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.

As 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.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.

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.

The most interesting discovery we have made is that both our grey herd sires – Winsaula Malahide and Winsaula Joker – carry the classic grey gene, with the bonus that they both carry one of only two genotypes associated with black alpacas.

Joker is genotype Ee aa with a medium silver grey phenotype; Malahide is EE aa with a phenotype of light silver grey. We were excited to learn that the two capital EE’s in Malahide’s genotype mean that he is unlikely to produce light offspring as he does not carry an MC1R allele, and regardless of phenotypic colour all his offspring will cover black.

Joker carries just one MC1R allele, denoted by the little e. So far Joker has produced black and dark silver grey cria. But he has also produced white when mated to a female carrying the least ideal genotype pairing for a colour outcome. With an understanding of how genotyping works, we can plan his mating’s more accurately to achieve grey or coloured cria.

Our BAS National Modern Grey Champion, Winsaula Suited and Booted’s genotype is also EE aa although there is no test yet to identify modern grey. Suits, standing at stud at Lopham Alpacas, has no white in his genotype which would be denoted by A. This suggests there are other genetics at play producing the white fibres in his black fleece and we are looking forward to research on the modern grey test being completed.

Interestingly, statistics from Snowmass Alpacas in the United States (US) suggests that 86% of bay black alpacas are Ee aa like Joker and the remaining 14% are EE aa like Malahide. There are roughly 217 bay black alpacas listed on the BAS UK registry, and if we apply the stats ratio from the US it suggests only 31 bay black alpacas in the UK are EE aa.

The data from Snowmass Alpacas presents a ratio 48% EE aa to 52% Ee aa in true black alpacas. If we apply the same ratio to the true black Suri’s on the UK registry, only 30 of 70 are EE aa suggesting just 21% of black Suri alpacas have the full EE aa black genotype. Breeding silver grey is very closely linked with breeding black alpacas and we find the seemingly low occurrence of this EE aa genotype hugely interesting.

By comparison three of our higher quality light fawn females tested as ee aa. This aligns with the data produced by Snowmass in that 59% of their light fawns were found to carry this genotype. We wanted our three light fawns to produce darker colours however as each one of them has two copies of the MC1R allele they can’t produce darker colours unless they are bred to an EE or Ee sire.

The outcome of this knowledge was a beautiful black cria from one of our best fawn females who had previously produced a multiple Supreme Champion light female. In hindsight, and with the benefit of genotyping knowledge, we now know the previous genotype pairing was unlikely to produce the colours we aspired to produce, but as she won two Supreme Championships, we are certainly not complaining!

In our herd about 35% of our animals do not carry a copy of a dilution mutation of the MC1R gene. That is their genotype is EE and we are expecting this ratio to rise when our latest test results come in. We are finding our alpacas without the dilution mutation particularly useful because we are able to breed them to white or light animals with diverse bloodlines and/or diverse fleece traits to improve the overall quality of our herd.

For more information on coat colour genotyping at Snowmass see The American Alpaca Journal January 2022, Alpaca Coat Colour Genotyping: Review and Preview at www.snowmassalpacas.com/american-alpaca-journal For Neogen UK email: JShennan@neogen.com