Alpacas 101 Continuing Education

More Alpaca Facts On

• birthing
• birthing kit
• feeding
• BVDV
• body scoring
• stomach diagram
• blue eyes
• registries ARI & CLAA
• pastures
• toxic plants list
• fiber sorting & grading
• Purchasing your first Alpacas
• fleece parts diagram
• micron grading chart
  
  
  

Alpaca Birthing

Purchasing Your First Alpaca

Ok now you have decided to join the alpaca world...congratulations!

The biggest thing alpacas have to teach us is patience nothing happens quickly with them and when you go to purchase them you should also take your time. Do research and when you think you have done enough do twice as much as you though was enough and your half way there.

You should also educate your self to fibre, bloodlines, conformation, health, birthing, feeding and maintenance of the alpacas. Visit as many farms as you can go to a show and maybe help out on shearing day at a local farm. Try and find a mentor to help you and teach you preferably some that doesn't have an alpaca to sell you.

Shearing

Fiber sorting & Grading

This topic is probably the most important topic if we are at all interested in having a viable fiber industry in North America.

Why are we raising alpacas?

For the fiber?

What makes alpaca so much better than the other fibers that are on the market?

When we put alpaca forward to the public it must be superior to the other products on the market. I believe we are putting alpaca forward as a cashmere soft, durable, odorless, lightweight, garment, which is comfortable warm but never too hot product. That said every time a consumer feels alpaca products which doesn't fit this description we are damaging our industry. It is up to each of us interested in a sustainable industry to work towards producing the best natural fiber on the market today. Now for the farmers only interested in breeding and selling stock they need to take heed of this as well because if we do not have sustainability everyone looses in the end.

The best time to do your sorting is on shearing day. You need to put quite a lot of thought into your system and how the flow of fiber from the alpaca to the finished sorted fiber bag will work best. Draw out a map to make sure you are being efficient and the risk of contamination is minimal.

Micron Groups

To sort fiber properly it should be within two microns each other. The criteria is color, micron, length of fiber, longs and shorts need to be in it's own bag.

Each fleece will most likely have longs and shorts, so for each color you will need two bags for each of the fiber grades, grading one to six, so you now have 12 bags for each color.
Please note you may combined colors just decide which colors your are going to have.
There ere are twenty two natural colors but most likely you will decide to mix some of your colors. You will of course want to keep your whites and black separate unless you want gray. I sort my colors as; white, light fawn, brown, black, gray and rose gray.

6 colors X 12 = 72 separate bags. Each bag should be numbered one through to six marked for color, shorts or longs and grade, one being Royal Baby up to Strong. See micron chart for grading standards.

Canadian Standard Lengths

Is important that your lengths are not mixed as the longer fibers will have ends sticking out of the yarn as it wears. Your beautiful socks in no time will look like fuzzy dust bunnies. Also they can make the yarn feel more prickly than it really is. You don't want your yarn to shed either.

Mark your sorting table with the lengths for easy reference. Don't throw away the under two inch lengths you can have it made into battings for making quilts or stuffing pillows.

You should also check for soundness of fiber. You can tell if the fiber weak or tender by holding a small staple between your thumb and index finger grasp the other end with your other hand hold tightly and flick the center with your middle finger, if it brakes it is tender.

Dated Oct. 1, 2004.
Attached, FYI, is the new Canadian Alpaca Fibre Harvesting Code of Practice. The Code of Practice is meant to be used as a guide for the Shearing process and for submitting fibre to CANCAM.
Please note the changes in Huacaya short and long fibre lengths for 2005. Huacaya short: 2-4 inches; Huacaya long: 4-6 inches. These changes came about as a result of discussions with Cameron Holt at the Sorter/Classier Workshops. The changes in the length parameters will hopefully help to alleviate the current shedding problems we are having with some of our products e.g. socks, felt, etc.

Area's of Fleece

In the sorting process it is much easier to separate the different areas of the fleece as it comes off the alpaca. You can use cardboard pop flats marked with the different area's in which to collect the fleece as it comes off the alpaca.

1. Blanket
2. Britch
3. Neck
4. Middle or upper leg
5. Lower leg
6. Belly

You might have quite a few of these flats and they can be stack on top of each other if the shearer gets ahead of your sorting. Have record sheets ready which you can fill out and put on top of the fleece in each flat. Many people (guilty of this my self before I knew better) just snatch up the fleece and put it in a clear plastic bag perhaps keeping the blanket separate marked with the animals name and grading it as first's and seconds, this is not sorting!

To have a good finished produce you can not by-pass the sorting and grading process which in it's self is almost an art form, none the less, I suggest you either take a good course or hire a qualified expert to do the grading for you. To sort properly you must be able to asses the fiber micron and put it in the proper sorting bag. The only fiber you should be throwing away is perhaps the very dirty and extremely contaminated fleece like the but and the birds nest at the base of the neck , if you don't have a use for it perhaps someone else does.

Understanding Fiber Histograms

Breeding for Fiber

Mostly it is genetics. It is important to understand fiber growth to help you make good breeding choices for each fiber type. In Australia they are making leaps and bounds in recovering from their disastrous sheep breeding programs, quantity over quality. The alpaca world should keep a close eye on their industry and learn from their mistakes and successes. Just recently the news of an ultra fine merino fleece braking the twelve micron barrier with a micron count of 11.9 was huge news for the natural fiber industry!

Blue Eyes Alpacas

Alpacas come in all kinds of eye colors from black to light blue just like in humans. To say that all blued alpacas carry the deafness gene is purely silly. Some blue eyed whites have been found in a very few cases to be deaf. At one time people were fighting over blued white alpacas and paying top dollar for them. Why because they had the finest fiber. And that is true today but there is an unreasonable paranoia over any alpaca with the smallest bit of blue in it's eye which I believe is harming the alpaca industry. To be an animal which carries the deafness gene there must be an absence of pigment which can be found anywhere on the body in the ear cannel or the toe nails or white patches on a dark alpaca but it is not the eye color that relates to the deafness gene. There just hasn't been enough research into this topic to draw any educated deductions, certainly no one can quote facts with out a scientific foundation.

Below are some exerts on the deafness gene and eye color which I believe to be intelligent and thoughtful from highly respected experts in the alpaca world.

Eric Hoffman writes in his book The Complete Book of Alpacas about blue eyes;
On page 518 he writes:
" The impact of blue eyes in breeding decisions is somewhat different. Different philosophies are possible on this one. An extreme philosophy would be to cull all of them from breeding. The opposite extreme is to ignore them and mate alpacas while ignoring their eye color. A middle route would be to avoid the mating of blue-eyed animals to one another. This middle-of- the-road approach is likely to mitigate any sub optimal baggage that the trait might have, simply because the breeder is avoiding the mating together of extreme animals. "

On page 515
'Lack of complete pigmentation of eye. Many different genetic causes, some with other associated defects (deafness) but many without such association. Not always a defect.'

Quotes from Dr. Anderson.
We have found that the fact that they have blue eyes actually has little to do with deafness other than the fact that it increases the likelihood that they are deaf if they have a white hair coat.

We have dispelled many myths:

1. blued eyed alpacas are always deaf - NOT true. We have tested many blue eyed but not white or only partially white animals that can hear.

2. Colored eyed alpacas can always hear. NOT true - we have tested some animals that are deaf but have colored eyes. Many have some flecks of blue or gray. Certainly most deaf animals have blue eyes, but some colored eyed animals are deaf.

3. If the skin is black they can hear no matter what the color of the eyes or hair. NOT true. Many of the deaf alpacas we have tested have black or darkly pigmented skin.

What we do know is that recessive color genes do seem linked to deafness - probably because the gene loci are close together on the DNA. Thus, if the color gene does not get turned on the hearing gene does not either. This is most closely tied to hair coat color, but is amplified when eye color is recessive too. Recessive colors are primarily grays with blue discoloration in eye. We have seen two gray studs where upwards of 20% of offspring have been deaf. This year we have 8 BEW females waiting to give birth. The first one born is white, has blue streaks in eye but dark pigmentation in over 50% of the eye, and is STONE COLD DEAF!.

At some point, someone needs to decide if deafness as a birth defect is actually worth researching and fund it! I do not care who researches it, but I do think that it needs to be done.

David E Anderson, DVM, MS, DACVS
Head and Associate Professor of Farm Animal Surgery
Director, International Camelid Initiative
Ohio State University

From a group e-mail at the Alpaca Chat Line.

The connection between blue eyes, white hair and deafness can be traced to the development of the neural crest in the embryo. The neural crest supplies cells, which develop into melanoblasts, which migrate ultimately to the base of the hair follicles as melanocytes, producing melanin, which lends color to the hair. If this migration is not complete, lack of pigment in all or some areas of the skin white or piebald) can occur. A similar lack of pigment in the eye can lead to blue-eyedness; a similar lack of nerve tissue supplied to the inner ear tissue or the degeneration of these tissues (in the cochlea and saccule) can lead to deafness, bilateral or unilateral, partial or total. All of these tissues are supplied by the neural crest, but some of these tissues are supplied by complex mechanisms in the embryo, so deafness, skin and eye color may be completely or partially lacking. This is the simplest explanation I can reconstruct, for those who are interested.

Dave Friedman

Registries Explained

ARI & CLAA Registries

The Alpaca Registry, Inc. (ARI), which is closely aligned with the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association (AOBA), is the organization that oversees registration of alpacas in the United States.
The Canadian Livestock Records Corp. (CLRC), in conjunction with the Canadian Llama and Alpaca Association (CLAA), handles all the registrations for alpacas in Canada.

At the end of 1998, both ARI and CLAA closed their registries to any new alpacas. No Alpaca can be registered with either the ARI or the CLAA unless both parents are already in the registry. Anyone can import alpacas into North American but they cannot be included in either registry.
Every alpaca in both registries is DNA blood typed for proof of parentage before the application for registration is approved. Registrations are not transferable between the two registries.
All the alpacas that were imported from Chile, Bolivia or Peru before the registries were closed had to be screened in order to be accepted by either registry. Any alpaca that did not pass screening was not allowed to be registered.

All alpacas had to be screened in their county of origin and then transported to Canada or the U.S. This rule was adopted as one of the earlier imports was not screened until the alpacas landed in Canada. Subsequently, some of the alpacas did not pass screening (mainly because their fiber was a bit coarse) and therefore we have a few unregistered alpacas in North America.
Each alpaca had to be screened separately by people working for U.S. importers and people working for Canadian importers. The same standards were used by both sets of screeners, however a fee was payable to each registry for every alpaca screened. The fee to be screened for entry into the ARI was $500 US per alpaca.

Some Canadian importers had their alpacas screened for entry into the Canadian registry but elected not to pay the fee to have their alpacas screened for entry into the ARI. At this time there was a reciprocal agreement on the table between Canada and U.S. and these importers were confident that their alpacas would be able to be registered with the ARI at a later date.
Consequently, the reciprocal agreement was not completed and these imported alpacas have never received entry into the ARI. You often hear these alpacas referred to as single-registered, whereas alpacas that were screened by both countries and received entry in to both registries are often referred to as double- or dual-registered.

It is also of interesting to note some Canadian importers intended to have their alpacas screened for entry into both registries but were not able to accomplish this before the closing of the registries on Dec. 31, 1998. Only alpacas that are registered with the ARI can be shown at AOBA-sponsored shows in the U.S. and only alpacas that are registered with the CLRC can be shown in CLAA-sponsored shows in Canada. Alpacas from either registry can be shown in International shows as well as all other local shows.

There is really no difference in the quality of the alpacas that are single- or double-registered. The majority of single- registered alpacas are offspring of alpacas that passed the same screening process as the double-registered alpacas. The real difference is the price. Double-registered alpacas sell for three or four times more than their single-registered counterparts.
For anyone wishing to raise alpacas mainly for the fiber, single-registered alpacas are a more cost effective way to go.

Alpaca Feeding

Alpaca are a ruminant, not a true ruminant because they have one stomach with three compartments but they chew their cud just like a cow. They need to have a low protein hay and pasture grass. Protein levels should be 8 to 10% for adult males, non pregnant and non lactating females. For pregnant females they need 12 to 14% protein for the first two trimesters and 12 to 14% for the last trimester and older weanlings (tues). Lactating females need 13 to 15% protein to produce adequate milk and not lose too much weight (see body scoring to access weight). They need to eat two% of their body weight each day to be healthy and be able to meet their reproductive needs. An average alpaca of 140 pounds would need to eat two pounds of hay per day. Because it is to hard to see what they are eating we feed free choice hay all the time. We use a dairy hay but test the hay for protein levels, nitrate and potassium levels to make sure it is suitable for our needs.

Besides hay and pasture alpacas need minerals which we give to them in a pellet made by our local feed mill which is designed by our vet and the feed company. It is designed for our soil conditions in our area and also contains grounded up grains mixed and compressed into pellets. We feed a cup a day per alpaca which seems not very much but if you over feed you might find your stock gets the runs from to much protein. More is not necessarily better in this case. In North American we tend to over feed if your alpacas have lose stools and you have checked for parasites have a look at your feeding program you might be over feeding. To ensure that every one gets a fair chance at getting their share of grain we have many little feeders all over the barn, it's like an easter egg hunt at feeding time everyone looking for the best place for grain but they settle down quickly and the grain is gone if five minutes.

Pasture is just as important and you should make sure there are no toxic plants in the fields. If you are planting a new pasture you should get the soil tested to see what you need to add to it. Also you should have a good variety of different grasses so there is grass growing through out the growing season. Alpacas are ideal small acreage's and You can keep between five to ten per acre.

Water is the last thing on my list and probably the most important. It must be clean and the containers should be clean out once a week and the water changed every a day to keep it fresh. In the summer we have many large containers spread out in the fields to make sure no one is going with out water. In the winter we take hot water out to the barn to heat up their water because if the water is to cold they may not drink enough. You should see them crowd around when we bring it out in the morning you'd think it was hot coffee.

To summarize alpacas need

• clean water from a clean source.
• free choice hay, protein levels checked.
• minerals.
• grain or pellets.
• good pastures free of toxic Plants.
  

*Remember to introduce any changes to the diet gradually over a period of a couple of weeks. This way the microbes in the gut have time to adjust to any feed changes.

Alpacas Health

What is Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus BVDV?

Cattle Health: Spotlight On Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus

Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus (BVDV) is a costly disease that affects cattle and other ruminants. The virus has many nasty effects, including fever, diarrhea, respiratory and reproductive disease, abortion, birth defects and death.

BVDV infections may be acute (intense, but short) or persistent--a characteristic that makes the virus particularly difficult to control. Cattle can develop persistent infections (PI) when exposed in utero within the first 125 days of gestation. Once born, they shed the virus, infecting other animals in the herd.

Alpacas can contract BVDV and in most cases can get over the virus as with most illnesses it is the immune weak alpacas that might become very ill and even die from the disease, the young, old or already weak animal.

We are most concerned with the Persistently Infected (PI) alpaca. Most alpacas born with BVDV will die with in a very short time if they make it to full term and are not aborted in utero. In a few cases the cria is born and seems normal and even grows up to become an adult but is a carrier of the virus and spreads it to others they come in contact with.

What can be done about BVDV?

This is were Bio-security comes in and why it is so important.

All alpacas new to the farm or that have been away from the farm must go into quarantine for three to four weeks.

All alpacas on the farm are tested for BVDV.

All newly purchased alpacas are blood tested as part of the conditions of sale. Even if the alpaca may pass the blood test it still needs to go into quarantine.

All alpacas coming to the farm must be tested for BVDV especially females with cria at foot come for breeding.

All cria born on our farm are tested for BVDV as a precaution.

A negative BVD test for a cria certifies that both the cria and the dam are not PI.

A healthy alpaca will eliminate the BVDV within a 2 to 3 weeks period of time.

A female needs to get only 1 negative test from any one of her crias to certify she is not PI (a test performed on her first cria can be presented as proof for herself for all her life).

f a PI cria is left in contact with other alpacas, it will cause abortions, diarrhea and births of other PI crias.  If a female PI cria was well enough to grow and reproduce herself, she would automatically give birth to PI crias

An alpaca will be declared PI only after 2 positive BVDV tests performed 3 weeks apart.

Tests for BVDV are relatively inexpensive as the blood is combined to a maximum of 15 alpacas so you are testing 15 at the cost of one test. So a herd of sixty alpacas will cost only three tests. Not a huge hardship for a bit of peace of mind.

Body Scoring

I think that one of the most important things we as breeders need to understand is body weight, that loss of weight can be early warning signs of possible health issues. In North America we have a tendency to over feed our animals because we care so much for them so I see more of a problem with over weight alpacas than underweight.

We need to have our alpacas at optimum weight for reproduction, breeding, fiber production and able to ward off illnesses. The easiest way to keep track of your alpacas condition is to record it's body score and don't be fooled by fleece coverage get your hands on the back bone at the withers put your thumb and index figure on either side of the bone and depending on how close or far apart your figures are is the score. Some people do a one to five score and others do a 1 to ten. One is thinnest and five is obese or using the one to ten scoring five being optimum. It is fast, easy and costs nothing.

Body Score Chart

Pastures

One of the most important thing about pastures is done in the planning stage.

Toxic Plants List