Alpaca Journal

If you want to create grey alpacas this article is your road map. This is the second in a series of articles by Elizabeth Paul that analyze the color pathways in alpacas.

One of the most interesting details in the article is the suggestion that black is a recessive allele of brown and black to black matings only produce about 50% black cria, the other half being brown.

Paul says that a mating with one grey parent will produce grey 33% of the time and that grey almost never occurs when mating red to red. She also comes to the following conclusions:

1. The results of the survey support the assumption that rosegrey alpacas are a form of brown and that silvergrey alpacas are a form of black fleece colours.
2. Crossing two grey alpacas had at least a 60% chance of producing grey progeny. Crossing a grey with a non-grey alpaca had approximately a 25% chance of producing grey progeny. Crossing two non-grey alpacas produced less than 5% grey progeny. (This study has not examined particular pedigrees. Non-grey alpacas with grey ancestors would be more likely to produce grey progeny themselves in the right mating.)
3. Crossing grey alpacas with white/coloured (non-grey) alpacas was more likely to produce solid colour or white progeny, than either grey or white/coloured progeny.

Click here to read more.

RELATED LINKS:

• Breeding for Color
• The Status of White and Red Alpacas in the Australian Herd
• Theory of Colour Inheritance in Alpacas