Current state of sable breeding in Russia

Sable is a unique object of caged fur farming; its main product is valuable skin. Products made of sable skin are of very high quality and beautiful. Sable fur is almost weightless, silky, sparkling in the light, amazingly beautiful, and also very warm and durable. In 1931, work began at the Pushkin State Fur Farm to create a unique herd of valuable fur-bearing animals, which resulted in a sable with an almost black color, uniform throughout the body, significantly different in color from animals of commercial populations. Subsequently, it was introduced to other farms engaged in sable breeding, and was approved as the black sable breed. Currently, in the fur farms of our country, in addition to black sable, sables of the Saltykovskaya 1, Saltykovskaya silver and Pushkinsky amber breed type are bred. The selection work in the field of sable breeding in previous years was aimed at obtaining products that were uniform in color, which distinguished farm sable skins from the color variety of commercial sable skin. The current situation does not fully satisfy the requirements of the modern fur market. This paper presents the results of the study of the current state of sable breeding in Russia, as well as characteristics of the reproductive qualities of female sable of the Saltykovskaya 1 breed when they are mated with commercial males in order to obtain a more diverse range of pelt products