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Across Herd Genetic Improvement
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There are four general industry prerequisites for rapid, breed-wide alpaca improvement.
- 1.Breeding objectives: There needs to be agreement on breed standards, which are, focused primarily on heritable, commercial traits for both suri and huacaya alpacas.
- Performance evaluation: There needs to be a central record keeping system established that measures and records performance for specific commercial fleece characteristics. The records will form the basis for establishing heritability estimates for specific characteristics and estimated progeny differences Estimated Progeny Differences (EPDs) for specific animals.
- Breeding systems: There needs to be mating systems established that maximize the rate of genetic gain in a predetermined direction.
- Pedigree records: Clear, accurate records of ancestors should be recorded and available. (This is not always a precondition.)
It is the alpacas turn on the world's stage. They have long suffered the indignities of Peru's Spanish conquers. It is time for their redemption from five centuries of purgatory, inflicted on them by the Spanish colonists. Alpaca breeders, world wide, need to make it their passion to place alpacas at the top of the livestock pinnacle. The alpaca deserves to be returned to the glory bestowed on them by the Incan civilization when their 16-micron fleece was the coin of the realm. It is in our own self-interest to do all we can to reestablish their glory.
As alpacas expand into livestock markets around the world, breeders from the lesser markets are going to seek superior stock from the larger markets. Here in the U.S., as our market for seed stock matures, new and existing breeders are going to seek--and pay for--quality animals and they will discount the value of primitive and unimproved animals. There is a maxim in the pure breed livestock market: Quality animals sell for more money, more often.
The breeders, who hold out quality as a goal, set standards, and produce alpacas with ideal commercial characteristics, are going to make more money. The alpacas in demand worldwide will be those with high breeding value. We only need to look at Julio Barreda's Accoyo brand to understand the truth of this statement. Accoyo is currently the only alpaca herd that is universally recognized as elite. To buy that elite seed stock, breeders from around the world fly to Peru, travel to Macusani at 16,500 feet above sea level, and then they cross swollen rivers to reach Accoyo. More than one-half of Accoyo's total income each year comes from the sale of stud males.
The breeders who follow a proven system of genetic improvement are going to win the race to the top of the pyramid. The most immediate benefit to these breeders will be their ability to sell herdsire quality males and thereby double their cash flow from animal sales.
There are four basic genetic prerequisites for rapid breed improvement: 1) genetic variability, 2) selection intensity, 3) selection accuracy, and 4) generational interval. Genetic variation is extremely important to the rate of gain. The more variation for a particular trait in a population, the more potential there is for change. If breeders have a wide variety of animals to choose fromsuch as those with high or low fleece weightsthey can select alpacas with very different traits and breed for those traits. If those animals have high breeding value for the trait, improvement in the herd will be rapid.
Selection accuracy is important if any improvement or gain is to be made. This means the traits you select for must be heritable. Accuracy says that we have the ability to separate superior and inferior animals. If you select for a heritable characteristic, such as fleece weight, you must identify superior stud males who historically have produced offspring with higher than average fleece weights to insure the trait is passed to the offspring. The same goes for fineness, crimp, staple length, etc.
Breeders should also understand that selection accuracy costs time and money. The cost to progeny test 10 dairy bulls runs into the tens of thousands of dollars. Fleece histograms for alpacas are expensive. And finally, selection accuracy can cost you the time it takes to assess the animals selected as breeding stock and as Dr. Dorian Garrick, of Colorado State University says, "Genes don't get better with age."
Selection intensity means being highly selective of the progeny produced by the high-quality parents you have chosen for foundation stock, and retaining in your herd only the offspring that exhibit a superior expression of the heritable qualities for which you are selecting. This ensures that breeding values will remain high and that each generation of offspring should improve: The higher the selection intensity, the higher the rate of genetic gain.
Generational interval affects the rate of genetic change simply because the more rapidly one generation replaces the previous one, the faster the potential gain. Mice reproduce more quickly than humans, producing 150 generations in the time it takes humans to produce one. (This makes it much easier to effect change in mice than in humans. And improving people is also a problem because there is very little culling undertaken.)
Generational interval is determined by the average age of the producing males and females in a given herd. Alpacas have a generation interval of four to six years for females and approximately five years for males, although this interval will vary from herd to herd; the shorter the interval the faster the gain.
To construct an improvement model that allows each of these principles to work efficiently with our current industry organization, there should be a large group of alpacas sharing performance records and genetics, and this group must be owned by a community of breeders with common objectives. While it might be unrealistic for one ranch to have enough animals of its own to create rapid improvement it is not unrealistic for us to do it together.
Across-herd or large-scale genetic evaluation can range from the assessment of large herds, to the assessment of nucleus herds, or even entire breeds. Large-scale evaluation in the instance of a reference sire system requires cooperating farms and individuals.
For cooperating breeders, the purpose of large-scale genetic evaluation is not complicated: They simply want to compare the performance of animals in different herds. Why is this important? Suppose an alpaca breeder has what he or she believes is the best stud male in the world. Without a method of comparing this male's performance to that of other males in other herds, the owner can never know the objective truth of their belief. Across-herd or large-scale genetic evaluation allows the truth of excellence to be proven and then shared with other members of the nucleus. Almost as important as the Estimated Progeny Differences (EPDs) of excellent sires is the identification of underperforming animals. The value of being able to cull inferior genotypes cannot be overestimated.
Across-herd evaluation provides an honest way to assess an animal's potential, and this creates the opportunity for rapid genetic gain. The process of evaluating individual alpacas through direct comparison with alpacas in different herds enables cooperating breeders to more accurately select from a more genetically diverse, yet increasingly improved, gene pool.
Richard Bourdon makes the value of large scale evaluation clear. "Just as it is easier to field quality athletic teams at a big school than at a small school because the big school has more athletes to choose from," Bourdon writes, "so it is easier to find truly outstanding breeding animals in a large population than in a small one."
When a group of cooperating breeders shares records by using a central database, they create for themselves an enormous advantage. They control for their collective benefit many times the information of a single breeder. In the animal breeding business, this information is the key to success. When across-herd data is gathered, the accuracy of prediction increases by the sheer volume of the information available. The EPDs, for the various sires and bloodlines, can be readily and accurately established.
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