BREEDING
BREEDING FOR COLOUR
Paula Winsor, Winsaula Alpacas, shares some of her findings on alpaca genotyping, a coat colour test she describes as groundbreaking for her herd breeding programme.
A
s a breeder with a fondness for breeding coloured Suri, in particular silver grey, we were very excited when Neogen released their coat colour genotyping test as it gives us a science based test to determine if our alpacas are genetically grey, rather than a perception based on coat colour or phenotype.
Access to this knowledge is groundbreaking for us, however we quickly realised that genotyping results provide us with far more valuable information beyond whether our alpacas are grey.
Malahide
There is an assumption that alpaca genotyping is only useful for grey breeders. However, we find we are able to provide a far better service to customers as they will often describe the colours they would like to produce – usually with the target colour being grey. But with 75% of grey to solid mating’s resulting in other colours being produced there is more to consider. With colour genotyping information, we can provide advice with far more certainty as to the types of colours a dam and sire are likely to produce when mated and recommend which stud to use over our dams depending on the desired outcome.
