Charting Herd Improvement
The slides below are from our 2019 EPD testing results. They provide a glimpse of how EPD’s can be used for mating selection and tracking the overall herd improvement.
These graphs chart our progress for our entire herd of about 50 Huacaya alpacas. Our herd is about 50% male & 50% female and range in age from 1 year to over 20 years old.
Each of the red squares represents an animal in our herd and also corresponds with the year it was born along with the EPD trait value.
It wasn't until we started using EPD's that we were able to properly identify pairings that would reduce fiber diameter and increase fleece weight.
When breeding for finer fleece, fleece weight predictions should always be taken into account.
Improving SD in alpacas has proven to more highly heritable than originally thought. (52%... same as AFD)
Improving SD provides the user with a stronger fiber that acts and feels much finer.
These are fibers that are generally referred to as guard hair. The purpose of tracking this trait is to track progress on how fine the coarsest fibers are.
Medulation can be reduced by proper breeding and also by reducing fiber diameter.
High curvature will negatively or adversly affect staple measurement as compared to low curve.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Holding your mouse over the slides should pause the sequence. Use arrows to navigate forward or back.