Alpaca Journal

By Mike Safley

The fiber from a species can be identified by its properties of scale height, frequency, and length. The photo below depicts eight different fibers; animal, plant, and man-made. It is easy to picture why coarse wool itches and why alpaca of identical micron has a softer hand than fine wool. Cashmere fiber's cuticles are less frequent making it more like suri, and silk is smooth and lustrous. The photo omits two fibers of great interest to alpaca breeders; suri and vicuña.

Two Australian farming families have again produced the world's finest wool - fibre so delicate it is almost invisible to the naked eye.

The 93kg bale has been bought by Italian luxury fashion house Loro Piana for more than $232,000.

The southern NSW farms, the Wilsons and the Walkers, equalled their own world record of 11.8 microns they recorded last year. Read more.

By Mike Safley

Alpacas come in many colors; on occasion, too many colors.  Dark-colored fleeces with the occasional light-colored fiber spread throughout the blanket have one color too many.  White fleeces, with the odd fawn or black fiber hidden among the white ones, are equally at fault.  The subject of color definitions, roan, grey, and multies is a hot potato tossed between the show rules committee, judges, the AOBA Board, show management, and exhibitors.  If alpaca breeders do not discriminate against solid colored alpacas with the occasional off-color fiber in their fleece, the problem could haunt them for sometime. In my opinion males that lack uniformly colored fleeces should not be herd sires.  Read more

Related Links:

• Breeding for Color

By Mike Safley

         Alpacas Magazine recently published a series of articles on the subject of Crimp.  I first wrote; The Case for Crimp and Eric Hoffman responded with an article entitled; Curvative:  Is it crimp or something else?  Crimp vs Crinkle is my response to Eric's article.  If you are interested in the subject of crimp in huacayas I think you will find this article enlightening.  Read the entire article

Related Links:

• The Case for Crimp

• Measuring Fiber Curvature:  Key Issues

• The Role of Crimp in the Textile Process

By Francis Rainsford

            Francis Rainsford is the president of the International Alpaca Association which is headquartered in Arequipa, Peru. This article, which is also found in the Spring, 2005 issue of “Wild Fibers Magazine”, opens with the following ominous warning about the quality of Peruvian alpaca clip:

“Mounting concern is being expressed in Peru over the steady increase of coarser alpaca fibre (31 microns+) whilst the production of finer, and more commercial, qualities (20 to 26 microns) is diminishing by comparison. Further, the coarser qualities are noted for more kemp and general hairiness giving them an unattractive comfort factor for apparel.” Click here to read the entire article.

By V.E. Fish
From "Wool Technology and Sheep Breeding. 2002 50(4)"

The capability of instruments such as SIROLAN-LASERSCAN™ (LASERSCAN) and OFDA100 to provide measurements of fibre curvature has resulted in increased interest, within Australia among wool producers and exporters, and among overseas top-makers and spinners.  However, the metrology of fibre curvature measurement by these instruments is poorly understood.  Standardized conditions for preparation, and measurement procedures that stabilize the curvature of the wool fibres prior to measurement by either instrument, are yet to be defined.

Based on its strong association with crimp frequency, wool fibre curvature measurement holds promise as a specification, which can be used to add value to wool in production, trading and processing…

Read More

By B. A. McGregor

Bruce McGregor's article about the effect of nutrition on crimp length and fiber diameter in cashmere goats could well be applicable to alpacas.  The basic conclusion is that increased nutrition results in high fiber diameter, less crimp and longer fiber. He also suggests that cashmere producers may be well served to include crimp measurements in their fiber classing system.

Read the entire article

Influence of Nutrition, fiber diameter and fiber length on fiber curvature of cashmere by McGregor

The above link has been provided with permission from CSIRO and may not be reproduced in any format without further permission from CSIRO.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajar
http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajea

Related links:

• The Case for Crimp
• Sources of Variation in Fiber Diameter Attributes
• Fiber Testing Technology

By M. Antonini, M. Gonzales and A. Valbonesi

The authors did field research into into follicular development in young llamas and alpacas.
The authors found that alpacas developed much higher follicular density than llamas.
Males and females, for all breeds, exhibited similar secondary to primary fiber ratios and skin densities.
Llamas seemed to attain their maximum scores at a later date than alpacas and the author found that unfavorable
environmental conditions could negatively effect maximum expression of follicular density.

Read the complete article here.Relationship between age and postnatal skin follicular development.pdf

The above link has been provided with permission from CSIRO and may not be reproduced in any format without further permission from CSIRO.

http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajar

http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajea

Related links:

• Correlations of Subjective Fleece Traits
• Fiber Testing Technology
• Incorporating Assessed Style, Length and Strength into Breeding Objectives for Fine and Superfine Merino Flocks
• How Reliable is Skin Based Assessment

By N.R. Adams and P.B. Cronjie

Are fine fibered alpacas smaller and do they cut less weight than high fleece weight, coarser animals? Do finer animals experience less micron blow out as they age? Is fineness correlated with higher follicular density in the skin and smaller animals?

Don Julio Barreda's B-Line (fine) Accoyo's are 20% finer, 20% smaller and cut 20% less fleece weight. It would seem that finer alpacas are smaller and cut less fleece.

Adams and Cronje take an in-depth look at all of these issues as they affect Merino sheep in Australia. Here are some of their conclusions.

The genes influencing the diameter of the wool fiber are unlikely to directly affect either liveweight or reproduction. Instead, effects on metabolism in finer wool sheep are likely to come about through concomitant increases in follicle density or in relative fiber length. Further effects on fleece weight or fatness may come about through selection for other characteristics associated with fine wool, such as reduced “blowout” response of fiber diameter to nutrition.

Finer wool genotypes tend to have a lower fleece weight, but this does not result in more amino acids being portioned to growth and reproduction. Rather, liveweight is also normally lower in finer wool sheep, and often the proportion of fat in the body is reduced.

Alpaca breeders can learn a lot by studying research on other fiber bearing animals.

Read the entire article. A Review of the Biology Adams.pdf

Related links:

• Sources of Variation in Fiber Diameter Attributes
• Methods for Measuring Microns
• How Reliable is Skin-Based Assessment of Wool Production
• The Case for Crimp

By P. L. Hynd¹, R. W. Ponzoni² and J. A. Hill¹

This is a fascinating article about the relationship between skin traits and economically important fleece traits. Alpaca breeders who are taking skin biopsies and making selection decisions based on the secondary to primary fiber ratios and follicular density should read the entire article.

The authors found, contrary to popular opinion in the alpaca industry that follicular density in the skin does not necessarily correlate with higher fleece weights. For those of you who do not want to read the entire study, here is it’s conclusion.

The increases in genetic progress towards the breeding objective, which were conveyed by addition of some skin traits, while not spectacular, were of sufficient magnitude to suggest they may be usefully incorporated into some Merino selection programs, particularly those in which selected sires are likely to be used over a large number of ewes. The extra benefit obtained by including the skin traits was greater than that reported by other workers (Skerritt 1995; Purvis and Swan 1997). This may reflect differences in the genetic parameters established for the different strains and flocks (Tables 1 and 2), differences in the skin traits used, or both. For instance in the Finewool sheep the genetic correlation between follicle density and clean fleece weight was only 0.13 (Purvis and Swan 1997) whereas in the Strongwool sheep in our study the genetic correlation between density and fleece weight was 0.54. This may reflect real differences in the association between these characters in the two strains but may also reflect the fact that density was measured by two different methods in the two trials. However, in none of the selection exercises conducted to date using skin traits as selection criteria has there been evidence of spectacular increases in the rate of progress towards the breeding objective of increased fleece weight and decreased fibre diameter. Our results point to moderate additional gains but do not support suggestions that selection for skin traits will result in large changes in fleece quantity and quality. Note that this could be due to the specific sub-set of skin traits measured to date. It remains to be seen whether consideration of criteria based on the efficiency of fibre production at the follicle level, or on fibre composition, will result in more substantial increases in the efficiency of identification of superior wool producing genotypes.

Click here to read the entire article.

Related Links:

• What are EPDs?
• Methods for Measuring Microns
• Fiber Testing Technology
• The Case For Crimp
• The Studmaster Fleece Report
• Incorporating Assessed Style, Length, and Strength into Breeding Objectives for Fine and Superfine Merino Flocks
• Sources of Variations in Fibre Diameter Attributes of Australian alpacas and Implications for Fleece Evaluation and Animal Selection

by Sandra J. Welsman

The Australian Sheep Genetics System paper surveyed the current and historical status of the various sheep selection systems that are available to wool producers.  This is an extensive 57 page summary of what genetic selection systems are available to breeders.  Anyone interested in learning about Best Linear Unbiased Prediction (BLUP) will want to read this paper. The paper also speaks to across herd genetic improvement programs. The Table of Contents for the paper follows.

4 GENETICS SERVICES AND COMPATIBILITY

4.1 A range of genetics service providers

4.1.1 LAMBPLAN – Meat and Livestock Australia

a. Goals, markets and customers

b. Breeding – vision and results

c. Products, services, market response

4.1.2 Advanced Breeding Services – NSW Agriculture

a. Goals, breeding vision, products, markets

b. Industry Wether Trials – Bloodline comparisons

c. Merino Benchmark: across-stud

4.1.3 CSIRO – Select Breeding Services and databanks

4.1.4 Central Test Sire Evaluation - Merino

a. CTSE information and database

4.1.5 Other quantitative genetics service providers

a. Agriculture Western Australia

b. Natural Resources & Environment, Victoria

c. Mackinnon Project – University of Melbourne

d. SARDI

e. Independent consultants

4.1.6 Soft Rolling Skins and Elite Wool systems

a. Assessment: ‘elite wool’ methods in the marketplace

4.1.7 Professional sheep classers and stud advisors

4.1.8 Practical services – laboratories, scanners

4.2 Current services: methods and compatibility

4.2.1 Summary of sheep genetics data collections

4.2.2 Enterprises, pedigree, accuracy, links

4.2.3 Traits recorded, measurement and data integrity

4.2.4 Data collection, delivery, processing

4.2.5 Preparing BVs, indexes, comparisons, reports

Abbreviations and Glossary

To read this summary click here.

INTERNATIONAL WOOL TEXTILE ORGANIZATIONTECHNOLOGY & STANDARDS COMMITTEE

By V. E. Fish, T. J. Mahar & B. J. Crook

University of New England

Armidale, NSW, Australia

This is a long, highly technical review of the current situation concerning the measurement of fiber curvature. Based on its strong association with crimp frequency, wool fiber curvature measurement holds promise as a further specification, which can be used to add value to wool in production, trading and processing.

The authors make the point that curvature/crimp is important to textile manufactures and note that synthetic fiber manufactures add crimp to their inherently straight fibers and filaments to improve the bulk density of their textile products. For wool, staple crimp frequency has been a means of quantifying the bulk density of wool for many years. Subsequently, more direct measurements of bulk density were developed – Resistance to Compression (RC) measurement in Australia and South America, and the Bulk measurement in New Zealand.

The article speaks to the benefits of crimp in finished goods and its relationship to handle.

Staple Crimp Frequency has been shown to be related to wool production and the performance of wool in processing and in determining the quality of the wool textile products, e.g. tops, yarns and fabrics. Swan found that a reduced crimp frequency was associated with higher fleece weight, i.e. a genetic correlation of -0.21. A number of researchers have reported variously on the beneficial effects of low crimp frequency compared to high crimp frequency on processing performance to top (lower fiber entanglement, longer Hauteur) and on top quality (lower nep counts). Similarly, a low crimp frequency has been associated with improved spinning performance and higher yarn quality in research trials in both South Africa and Australia. Yarns produced from wools of low crimp frequency were spun with fewer ends-down and were stronger and more even than equivalent yarns from high crimp frequency wools. Similar processing benefits have been reported for wools with low RC compared to wools with high RC values.

It should be noted that when wool processors refer to highly crimped wools they are discussing 22 – 32 crimps per inch, however crimp in fine Merino is 12 – 14 crimps per inch. (See: Ideal Alpacas from Myth to Reality.) Highly crimped alpaca fiber is rarely more that 10 crimps per inch. For soft handling, highly crimped alpaca is ideal while a moderately crimped sheep’s’ wool is desirable.

I warn you; this is a long technical article. For those of you who want to get to the bottom line here are the conclusions.

Based on its strong association with Crimp Frequency, wool Fibre Curvature is a measurement that has potential to add value to wool from its production through the processing chain to a finished wool fabric.

Fibre Curvature is less stable than other comparable raw wool characteristics such as Mean Fibre Diameter, Staple Length and Staple Strength. Despite this apparent instability, Fibre Curvature measurements have demonstrated strong agreement between the two commercial instruments, LASERSCAN and OFDA.

Prior to any standardization of Fibre Curvature measurement using either the LASERSCAN or OFDA instruments, work is required to determine appropriate calibration, sampling, preparation and testing procedures. It is hoped that the procedures currently in place for the measurement of diameter (IWTO- 12-98 and IWTO-47-98) will require little or no modification in order to accommodate Fibre Curvature measurement. However, until an adequate definition of equilibrium conditions necessary to stabilize the "inherent" or '"as is" Fibre Curvature prior to measurement is developed, there can be no certainty that this will be the case.

Until this work is completed, the use of the Fibre Curvature measurements provided by both instruments should be approached with caution.  Click here to read more.

Related Links:

• Methods for Measuring Microns
• The Case for Crimp
• Fiber Testing Technology

This series of articles and responses focuses on the debate between Australian sheep breeders regarding Jim Watts' Soft Rolling Skin Selection System.  This debate is relevant to alpaca breeders who are focusing on the virtue of selecting for alpacas with high follicular density skin.

The fundamental issue is whether selecting for high follicular density and high secondary to primary fiber ratios will create alpacas that are both fine and dense, or are these characteristics adversarial.  I wrote about these ideas in Ideal Alpacas from Myth to Reality.

The articles are from 1995, but the debate is still going on in Australia.

Click Here to read the articles.

This article discusses blow out of micron as it relates to an alpaca’s age. The amount of micron blow out correlates fairly closely when two year old measurements are taken and not as closely when measurements are used from younger animals. The article goes on to discuss micron count as it relates to color. The main findings on mean fiber diameter were:

• mean fiber diameter increased to 7.5 years of age

• correlation between the mean fiber diameter at ages 1.5 and 2 years of age with the mean fiber diameter at older ages are much higher than correlation made at younger ages

• fiber diameter blow out (increase with age) is highly correlated with the actual mean fiber diameter at ages of 1 year and older

• farm management (origin) affected mean fiber diameter

• there were important interactions between origin and year and origin and shearing age

• the effect of breed varied with live weight

• there was no effect of sex

• white fleeces were finer than fleeces classified as dark

The main findings on coefficient of variation of mean fiber diameter were:

• CV(D) declined rapidly between birth and 2 years of age reaching minima at about 4 years of age and then increasing

• CV(D) measurements on young animals were very poor predictors of CV(D) at older ages

• Suris had a higher CV(D) than Huacayas on most properties

• mean fiber diameter, live weight and sex did not affect CV(D)

• darker fleeces had higher CV(D) than whiter fleeces in two of the four years

Click here to read the article.

Original Publisher- http://www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajar

Related Links:

• Micron Madness

Many of you may have heard about the soft rolling skin (SRS) selection system advocated by Dr. Jim Watts. This article takes a negative view of SRS wool. The Italian spinners that were interviewed said that the staple was too long for efficient processing.

A great site that contains a little of everything on the status of sheep breeding research. I want to warn you that the site contains 98 pages and many abstracts, so only dedicated researchers should click on this link. Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics

Only abstracts are available at this site, but most appear as short papers of 4 pages (longer for keynote papers) in the printed proceedings: so if something takes your interest, continue to information on ordering copies.

This list of definitions clearly describes the terms used by alpaca breeders and fiber processors to discuss fleece measurements.  Understanding these terms will help us analyze fleece reports, histograms and textile terms.

Click here to read the article.

Related Links:

• Methods for Measuring Microns
• Crying Over Spilt Onions

Animal breeders make many of their selection decisions based on subjective type traits. Examples of this in alpacas include leg coverage, crimp in Huacaya, lock style in Suris, face wool, bone density, size and so on.

In this article about South African sheep breeders, geneticists analyzed whether the subjective traits such as softness of face, crimp and “creeping belly” were linked to objectively measured, economically important traits.  They discovered that crimp was related to fineness but that selecting against creeping belly also selected against fineness and crimp.

As alpaca breeders we need to spend more time studying the subjective traits that we rely on in our selection programs.  This article, while it is about sheep, can help us understand the importance of these decisions.

Click here to read Correlations of Subjective Fleece Traits with Production and Reproduction in Arfino Sheep.

Related links:

• The Case for Crimp
• What Makes a Champion?

Dr. Sumar presented his paper at the second annual Alpaca Western Extravaganza (AWE) in Redmond, Oregon on May 17, 2004. Julio had spent the previous two days judging the alpaca show, and on Sunday, he gave an oral presentation as part of the Gold of the Andes Seminar which was also taught by Maggie Krieger (Canada), Alonso Burgos (Peru), Jude Anderson (Australia), Luis Chavez (Peru), Angus McColl (Scotland/Denver), and Mike Safley (USA). His talk focused on the genetic and environmental contributions to the championship alpaca.

His observations on the importance of crimp and staple length are particularly interesting. He began his description on the importance of crimp by saying that he had recently read an alpaca book which said, “Crimp is not important.” This, he said with a smile, made him a “little crazy” because it was not true! Dr. Sumar went on to explain that staple length was the trait most affected by diet in alpacas.

The materials contained in What Makes a Champion are well worth studying by anyone endeavoring to create ideal alpacas. The Alpaca-Journal wants to thank Dr. Sumar for his kind permission to present his article to alpaca breeders worldwide.

Click here to read more.

RELATED LINKS:

• The Role of Crimp in the Textile Industry
• Spilt Onions

This is a must read for breeders who want to make accurate color selection decisions. Study this article and create the colored cria of your dreams.

Today, in a casual but lively discussion with Cameron Holt, conducted during breaks in the less lively 2004 Australian Open Tennis Final, I confronted my own confusion regarding terminology that we apply to the feral fibres that we are all trying so hard to eliminate from our fleeces. You know, the ones that cause prickle factor, the ones we hear judges rail against as “medullated fibres”, the ones we learnt about in skin histology as “primary fibres”, the ones dismissively cast out with the skirtings as “guard hair.” All the same, right? Wrong!

Click here to read more.

RELATED LINKS:

• What Makes a Champion?
• The Role of Crimp in the Textile Process

I attended the 2004 AOBA/ARI Fiber to Fashion convention in Reno, Nevada. The curriculum allowed attendees to explore the alpaca fiber commercialization process. The speakers included the internationally recognized experts such as Louis Chavez of Peru and Angus McColl who was originally from Scotland and more recently of Yokum and McColl Testing Laboratories of Denver, Colorado.

I have worked extensively with Angus McColl over the years. In 1992, he helped alpaca breeders to begin testing their alpaca fleeces for micron count, standard deviation and co-efficient of variation. This test is in universal use today.

As the president of ARI, I retained Yokum and McColl Laboratories to test all the imported alpacas that were screened beginning in 1994. We set fiber standards that were an important part of the basis for admitting previously unregistered alpacas into the alpaca registry. Angus had the following comment about those standards, during his lecture in Reno, “The ARI fleece standards that we used to screen the imports were primarily responsible for insuring that the best of the available animals in South America were imported into the United States.” More recently I have worked with Angus to develop a new fleece report that we call the Studmaster™ Report. This measures ten separate values: Mean Fiber Diameter (MFD), Standard Deviation (SD), Co-efficient of Variation (C of V) of Fiber Diameter, Spin Fineness, Fibers greater than 30 microns, Mean Staple Length (MSL), Length Standard Deviation (LSD), Co-efficient of Variation of Staple Length, Curvature, and Medullation (on light colored fleeces.)

Click here to read more.

RELATED LINKS:

• Methods for Measuring Microns
• Studmaster Males
• What are EPD's?
• Micron Madness

Once alpaca fleece is in the bag, what is it worth? The textile manufacturer could not care less whether the fleece available for sale came from a prize winning stud or the herd's ugly duckling. Understanding what qualities the buyer desires most is the key to getting maximum value from alpaca fiber production.

All natural fiber falls into one of two categories, carpet or apparel. Carpet is coarse, apparel is fine. Apparel fiber is more scarce than carpet fiber and sells for considerably more money per unit of measurement on the international market.

Click here to read more.