Chatting to some breeders the other day we were discussing the further development of angoras. One thing that came up quite strongly was new breeders moving into angoras and someone in particular breeding a ferret with a deformed jaw with no pedigree, to other jills with no pedigree known and that they had bought another that they now knew to be inbred. The quote that stands out was they didn’t realise “the extent of how serious the genetic side of breeding is”. I’ve got to say that alarmed me somewhat. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in this game so long, I know what people used to say;
10 years ago (and I’m not exaggerating) the first angora in a Scottish show was branded a freak, a mutant, an inbred deformity. That is where their reputation began. Pretty, sure but its inbred. Knowing who was breeding then I know he was not inbred as far as an angora can be, but our story does begin with inbreeding. If you have read our angoras page, you’ll know the angora began as a fur commodity. It didn’t need to be healthy, it just needed to be pretty and have long fur. Then it moved into pet trade, they then have to be somewhat healthy then but again, neutered at 6 weeks, health was clearly not a priority back then. I don’t know when health started to become a priority, and if we’re honest it’s not with everyone still. You do still need to be very careful with your breeders. The worlds a lot smaller these days, you cannot trust someone in bath to have unrelated lines to someone in the Lothians. Makes finding unrelated standard blood a nightmare when people are still doing things as they have for the last 100 years. That’s a nice hob local pal, can I line my jill with him? No questions on health or lines. It’s the problem that lead to the silver issue, (the sandy issue in central east Scotland for a good few years) and is currently destroying the work done by breeders to the UK angora population.
Perhaps it was due to inbreeding depression that health finally became a priority, or perhaps sales were affected by word getting round. In any case eventually it became highly important to us breeders to breed out. Adding standard and EU lines to improve genetic diversity. This is completely mirrored by the silver issue. The silvers were so inbred/linebred to the point that silver silver pairings are still demonised, and frankly you should be very careful with them. Instead people began to breed silvers with sables and carry on the silver line through a silver kit to a sable in their time, slowly increasing the genetic diversity of the colour until we can breed them together again if we do so with care and are wary of that genetic depression creeping in again. With the angoras we make a point of keeping below 1% inbreeding co-efficient, most breeders liking to be well below this point.
Way back 15 years ago (again) the UK angora lines began with 1 breeder importing a few full angora hobs and outcrossing before breeding back to angora. This continued the same way, them importing new lines every few years, and eventually new breeders started using these original lines for their base, most buying unrelated lines from that breeder to continue this progression, a handful importing as well. Because of how rare new blood is in the UK every UK angora breeder has lines from this original blood pool, and the chances are if you do not import new lines yourself (and even then sometimes) your lines are related in some way down the line. That is why knowing the pedigree of your lines is so important in angora breeding. You will inbreed if you are not incredibly careful.
The second big problem actually comes from other countries. You remember I said that some breeders still don’t really care about health? Well its bit half the worldwide ferret breeding community in the ass. There was one pairing in particular that involved 2 cryptorchid carrying ferrets. I won’t start a slagging match by saying which, but this was kept hidden until a good few generation later it was through half the pedigrees in the world. Beautiful dark lines but now every ferret descended from him is potentially a carrier of crypto and who knows what else. Unfortunately for the UK several of these imported lines both by that original breeder and a handful of others were descendants and we were left in a tricky situation.
To explain I’m going to refer to my celestials’ litter. Polaris was an oddity in the litter and one that though not unexpected (because I knew the lines) was incredibly unlikely. She was a chocolate, specifically the more sabley type. Thing is her mum wasn’t, neither her grandparents, great grandparents, looking directly at the pedigree it didn’t make sense but looking laterally it did. Her great uncle, her grandfather’s half-brother, was chocolate. That means her great, great grandfather was a carrier and it travelled hidden through 3 generations just waiting to find its match. These recessive genes can stay hidden through many generations but it can also disappear in a single one. That same chocolate uncle by this logic should carry dew, right? No, he didn’t. He was bred to a known carrier twice and didn’t have any.
If we take all this back to the situation, we were in with the angoras we now had a gene in our small gene pool we did not want, fortunately for us all crypto is an easily enough dealt with mutation. Effected ferret just needs neutered before they are 3 years old. Since its not too dangerous we have 3 options. 1 Ignore it and move on with our lives; this is the least responsible one and the one that leads to the gene filtering through the gene pool resulting in more and more ferrets being born with crypto. 2 scrap the lines and start from the beginning; this seems like a great idea but by the time it was found most lines in the world were “contaminated” we would not just be starting from scratch importing we would be starting right back at inbreeding depression or risk losing the angora gene (another recessive) in the mix of cutting this gene out. Some breeders have gone this way and there is an effort by many to keep clean lines clean whist slowing outcrossing so conserve the genetic diversity. 3 you can try to breed it out. As we saw with the colour example this can be done but it is not full proof. Any offspring of a known carrier can potentially be clean or a carrier themselves. Ideally, we would have a test and be able to continue as normal just being sure to prevent carriers breeding with carriers, getting best of both worlds but instead we must walk through muddy waters. To breed out the gene any animal presenting crypto must not be bred. They are often sold as pets. The parents of such a ferret are then also known to be carriers and are themselves retired. Since we don’t want to lose genetic diversity breeders usually do not completely scrap the line (though we did this when we could not risk a known carrier so close to one of our most prised lines) but for several generations the line is placed on strict pet only contracts so that the line can be observed for signs of crypto carriers and to prevent the transmission of the gene through the gene pool. This is one of the big reasons why angora breeders use contracts to track and contain the spread of illnesses such as crypto.
This whole problem is compounded in the UK because we are an island. Our gene pool is already limited to what we have in the country at any given time but because so many imported lines were descendants several generations back they were brought in as fresh blood, bred through multiple ferretrys to diversify lines, and in essence I would estimate that 80% of UK lines are potentially contaminated, this will likely go down as importation rises so long as people do not breed carelessly. Because we lack the ability to test we are resorting to tracking lines that potentially carry, trying to breed it out and hopefully ending up with a clean line but people who breed any ferret to get angoras both in the UK and the world at large are making this harder and harder. We also are doing all we can to prevent a similar situation happening again by every ferretry able importing lines as often as they can that they work on themselves before making available to other breeders.
As with any gene pool that has been compromised this is not just true for crypto but also any other illnesses seen at increase in a line, lymphoma, insulinoma, deafness, deformities such as cleft palates, increased incidence of swimmers or adrenal, these are all reasons a line might be pet home only for a few generations while the breeder checks the line. It is also why it is vital that ferrets who are perfectly health (and especially any with any issues) sold on a pet contract or with no pedigree should not be bred. There is actually a few big-name breeders that UK lines are trying to breed away from or find lines that these breeders have not had due to them being known for inbreeding or having particularly high incidence of ill health.
I’d like to finish this by asking you to please not support any backyard angora breeders who cannot tell you the inbreeding coefficient or know the pedigrees. I know it can be off-putting after years of owning standard ferrets to have to sign a contract and not have breeding rights for your ferret but please support the responsible breeders doing all they can to protect and improve the gene pool in the UK and if you’re interested in being an angora breeder don’t start with I want to breed angoras. Start by breeding standards to high welfare, learn to use feritage and use it for your standard lines, show breeders you want to work with you are interested by asking questions about different lines and ask for pointers on writing contracts. These are all skills you really need to know before breeding angoras responsibly so demonstrating them is how a breeder knows you are dedicated to doing the best by the breed before entrusting you with their lines.