Winter - Classical Mileend Alpacas

Not all breeders will be looking for the same
thing in their stud males. American breeder
and author Mike Safl ey has this to say
about selection; ‘The art of the selection process is
subjective. What do you, as a breeder, want your
herdsire to refl ect in his offspring? A certain colour,
maybe heavy bone or a particular head shape. Do
you want large or small alpacas? Fibre quality is
extremely important, but can also be subjective.
How does it feel or “handle”? Is fi neness more
important than volume?’
You may be breeding for the show ring, for
commercial fl eece production, for particularly
attractive animals that will be sold as ‘pets’ or
to produce the very best animals in the UK of a
particular colour such as black or fawn.
So the fi rst decision the breeder has to make is
to decide what their breeding objectives are and
secondly to look at their females realistically and
try to work out what quality of stud male would
set them on the road to meeting those objectives.
It is worth bearing in mind that we are talking
animal breeding here and that alpacas, unlike fruit
fl ies, do not do anything in a hurry. You may well
not achieve your objectives in one generation, it
is far more sensible to take the long view. This
will involve ‘breeding up’ and probably using a
succession of males to eventually reach your goal.
It will take time but there is the satisfaction of
knowing that you did it ‘your way’.
The only way to assess a stud male’s genotype
is to test the progeny. Mike Safl ey explains on
his Northwest Alpacas website; ‘The genetically
correct way to select alpacas with high breeding
value is by progeny testing. This involves using
a selection index to evaluate a stud’s offspring
for important traits, such as fl eece fi neness and
density. This means not just evaluating the stud’s
outstanding cria; either all of the offspring, or a
random sample large enough to ensure accuracy,
must be measured. To be accurate, progeny
testing must be done in an environmentally neutral
manner. This means that all the cria examined must
have been raised in similar circumstances with
similar feed and care.
By way of example, alpaca shows have a
Progeny class where three offspring are shown
together, hopefully representing the male’s
production capacity. As a breeder looking
to purchase a replacement male, would you
rather base your buying decision on the three
offspring that the exhibitor brought to the show
or a complete survey of the cria from the stud’s
production? Believe me, the large sample is
superior. The second approach to progeny testing,
which is more complex, is to use the dam’s
statistics to create an index that measures how
much a sire improves the cria over the dam.
Analysing just the male’s progeny is easier, and
testing all the offspring, or a representative random
sample, of a particular male creates a high degree
of selection accuracy for breeding values.’
Many breeders will not have enough cria on the
ground to do such large scale testing, but if there
Alpaca World Magazine Autumn 2004/05 11