To the right is a photo of two satin Lunkarya shelties, bred by Lotta Lööf, West Wood Stud.
To the right is a photo of two satin Lunkarya shelties, bred by Lotta Lööf, West Wood Stud.
The Lunkarya is showed in Sweden, but this breed
is not included in the standards yet. This is
Aristoteles Binky,
one of my pet Lunkaryas, a young Lunkarya female.
She was so young when this photo was taken that she had
no curls yet.
Many people ask why I bothered to breed Lunkaryas since we
already have the Texel breed here in Sweden. But in
Sweden all Texels are always combed out so there are
no curls left, the fur of a Swedish Texel therefore
reminds a lot of a washing board.
And the fur of the Texel is very soft,
while the Lunkarya typically has a rough fur.
A Lunkarya that is thoroughly combed out will
always regain it's curls, since the fur is rough. I
combed all
my Lunkaryas
and they never lose their curls.
The Curly is a short haired Lunkarya. The gene that causes the Lunkarya and curly varieties are not known elsewhere in the cavy fancy, so it is totally new gene! The first animal was found in a pet shop some years ago in Stockholm, Sweden. The Lunkarya gene is a dominant gene (the Teddy and the Rex are recessive genes). A Curly animal looks like the Rex and the Teddy. The gene has been exported from Sweden to Finland, Denmark and Germany. From what I have been told there is a breeder in Germany that now is producing Lunkaryas. Here are two photos of a Curly, my pet Fnistan.
You can combine the Curly gene with all existing coat varieties, but the combination between the Peruvian and the Curly makes the most exciting looking cavy, that is what we call the Lunkarya. The coat is rough, long and curly...
The photo shows my lovely pet Lunkarya Aristoteles C.
When breeding you have not been able to only use the Lunkarya cavies that also are Peruvians, you had to use the Coronet Lunkarya and the Sheltie Lunkarya, even ordinary Peruvians, Coronets and Shelties. The reason for this is that there still just a few years ago was so few cavies of the Lunkarya breed... Now there are more Lunkaryas around, and in order to produce good quality animals with the correct rough fur you must only breed Lunkaryas to Lunkaryas.
To see more photos of Lunkaryas check out Eva's Old Pet Cavies!
A nice photo of my pet Lunkarya Aristoteles Danira.
One of my pet cavies - Fairy Tales Belladonna - is actually in the pedigree of my Lunkaryas. Belladonna was a coronet.
A photo of my first ever Lunkarya, Milky Way's Gitza. She is in the pedigree of all the Lunkaryas I've ever bred, and that is several :-)
Gitza was a lovely pet, and she had many, many lovely Lunkarya relatives that also were lovely pets.
I bred Lunkaryas for 7 years, and had 12 litters. All my Lunkarya females were mainly pets so I didn't want to mate them that much :-)
The photo below shows a litter of three at the age of 4 days. They are actually my pet Lunkarya Danira's second litter.
In the book "A New Owner's Guide To Guinea Pigs" written by Karen Bawoll you can see two photos of Lunkaryas.
On page 123 in the book there is a photo of Milky Way's Gitza. The text says it is a lilac and white Lunkarya, but that is not true, since Gitza was silver agouti and white. And I should know, she was my pet!
On page 138 in the book there is another photo of another Lunkarya.
Copyright Eva Johansson
Last update: 26th of February 2006.