Fleece Weights

When you look at an alpaca, do you see a nice animal with some fiber on the outside, or nice fiber with some animal inside? I am sure that most people who farm alpacas have them primarily because they like them as an animal. Nevertheless, we need to remember that the processor's interest is focused entirely on the animal's fiber as a raw material.

For the breeder in a fiber industry, quality fiber production per animal is the key to profitability, whereas for the processor it is the processing attributes of the fiber that determine its value. Both of these two different goals can often be met if the processor sends the producer the appropriate price signals, but this is not always the case. It is therefore important that some fiber attributes are not promoted to an extent that will ultimately work to the detriment of the alpaca industry.

My background is with beef cattle and sheep. I have regarded alpacas as basically another livestock option, and this has been reflected in the production-type research we have carried out on our alpacas at Tara Hills and Invermay. Our focus has not been on alpacas as adorable pets and cute show-ring exhibits. Of course, after researching alpacas for the past seven years, I became hooked and now have fifteen of my own. So much for my credibility!

Even so, I believe it is important that we don't lose sight of the role of alpacas as production animals and the product, fiber. The nonfiber characteristics affecting the productivity of an animal must also always be considered. It will be much more profitable for a producer to have an alpaca with an average fleece that produces a healthy cria each year than one with a top fleece and a poor reproductive record. Regardless of its fleece attributes, an alpaca with any serious physical defect or with an unsound reproductive history should have no breeding future. In South America another of its products is meat, but as long as we regard them as pets, there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of the Super Macpaca burger making the big time.

So if fiber is the important product we need to identify, the factors that influence its value to the producer are the most important. I use the term producer deliberately, because there is a danger that too much emphasis can be given to the value set by the processor. Here I draw on my experience in the sheep industry. Processors list attributes such as staple length, tensile strength, yield, fiber diameter, wool bulk, and color as being all-important. It doesn't matter to processors whether it takes two hundred or a thousand sheep to produce a ton of fiber because their interest is in acquiring a certain weight of fiber. On the other hand, for the sheep farmer the single most important trait influencing profitability is the weight of fiber produced per animal. It is this factor, more than any other, that determines whether a farmer stays in business.

We have the example in sheep of wool tensile strength. Processors insist that it is important, and farmers know that they can manipulate tensile strength by shearing in late winter before lambing. However, apart from obviously tender wool, there is no price premium related to tensile strength, and because prelamb shearing incurs an extra feed cost, this practice cannot be justified in relation to profitable wool production. So unless processors are prepared to pay a worthwhile premium for a particular fleece characteristic, one must question its importance.

What does this have to do with alpacas? Well, there seem to be many in the alpaca industry who are looking at fiber from the processor's, rather than the producer's, viewpoint. Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to fiber diameter. We are bombarded with information on microns, standard deviations, and coefficients of variation. Owners can display all this information in a histogram that can be pinned on the wall for all to admire. But what is the extra value to the producer in selecting for fineness?

show

Data presented by Bruce McGregor at the 1995 Australian Alpaca Association conference indicated that fiber averaging 27 microns was worth about 60 percent of fiber averaging 22 microns.

Some data from New Zealand research flocks located at Tara Hills and Flock House illustrate this point. Records from 193 adult female huacaya alpacas were used to compare three selection policies: selection of the top 10 percent on fleece weight, the finest 10 percent, and a flock unselected for fleece weight or fiber diameter. This would be typical of a stud situation where the top 10 percent were used as parents of replacement stud sires. The mean fleece weight was 4.2 pounds (1.9 kg), and the mean fiber diameter was 30.9 microns. These values were assumed for the unselected flock that is included as the baseline. The top 10 percent selected on fleece weight averaged 6.4 pounds (2.9 kg) and 33.2 microns--that is, they produced 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of fiber that was 2.3 microns coarser than the flock average. The top 10 percent selected for fineness averaged 3.1 pounds (1.4 kg) and 24.1 microns, so a reduction of 6.8 microns was associated with the loss of about 1.1 pounds (half a kilogram) of fiber. Thus, the difference between the top 10 percent on fleece weight and the best 10 percent on fineness was 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg) and 9.1 microns.

If we assume that 22-micron fiber is worth $9 a pound on the commodity market, the relative figures cited by McGregor suggest that 24-micron fiber would be worth $7.25 per pound, 26 microns would be worth $6.35 per pound, and 27 microns or coarser would be worth about $5.44 per pound. For this comparison let's also assume that 50 percent of the fleece is skirted. The unselected animals would return 4.2 pounds x 50 percent x $5.44 = $11.42. The top 10 percent on fleece weight would return 6.4 pounds x 50 percent x $5.44 = $17.41; and the best 10 percent on fineness would return 3.1 pounds x 50 percent x $7.25 = $11.24. In this scenario, selection for fleece weight increases returns by about 50 percent, whereas selection for fineness results in no increase in returns. The figures used have assumed that 24-micron fiber is worth 33 percent more per pound than fiber averaging 27 microns or more. In order for selection solely for low micron to break even with selection solely for fleece weight, 24-micron fiber would have to be worth 105 percent more per pound than 27-micron or coarser fiber.

Not all the difference between the selected 10 percent and the flock average is due to genetic factors, but as both fleece weight and fiber diameter are known to be highly inherited in other species, it can be assumed that good responses can be achieved by selecting for these traits in alpacas. The above example suggests that selection for low micron will not increase returns for producers. However, this assumed selection was carried out for a single trait. From our data, fleece weight and fiber diameter appear to have a positive correlation--that is, as fleece weight increases so does fiber diameter--but, fortunately, this relationship is quite weak. If we use an index that combines the benefits of fleece weight with the benefits of lower fiber diameter, making useful gains in both traits should still be possible.

Index selection will identify those individuals that have high merit for both traits. Although animals with finer fleeces tend to have lower fleece weights, an appropriate index that is weighted for each characteristic will ensure that only those individuals with a fine fleece and a high fleece weight are selected. This will not increase fleece weight as fast as selection solely for fleece weight, nor will it decrease fiber diameter as fast as selection solely for fiber diameter; but the net effect of increasing fleece weight and decreasing fiber diameter in tandem is likely to be the most profitable for the producer.

Furthermore, a breeding value can be assigned to each animal by including heritability and a dollar value for each pound of fiber and a dollar value for each micron change in fiber diameter. Thus, an animal that had a low fiber diameter but a below-average fleece weight would not be ranked as highly as one with a low fiber diameter and an above-average fleece weight. This method was used successfully in the New Zealand merino sheep industry to establish a flock of ultrafine merinos that maintained fleece weight and may have value in the alpaca industry as well.

It has become common practice to advertise studs as having a specific low micron count, implying that this is an indicator of their merit as sires. Our flock data show that in the absence of comparative fleece weight data, these micron values can be quite misleading. This same stud with the impressive low micron may be producing the lightest fleece in the flock!

The key to genetic improvement is to select from large numbers of animals. Breeders with large flocks have the scope to rank animals within their flocks and are able to use their top sires within their own flocks. This gives them the potential to make worthwhile genetic progress. Breeders with small flocks have insufficient animals to effectively assign genetic merit to individuals and a limited capacity to use their own sires because of inbreeding concerns. Because smaller flocks require a continual supply of sires bred outside the flock, they are, in practice, multipliers of the larger flocks' genetics. The most important decision smaller breeders make in the purchase of stud males is the choice of a large stud flock where the selection goals and procedures are consistent with their own objectives. An average male from a top stud will often be superior to a top male from a mediocre stud.

It is known that nutrition can have a profound effect on alpaca fiber. In a comparison between alpacas grazed on native pastures and those grazed on alfalfa in Peru, Allan Marshall demonstrated that adult and young alpaca grazed on alfalfa had heavier liveweights and produced heavier fleeces.

When alpaca research commenced at the Tara Hills High Country Research Station in the South Island of New Zealand in 1989, the expectation was that under better nutrition liveweights would increase, fleece weight would increase, and, based on experience with sheep, some coarsening of fiber would occur. The phenomenon of hunger-fineness is well known in merino sheep. It turned out that the apparent effects of nutrition on fiber diameter in alpacas were much greater than anticipated.

The 100 two-to-four-year-old research alpacas imported from Chile weighed 100 pounds (45 kg) when

Achieving High Fleece Weights--
The Key to Successful Fiber Production

George H. Davis, MS

Achieving High Fleece Weights-- The Key to Successful Fiber Production

George H. Davis, MS

Achieving High Fleece Weights--
The Key to Successful Fiber Production