Alpaca Journal - February, 2004

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Creating a Breeding Program

Friday, February 20, 2004

The Studmaster Fleece Report

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.)

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Monday, February 16, 2004

Breed Standards

A Standard of Excellence

Alpaca breeders who are truly interested in creating a useful set of breed standards should enjoy reading a piece written by Thomas Shaw more than 100 years ago. Shaw begins by saying:

"It is absolutely impossible to attain marked success in breeding domestic animals without breeding them to a certain standard. The man who makes the attempt to do so is like the mariner who sails the seas without a compass. He, himself, cannot tell whither he is drifting. He is playing at what may be termed a game of chance."

The article is written in an unfamiliar prose style and takes some patient reading. But, his discussion of Standards for Purebreds, The Makers of Standards, Advanced Registration, Fancy Points and Receiving Benefits from Standards are worth the effort.

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Saturday, February 14, 2004

Breed Standards

Our Future: Alpaca Breed Standards or Flip of the Coin?

The industry is making steady progress on breed standards. Only last year the old Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, Inc. (AOBA) Board of Directors forced through an ill-advised by-law change that declared that there would be no alpaca breed standards established without two-thirds of the AOBA membership voting in favor of the proposed standard. As it turns out the Colorado Appeals court decided that the old Board of Directors had acted in a manner that was contrary to the Colorado statutes for non-profit corporations. The court reversed the Board of Directors’ actions. The issue, of breed standards, is now back in play and the industry has some decisions to make.

The debate took a considerable step forward at the 2004 AOBA/ARI Fiber to Fashion Conference in Reno, Nevada. Curt Gedney, an ARI board member, organized a presentation on breed standards for the conference attendees. The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. David Ames of Colorado State University. The panel included Dr. John Edwards, Vice President of Express Ranch; the second largest supplier of cattle genetics in the United States; Zane Akins who spent thirteen years as the CEO of American Holstein Association; and Dr. Phil Sponenberg who serves as technical coordinator for the American Livestock Breeds Conservatory.

Dr. Ames began the evening by suggesting that the alpaca industry had the opportunity to create their vision of an ideal alpaca in the form of written standards, goals or guidelines.

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