This is the website for the National Fox and Tan Cavy Club. The site will be updated as frequently as possible with any new information but obviously work can sometimes get in the way of this.
Sam Richardson (Webmaster)
2025
Well a new year has begun and hopefully it will be a good one. I will get all the dates and judges for this years shows added as soon as I am able.
Good luck to you all and feel free to send me pictures of your winning Fox, Tans and Otters to upload on to here.
We are looking forward optimistically to this being a year of showing.
Show dates and judges (once all are in place) are now listed on the shows 2023 page.
The points competition will be running alongside this and fully paid up members will all be entitled to gaining points and leading to the points awards.
2020
Well what a year 2020 has been. With everything happening globally and on a more local scale with me being a key worker I have not had much time to keep the site updated. I will be trying to rectify this issue but for now I will just post the following.
From all here at the NFTCC please look after yourselves and we look forward to seeing you all in 2021 when we hopefully regain a little normality.
We will be carrying membership from the lost year of 2020 over to 2021.
The following is an article by Tony Cooke. The man who managed to spot the breeds and got the ball rolling bringing them to the point we are at today.
Serendipity by Tony Cooke
I have always been blessed with serendipity. The dictionary defines it as 'the art of accidentally happening on interesting things', (or something like that). It started in my school When we all went off to France on a school exchange visit, my classmates spent their visits the Paris suburbs but my exchange family took me off to visit 'granny' who lived in Monaco!
My two years National Service took me through the USA and Hawaii into the centre of the Pacific Ocean for the H-bomb tests. A change of job, from meteorology to chemistry then took me Unexpectedly into a position which led me to travel all over the world, from South Korea, Paraguay, Poland and Cuba to Haiti, Pakistan and Peru, seeing the most incredible sights and experiencing cultures I could have only dreamed of as a boy. But serendipity has also worked for in other areas than just travel and this article is about one such occasion.
When Gill and I joined the Cavy Fancy from the mouse fancy about twenty five years ago we were struck by a number of differences between the two fancies. The mouse fancy had a single controlling organisation (the National Mouse Club) which covered rules, show regs, standards, etc.
They also had their judging system split into five 'sections' : Selfs, Tans, Marked, Satins (which we had introduced) and AOVs each of which brought a single 'candidate' up for Best in Show. No referee judges needed here!). Now there were no Tans in the Cavy Fancy and that seemed to a serious 'gap'. After all mice had them, so did rabbits and even dogs (Doberman, dachshund, Rottweiller, etc) so why shouldn't we?
So twenty five years ago we started to search. I got in touch with a contact in the research field to see if he knew of any in UK laboratory stock however this didn't yield anything worthwhile. Through him I obtained a copy of the world listing of laboratory stocks of known genes in all laboratory animals. (I swapped a copy of my mouse hardback book to obtain this list). Sadly, after scouring the listings with a magnifying glass it was clear that there did not appear to be any examples of the black tan gene in cavies anywhere in the world.
So, back to the drawing board. If they didn't exist then the only way to get them was for a spontaneous mutation to occur and for someone to recognise the importance and to propagate it. Because one thing that was certain. This is not a case of 'mixing' up existing genes and arriving at new combination. What we were needing was a new gene (new to the Cavy Fancy that is) which as known in other species but which did not so far exist in the cavy.
My various old friends in the mouse fancy knew of our lack of the Black tan gene and the ongoing search. After all, they had had Tans since the 1920's. About seventeen years ago we got a call from an old mouse fancier who, although no longer active was still keeping a range of fancy animals - mice, rats, cavies, etc. "Hallo Tony - I think that I have found your missing Tans for you" said Mike Foley "Come up and take a look. I've got chocolate tans and beige tans!". He was living in the wilds of Cambridgeshire. So I took a days leave off work and we trekked up there to see if he could deliver
I have to say that on first sight they did look promising. Perhaps we had in fact found ShangriLa. One slight problem was that his pigs were all 'free range' and whilst he knew who the mothers were the boar was a bit more problematical. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we came away from Cambridgeshire with three or four 'tans' and set about trying to breed some more. Sadly, as they grew up it became apparent that these were not in fact tans (which have a self top colour) but were simply pink eyed agouties ("argentes") of rather mixed origin. The pink eyed effect had 'brightened' the belly colour to the point where it grabbed attention. As they grew on the top colour gradually became agouti-like and was quite clearly not the single self colour that we were seeking. We bred them for a couple of generations in the hope that the tan bellies could be transferred onto selfs but it was all a red herring. Off to the pet shop with them all.
So, once again it was back to the drawing board. Every new town we visited over the next fifteen years or so involved a sniff round the pet shops in the hope of finding a tan (or a perfect Tortie and White). Always a dead end. But we knew that sooner or later the mutation would occur. If only a fancier was in the right place at the right time. And this is where serendipity kicked in. Older fanciers will know John and Isobel Day, now living in Switzerland. John was a former NCC General Secretary. Some ten years ago John phoned me and asked if I would like to go over there judging. I pointed out that at that time I wasn't on any judging panels and said no. A year later John called again and this time managed to persuade us to go. If I had gone when first invited then I wouldn't have been writing this article now
Anyway, in early 1998 we flew to Zurich and I found myself with about 150 pigs to judge. You may have noticed my 'show report' in "Cavies" magazine in spring 1998. The show went well and I was pleased with the very nice 5-8 month Himalayan which I had given Best in Show to. It was getting cooler and darker at the end of the day and there were just a few 'unstandardised' (mostly, frankly, pets) to end the day. Up came what at first sight was a self black. I turned it over to reveal a tan belly!!! Bells started ringing. After finishing judging I asked the owner (who had just won Best in Show with the Himalayan - whew) if the blacktan, a boar, was fertile? "Well, its father is" she said. She had two of them! The original one she had found in a pet shop near the German border. Had she not spotted it in the pet shop, or not bothered to buy it, or not bothered to try showing it, or had I not judged that particular show it would probably have been missed.
I explained to the Swiss fanciers just how important this development was and we started to plan the way forward. They use UK Standards for their judging so it was in their interest to get the breed to the UK and into our 'system' as soon as possible. So we did a deal. They would build up the numbers to the point where there were enough for us to arrange for importation into the UK. We would pay the cost of the importation, get them breeding in the UK and plan to give them a launch at Bradford Championship in January 2000. Also, we did not want the 'secret' to get out early in case there were any problems along the way. We didn't want to excite people and then disappoint them. So the Swiss agreed to not show any visitors what they had until the deed was done. We would like to thank them for all their help along the way. It was an 'eventful' 2 1/2 years since that fateful day. (The Days are included on our BT 'Friends and Family' list!).
The first job was to get them breeding in Switzerland though. Based on my mouse experience I advised them to put the boars mostly with selfs, since the tan gene in mice is 'dominant' over 'self', so you get tans in the first generation. But most importantly to get them breeding.
By late 1998 we had worked out that if the gene behaved exactly the same as in mice or rabbits then theoretically we should be able to produce 'Silver Foxes' from tans. I suggested this to John when phoning him starting to make arrangements for the importation visit and he said "Oh, yes, we've got them already!". So the paperwork was set in motion for the importation of four black tans and five silver foxes as foundation breeding stock. The wait seemed interminable but at the end of May 1999 the UK Ministry vet gave us the OK and they were finally and legally ours. The foxes were a bit older and better developed than the tans so the foxes were immediately paired up.
71 days later the UK's first fox boar was born - a Lilac! And in the next four days we had two more litters - two black (known as Silver in the other two fancies) fox sows a black fox boar and a Chocolate fox sow. So, we now had some stock to show at Bradford Champ for the 'launch', but more importantly they were clearly vigorous and fertile.
The next job was to decide on a 'naming' system for our records. After 20 years in the fancy ordinary human names were starting to run out. Our son pointed out that Black and Tan was a drink and so we decided to name them all after drinks. We acquired a list of cocktails and a large drinks dictionary from a cheap bookshop and the first name leapt out at us. The Lilac Fox became Freddy Fudpucker (yes, that's the name of a cocktail!) and the ChocFox was Cocoa. We later added Daiquiri, Drambuie, Guinness and many others.
The rest, as they say, is history. They were now breeding well and numbers are growing steadily. Before setting off to Doncaster2000 for the launch in January we had a quick count up and we had a total of 22 tans and 13 foxes. We were able to enter seven for the show and I think that it would be fair to say that they were well received by those who saw them.
We got them out to other fanciers as quickly as possible. The nice thing with them was that you only need one tan boar (and a couple of Self black sows) to get a stud started. Then it's up to the breeder, selecting for tan and trying not to lose the type contributed by the self mothers. They are required to have a tan eye circle and tan 'ticking' along the flanks, plus a rich tan belly.
Foxes were a bit slower in being distributed because (a) we had less of them and (b) they were not so easy/simple to produce by means of an 'outcross'. The relationship of the fox to the tan is the same as the relationship of the Silver Agouti to the Golden Agouti. It is the same pig apart from carrying a double dose of the recessive gene which removes all red pigment from the coat. So whilst for the tan you will get quick results using a self black sow, the corresponding 'outcross' for the fox is the 'dilute' (i.e. poor self black) which comes out of Silver Agouti breeding and obviously they are not to be found in sales pens. You have to get a Silver Agouti breeder to provide you with them via agouti breeding) and these are not commonly available or identifiable. So the best way forward if you want to breed foxes is to buy a trio from a breeder who already has them established.
For anyone interested in their genetics I will keep it `short and sweet`. Agouti (A) is dominant over Tan (at) which is dominant over Self (a). So an agouti marked pig can `carry` tan or self, and a tan can `carry` self, but a self cannot `carry` tan or agouti. And if you have a tan (or fox of course) you can `modify` the top colour from, say black to choc or lilac or beige in the same way as you would for selfs. That`s it! Exactly the same as in mice or rabbits.
I have always been blessed with serendipity. The dictionary defines it as 'the art of accidentally happening on interesting things', (or something like that). It started in my school When we all went off to France on a school exchange visit, my classmates spent their visits the Paris suburbs but my exchange family took me off to visit 'granny' who lived in Monaco!
My two years National Service took me through the USA and Hawaii into the centre of the Pacific Ocean for the H-bomb tests. A change of job, from meteorology to chemistry then took me Unexpectedly into a position which led me to travel all over the world, from South Korea, Paraguay, Poland and Cuba to Haiti, Pakistan and Peru, seeing the most incredible sights and experiencing cultures I could have only dreamed of as a boy. But serendipity has also worked for in other areas than just travel and this article is about one such occasion.
When Gill and I joined the Cavy Fancy from the mouse fancy about twenty five years ago we were struck by a number of differences between the two fancies. The mouse fancy had a single controlling organisation (the National Mouse Club) which covered rules, show regs, standards, etc.
They also had their judging system split into five 'sections' : Selfs, Tans, Marked, Satins (which we had introduced) and AOVs each of which brought a single 'candidate' up for Best in Show. No referee judges needed here!). Now there were no Tans in the Cavy Fancy and that seemed to a serious 'gap'. After all mice had them, so did rabbits and even dogs (Doberman, dachshund, Rottweiller, etc) so why shouldn't we?
So twenty five years ago we started to search. I got in touch with a contact in the research field to see if he knew of any in UK laboratory stock however this didn't yield anything worthwhile. Through him I obtained a copy of the world listing of laboratory stocks of known genes in all laboratory animals. (I swapped a copy of my mouse hardback book to obtain this list). Sadly, after scouring the listings with a magnifying glass it was clear that there did not appear to be any examples of the black tan gene in cavies anywhere in the world.
So, back to the drawing board. If they didn't exist then the only way to get them was for a spontaneous mutation to occur and for someone to recognise the importance and to propagate it. Because one thing that was certain. This is not a case of 'mixing' up existing genes and arriving at new combination. What we were needing was a new gene (new to the Cavy Fancy that is) which as known in other species but which did not so far exist in the cavy.
My various old friends in the mouse fancy knew of our lack of the Black tan gene and the ongoing search. After all, they had had Tans since the 1920's. About seventeen years ago we got a call from an old mouse fancier who, although no longer active was still keeping a range of fancy animals - mice, rats, cavies, etc. "Hallo Tony - I think that I have found your missing Tans for you" said Mike Foley "Come up and take a look. I've got chocolate tans and beige tans!". He was living in the wilds of Cambridgeshire. So I took a days leave off work and we trekked up there to see if he could deliver
I have to say that on first sight they did look promising. Perhaps we had in fact found ShangriLa. One slight problem was that his pigs were all 'free range' and whilst he knew who the mothers were the boar was a bit more problematical. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we came away from Cambridgeshire with three or four 'tans' and set about trying to breed some more. Sadly, as they grew up it became apparent that these were not in fact tans (which have a self top colour) but were simply pink eyed agouties ("argentes") of rather mixed origin. The pink eyed effect had 'brightened' the belly colour to the point where it grabbed attention. As they grew on the top colour gradually became agouti-like and was quite clearly not the single self colour that we were seeking. We bred them for a couple of generations in the hope that the tan bellies could be transferred onto selfs but it was all a red herring. Off to the pet shop with them all.
So, once again it was back to the drawing board. Every new town we visited over the next fifteen years or so involved a sniff round the pet shops in the hope of finding a tan (or a perfect Tortie and White). Always a dead end. But we knew that sooner or later the mutation would occur. If only a fancier was in the right place at the right time. And this is where serendipity kicked in. Older fanciers will know John and Isobel Day, now living in Switzerland. John was a former NCC General Secretary. Some ten years ago John phoned me and asked if I would like to go over there judging. I pointed out that at that time I wasn't on any judging panels and said no. A year later John called again and this time managed to persuade us to go. If I had gone when first invited then I wouldn't have been writing this article now
Anyway, in early 1998 we flew to Zurich and I found myself with about 150 pigs to judge. You may have noticed my 'show report' in "Cavies" magazine in spring 1998. The show went well and I was pleased with the very nice 5-8 month Himalayan which I had given Best in Show to. It was getting cooler and darker at the end of the day and there were just a few 'unstandardised' (mostly, frankly, pets) to end the day. Up came what at first sight was a self black. I turned it over to reveal a tan belly!!! Bells started ringing. After finishing judging I asked the owner (who had just won Best in Show with the Himalayan - whew) if the blacktan, a boar, was fertile? "Well, its father is" she said. She had two of them! The original one she had found in a pet shop near the German border. Had she not spotted it in the pet shop, or not bothered to buy it, or not bothered to try showing it, or had I not judged that particular show it would probably have been missed.
I explained to the Swiss fanciers just how important this development was and we started to plan the way forward. They use UK Standards for their judging so it was in their interest to get the breed to the UK and into our 'system' as soon as possible. So we did a deal. They would build up the numbers to the point where there were enough for us to arrange for importation into the UK. We would pay the cost of the importation, get them breeding in the UK and plan to give them a launch at Bradford Championship in January 2000. Also, we did not want the 'secret' to get out early in case there were any problems along the way. We didn't want to excite people and then disappoint them. So the Swiss agreed to not show any visitors what they had until the deed was done. We would like to thank them for all their help along the way. It was an 'eventful' 2 1/2 years since that fateful day. (The Days are included on our BT 'Friends and Family' list!).
The first job was to get them breeding in Switzerland though. Based on my mouse experience I advised them to put the boars mostly with selfs, since the tan gene in mice is 'dominant' over 'self', so you get tans in the first generation. But most importantly to get them breeding.
By late 1998 we had worked out that if the gene behaved exactly the same as in mice or rabbits then theoretically we should be able to produce 'Silver Foxes' from tans. I suggested this to John when phoning him starting to make arrangements for the importation visit and he said "Oh, yes, we've got them already!". So the paperwork was set in motion for the importation of four black tans and five silver foxes as foundation breeding stock. The wait seemed interminable but at the end of May 1999 the UK Ministry vet gave us the OK and they were finally and legally ours. The foxes were a bit older and better developed than the tans so the foxes were immediately paired up.
71 days later the UK's first fox boar was born - a Lilac! And in the next four days we had two more litters - two black (known as Silver in the other two fancies) fox sows a black fox boar and a Chocolate fox sow. So, we now had some stock to show at Bradford Champ for the 'launch', but more importantly they were clearly vigorous and fertile.
The next job was to decide on a 'naming' system for our records. After 20 years in the fancy ordinary human names were starting to run out. Our son pointed out that Black and Tan was a drink and so we decided to name them all after drinks. We acquired a list of cocktails and a large drinks dictionary from a cheap bookshop and the first name leapt out at us. The Lilac Fox became Freddy Fudpucker (yes, that's the name of a cocktail!) and the ChocFox was Cocoa. We later added Daiquiri, Drambuie, Guinness and many others.
The rest, as they say, is history. They were now breeding well and numbers are growing steadily. Before setting off to Doncaster2000 for the launch in January we had a quick count up and we had a total of 22 tans and 13 foxes. We were able to enter seven for the show and I think that it would be fair to say that they were well received by those who saw them.
We got them out to other fanciers as quickly as possible. The nice thing with them was that you only need one tan boar (and a couple of Self black sows) to get a stud started. Then it's up to the breeder, selecting for tan and trying not to lose the type contributed by the self mothers. They are required to have a tan eye circle and tan 'ticking' along the flanks, plus a rich tan belly.
Foxes were a bit slower in being distributed because (a) we had less of them and (b) they were not so easy/simple to produce by means of an 'outcross'. The relationship of the fox to the tan is the same as the relationship of the Silver Agouti to the Golden Agouti. It is the same pig apart from carrying a double dose of the recessive gene which removes all red pigment from the coat. So whilst for the tan you will get quick results using a self black sow, the corresponding 'outcross' for the fox is the 'dilute' (i.e. poor self black) which comes out of Silver Agouti breeding and obviously they are not to be found in sales pens. You have to get a Silver Agouti breeder to provide you with them via agouti breeding) and these are not commonly available or identifiable. So the best way forward if you want to breed foxes is to buy a trio from a breeder who already has them established.
For anyone interested in their genetics I will keep it `short and sweet`. Agouti (A) is dominant over Tan (at) which is dominant over Self (a). So an agouti marked pig can `carry` tan or self, and a tan can `carry` self, but a self cannot `carry` tan or agouti. And if you have a tan (or fox of course) you can `modify` the top colour from, say black to choc or lilac or beige in the same way as you would for selfs. That`s it! Exactly the same as in mice or rabbits.
