>From: Bob Church <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Bob C Q&A: "Nut"rition >I haven't figured out the rubber, although I work on the hypothesis >that they either want sulfur or are just sh*ts, and lean towards the later. If they chewed as much as humans you could reason its the same as why humans chew plastic (in the form of chewing gum). Maybe they want to but can't get it right because their teeth are wrong.... <grin> >From: Mark Zmyewski <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Sable is the original color/pattern??? >I'm confused, because I thought the original color of the ferret was >white/albino and it was the mixing of ferrets with European polecats that >caused the sable ferrets. The same people pushing this theory are the same people pushing the Egyptian theory. There is absolutely no evidence that white is the original color. White animals in the wild are particularly easy to spot for predators - well excpet in the Arctic but ferrets are polar bears or Arctic foxes. The confusion comes from folks in England and elsewhere that call any brown ferret a polecat and any white one a ferret. Thats wrong. Ferrets are ferrets and according to our resident expert - Mo'Bob, who will correct me I'm sure if I'm wrong - they are so much like the European Polecat that it is most likely they are domesticated from them. Just as Dogs are pretty much domesticated wolves - but since dogs were more modified by going for breeds that that less resemble wild wolves. >From: Sukie Crandall <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: shades of gray in gentics, shades of gray in ferrets, liver illness >When someone has what looks like the matings of full albinos but winds up >with colored kits it might be that one or both of the parents happened to >have suppressing genes at other loci which caused them to appear albino. Absolutely - though you are the expert over us here. What do you know about genes like the horse's palomino and dogs merle? Is my hypothesis about albino being like this? That is that it fades chocolate browns to champagnes (cinnamons) but doesn't affect sable shades. I'm just trying to figure out why we have diluted chocolates but not diluted sables. >What do the formal color naming groups call a ferret which has the typical >patterning but instead of the standard colors it's almost all or all in >shades of gray? AFA currently uses roaning to describe the whitening of black. FURO used the same term and something else to describe the pattern but used seperate names for the shades. Neutral black (as in silvers) seems to be different than the (slightly brownish) black sables. I think this is one of the colors that was very common but through indiscriminant breeding with pandas and blazes seems to be hard to find in a good clean state anymore. "Silver mitts" used to be good clean patterns with the black/grey color and white patterns on the feet. Now you usually find it mixed in with the white socks and knee caps of the Waardensburg patterns. Breeders really ought to learn more about genetics instead of denigrating those who have. Genetics is how we can achive our stated goal of "improving the ferret". If you don't know genetics (well really just inheritance) you can't know you are improving your lines. Show ribbons don't prove anything. Mass production through breeding every jill you can grab doesn't either. We're more impressed with those that talk about the jills they don't breed. Those that talk about trying to track traits through generations. Culling is how we improve ferrets. Though culling by adopting out not euthanizing. bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets http://www.zenferret.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 1910]