Depending on the variety and breed of your cavy, color will either be essential (as in self-colored Americans) or almost worth no points (broken marked longhair breeds get 2 1/2 points). For example, any breed in a self-colored variety will be highly judged on color. Any breed in a broken color variety will have more emphasis placed on markings than color. Either way you will probably be marked down if they don't have good color. You want the color to be as vibrant and rich as possible and hold the same color all the way to the skin.
Checking Color
Here is an example of color going all the way to the skin - nice bright orange.
Here is an example of faded undercolor, not the same color as the topcoat - a fault.
| Very Good/Good Each of the cavies above exhibit very good color. The color is rich and vibrant with no fading. |
||
|
Fair You can see on this clipped Silkie the faded black. The lighting makes it look worse than it really is, but demonstrates a faded black. Longhaired cavies are harder to get correct color on than shorthaired breeds. |
||
| Poor Oops! That color is supposed to be chocolate, but it is faded and this coloring is not very good at all. |
|
What to look out for |
|||
|
Self-Colored animals Look out for any stray hairs of a different color. Also look for white snips or toes, as any foreign-colored hairs are a disqualification from competition.
|
Broken/TSW/TS/Dutch Marked
Watch for intermingling (first pic) which is any two non-white colored colors mixing together. Also watch out for 'roaning' (second pic) which is mixing of any color hair with white hairs. Both are faults. Intermingling is a rather common problem in TSW's. Look for a cavy with clean-cut patching. |
||
|
Broken/TSW The big factor in Brokens and TSW's is the patching. These varieties must have at least a 50-cent piece sized patch of each color when full-grown in order to be shown. Smaller sizes will be disqualified. In order to be competitive, however, the cavy should have as equal amounts of each color as possible. The baby in the pic above probably wouldn't be showable, and if he were, he wouldn't be very competitive. |
|||
