Our Breeding Program Philosophy Explained

Our alpaca business has been a very enjoyable experience so far and we expect that to continue. We are also very serious about the breeding program we have established through the purchase of quality females and quality breedings. This year we had a male cria from El Nino's Michelangelo and Legacy's Charisma.  In 2008 we expect crias from NWA LTD Goldsmith, El Nino's Michelangelo, Snowmass Peruvian Casanova, Snowmass Incan Emperor and our own Accoyo America Genesis which we purchased this year (2007) at the Parade of Champions. In 2008, Crescent Moon has offered us a breeding to Legacy due to our purchase of Vahevala. For those of you who aren't in the business, Legacy is 1/2 owned by Crescent Moon Ranch in Terrebonne, Oregon, they sold the other 1/2 interest to Virginia Alpaca Farm & Breeding Co. for $750,000.00. Making him the highest selling animal to date. We will breed our full accoyo Julieta (currently bred to Michelangelo) to Legacy for a 2009 cria (hopefully a boy). You can view images of our alpacas under the ALPACAS menu item and under ALBUMS (both are works in progress).  You can also visit our animals on AlpacaNation.

Our breeding program is more than just purchasing expensive breedings from top notch herdsires. We have only done this as a seed for our program. Next year, Genesis will be a cornerstone in our breeding program. This means we will breed him to at least 3 to 4 of our females every year. We hope that the breedings we have purchased will result in one or 2 extremely high quality males so that we can keep 'generating' our own diversity. For now, we will only be offering outside breedings to our males in their first year of service and only to a few select farms.  Genesis' sire is Hemingway and his DAM is a full accoyo Caligula daughter.

Hemingway is known for his fineness over a long period of time and Genesis doesn't dissappoint. His 3 year fleece stats are extremely good. Looking deeper at his skin biopsy, Genesis also has a 12.5/1 SP ratio, only 6um separating his primary fibers (guard) from his secondary fibers, good density, and very low medulation (YOCOM).

Our breeding decisions are based on the following 'rules':

1. Never compromise 2nd year AFD
2. Never compromise density
3. Never compromise SP ratio
4. Male should have 4"+ staple unless any item above is extremely better than the DAM.
5. Track qualities of each animal that differ.
6. We will test a male with extreme fiber qualities over perfect conformation especially if we
    know both the Sire and DAM of the male are perfect conformationally.

Given the above 'rules', lets examine the breeding to Charisma:

Charisma 2nd year stats are: 20.10   4.10    20.50    98.30
Genesis 3rd year stats are:   20.80   3.90    18.80    97.90

Given known inaccuracies in the testing, you can see that these animals are equals when it comes to the fleece criteria.

Charisma  SP  12/1
Genesis SP     12.5/1

Given known inaccuracies in the testing, you can see that these animals are equals when it comes to the fleece criteria. Also note that the average SP ratio 8.5/1.

Charisma  follicles/mm  50.23
Genesis follicles/mm   51.5

Given known inaccuracies in the testing, you can see that these animals are equals when it comes to the fleece criteria. Also note that the average density is ~38 f/mm.

Genesis is on pace to have 4.5 inches of growth this year. We like to think that if an animal can do that in our environment, it only gets better in colder areas.

Charisma has an ~16um difference in her primary and secondary fiber diameters.
Genesis has an ~6um difference in his primary and secondary fiber diameters.

This is one characetristic we will track on the resulting cria.

Neither animal has conformation issues to speak of.

We are taking a small chance on this breeding because Charisma has a white spot. We don't know if Genesis carries the white spot gene but if we assume he does, we can expect (at the worst case and assuming no other dominate genetic tendencies)  a 25% chance that the cria will be a blue eyed white alpaca.

To summerize why we elected to pair these animals, you can see that in most cases we are 'maintaining' fleece qualities that are already much better that the average animal in the US. We also wanted to combine 3 of the top herdsires to ever enter this country in a very short pedigree namely, Heminway, Legacy, and Caligula.

Also note that rules 1,2,3 will almost always pass with an animal such as Genesis unless we have an extremely dense female. Therefore, you can see that for the most part we will be looking to cross Genesis with females having higher levels of luster and different crimp styles. In our program (currently), color is secondary to all fleece qualities.