Breeding Season Molt at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

As with fox, mink, and chinchilla, nutria became an item for breeding season molt-stock promoters. In the early 1960's, however, the ballyhoo subsided and the raising of nutria settled down to a serious occupation. The advantage of farm-bred nutria, as with other ranched animals, is the ability to produce uniform colors and qualities which facilitate marketing. breeding season molt and Pelting.—The usual breeding season molt season for mink is early March, when the females enter their estrous cycle. Mink reach sexual maturity during the first year, at the age of about 10 months. There is only one breeding season molt season during the year. A widely practiced breeding season molt system is to mate each female twice at an interval of 7 to 10 days. An analysis of ranch data shows better production obtained from those animals mated twice.

The breeding season molt season for horses in the temperate regions is during the late winter, spring, and early summer; it is variable in the tropics. Most horse breeders do not use colts and fillies for breeding season molt service until they are four years old (horses reach physical maturity at about 5 years of age). Younger animals, although capable of reproduction at about two years of age or less, are still growing and are usually in training and competition.

Gulls fall into three natural subgeneric groups on the basis of their morphology and behavior. One large diverse group, the hooded gulls (sub-genus Xema), have black hoods during the breeding season but molt to mottled gray head feathering during the off season. The "primitive" hooded gulls include the laughing gull (L. atri-cilla) and Franklin's gull (L. pipixcan) of America and the sooty gull (L. hemprichi) of the northwestern Indian Ocean. Examples of the more advanced "masked" hooded gulls are the Old World and South American black-and-brown that no one has ever attempted them before.