Noreen and Mark may have stolen the headlines but we mustn't forget those golden breeders that had been there ten years earlier and others such as Evelyne van Vliet, Andre and Tracey Theophilus, Steve and Bev Cowley who had very strong studs but perhaps were not in the right place at the right time to gain that prestigious Best in the Show. The number and the calibre of the truly dedicated enthusiasts for this colour during the 90's meant that the blacks were easily caught in quality and numbers and other colours of self were left to flounder. Goldens may not have that inherent type of the blacks but they are vigorous and they breed well. They survive and they grow and grow and grow. Something awakened or perhaps it would be more correct to say took over my senses around the turn of the century and I rejoined the rat race. I still had the bare bones of a stud of goldens. I still had that rich shade of colour I still had big pigs and large elephant like ears but all else had drifted and was stuck somewhere in the time warp. Some of the characters promoting my breed had changed yet again. Turn of the century and top of the show pile was Mark Rubery a lad nurtured under Jim Tenner's wings. A lad I had had a brief encounter with 20 years earlier while I was part of the Cheshire set during its glory years. Another face holding the flag high at this time was the new secretary of the English Self Cavy Club Nigel Beard who was making a name for himself with an impressive stud. I soon realised that if I was to challenge again for top honours I needed a serious injection of new blood. Out crossing is always dangerous the purpose behind the exercise is to give some of the desired traits a serious leg up but for every step you achieve forward there are at least three steps backwards and the fall out of undesirable pigs in your stud can almost reach unacceptable levels. Anyway I bit the bullet and visited Nigel and he very kindly provided me with some very useful pigs. Nigel's pigs were even coloured had good eyes large ears and that oblong head shape with a full muzzle which I so much like. Unfortunately not many months after my visit Nigel tragically passed away, his stud of goldens passed on and on again and I now see little evidence of them except in my own pigs. It is such a pity when someone's enthusiasm and vision has not been more widely used and received the respect it deserved. I have several times found pockets of Nigel's cavies and tried to capture a few more pigs from this widely scattered stud only to be thwarted and denied access and then only later to find they have been disposed of and lost without trace. Anyway I mustn't complain I was lucky enough to get that initial input if I had got my hands on any more I may have swamped my stud and lost the individuality of my own strain. Not content with the gene pool at my disposal I have also introduced goldens from another visionary of our breed. I have a lot of time for Frank Clarke. Frank was winning with cavies when I was just a lad, Frank has been bold enough to go back to basics and use other colours to make giant leaps with goldens. Yes this occasionally gives throw backs but I firmly believe Frank has done a great deal to advance our breed. He has also done something which some of our breeders find so difficult he has disseminated his pigs to others unselfishly and allow others to share in his breeding success. The golden is now able to challenge the black or any colour of self in terms of type on a level playing field not only this but golden cavies also have vigour and size and breed with ease. During the last six or seven years I have encountered serious competition from Mark, Frank, Graham Phillips (keeps a very strong stud of goldens), Jackie and Jim Driver, Bernard Wiles, George and Lily Leete, last and not least Simon Neesam the most recent and number three to gain the coveted BIS and many others just as significant who I apologise for not mentioning. Together with a good degree of passion this formidable list of fanciers and others have taken our breed forward in both quality and numbers. What is quite promising, and as Self secretary I am able to access the number of new advocates to our colour, many of whom are still in their embryonic stage but still look like offering a potential strength that is only rivalled by the burgeoning rare variety clans (the numbers game at the Club level indicates that if an established fancier takes on a new breed it is more likely to be the self golden than any one of all the other eleven colours of self put together). Where am I at present? Most of my goldens live in large open floor pens. Health wise they do better and they grow well. They can see you all the time so are friendly and get less stressed. I think I'm progressing colour wise, because of the open pens any with weak flaky colour are obvious and not encouraged. I am proud to say width between both eyes and ears has come along in leaps and bounds. At the moment one of my areas of study is placement and shape of ears, to recognise one of your own shortfalls gets you most of the way down the road to putting it right. Over the years I have made a point of noting the coat quality of each pig. This colour has two distinct coat types, a fair percentage of pigs are born with and grow up with very short tight coats, encourage these and use them unreservedly in your stud. They give a far evener colour than their more coaty cousins; flakiness is rarely a problem they are so much easier to get to the show bench. My intention has been to retrace some of my tortuous path with the self golden and to mention and give credit where credit is due to some of my friends and adversaries along the way. I have no shame in saying I am just as far from the end of the rainbow now as when I started my journey. That doesn't mean I haven't made any progress during all these years but rather that my final goal is forever changing as my sights are reappraised and set higher and higher. My vision of the Holy Grail is personally very clear, that does not change. It is that picture that makes it possible to judge and offer a personal opinion on other fancier's selfs.
As history continues it's relentless march,The Cheshire Stud presented a successful team of seven pink eyed goldens at Harrogate 2009.

TIME MOVES ON !!!!