Alpaca Journal

By Mike Safley

Warren Buffet, the world’s richest and most famous investor, said, "My favorite time frame for holding a stock is forever." Mr Buffet was talking about financial stocks but his thoughts are similar to mine when I consider my investment in alpaca livestock.

Click here to read entire article.

By Mike Safley

Summer is fading and year-end is looming. Uncle Sam is looking forward to taking a big slice of your income for 2004. Northwest Alpacas is a patriotic institution and we agree with Uncle Sam on most things. But, when it comes to taxes we are of the persuasion that less is better. We like to see our favorite Uncle on a diet. Especially when it comes to our alpaca income.

Click here to read entire article.

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

By D. Andrew Merriwether, Ph.D., and Ann M. Merriwether, Ph.D.

Much controversy and secrecy revolves around discussion and use of blue-eyed-white alpacas (BEWs) in breeding programs.  Blue-eyed white alpacas are all-white alpacas, with blue eyes, which are often (but not always) deaf.  Recently some alpaca farmers have suggested that the BEWs should not be used for breeding so this gene can be eliminated from the American alpaca gene pool. This suggestion reflects some of the misinformation that surrounds the issue of BEWs.

This article will discuss the genetics of BEWs. What we know about the genetics, given the paucity of reliable breeding data on the subject, is limited because some farms don’t acknowledge if their herdsire or dam has ever thrown a BEW, and relatively few BEWs are actually ARI registered (an when registered they are registered as white not BEW). Read more.

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.