Davidson Chinchillas - Specialising in Charcoal Chinchillas

The Broucke "Recessive Charcoal Brown" is probably the best known of the charcoal chinchilla mutations. It was deliberately given the name "charcoal brown" to distinguish it from the many colour phases of standard and mutation chinchillas which where shown in the US at the time.

What follows is a history of the mutation which first appeared on their ranch in 1957. The information has been taken from an article written by the Brouckes in 1968.

In 1948 a very light chinchilla was born on the Broucke chinchilla ranch. It was unusual at the time because the rest of their herd was predominantly dark.

Betty decided to work with the light line against Vic's wishes. She had a sire and daughter pairing who she would move around the chinchilla ranch in order to confuse him. When he discovered the pair she would move them again.
It was not until 1957 that Vic asked Betty to come and look at the newest arrivals to the herd. The light pair had produced two very dark babies with no white belly. Betty described them as a "dark chocolate colour from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail". Both kits were male.

Using their herd records the Brouckes immediately found 8 more daughters to pair with the sire, and of those, 6 produced more charoal brown offspring. Over a number of years it became clear that they were working with recessives - when a charcoal was mated to a standard the offspring were invariably standard in colour. When these offspring were mated back with a charcoal there was a 50/50 chance of producing charcoal offsping.

There were a number of setbacks for the Brouckes in the early days of breeding the recessive charcoals. They lost their first charcoal to charcoal pairing kits due to lack of heat. They realised that in order to increase the survival rates of the kits they needed to use heaters - they used them for about a week before the female was due and for about 3 weeks after the kits were born.

The Brouckes learned that patience was the key to breeding recessive charcoals. Unlike breeding standard chinchillas, breedbacks in charcoal pairings often resulted in injury to the young. It also appeared that milk was slower in being let down by charcoal females - kits were lost due to mothers turning on them when they scratched and bit the teats to get milk.

They spent many years crossing large carriers back to charcoals and despite all the setbacks and occasional heartaches their dedication and hard work with recessive charcoals began to come to fruition. Just one example of which was that in February 1966 a Broucke charcoal female won the Grand Show Champion Award.

 
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