There are many many excellent elite blacks out there. Some people, so
called "experts," will tell you that you do need to breed your good
blacks to fawns and whites to improve the black. I beg to differ. And I
point to Alpacas de la Patagonia as proof. And if you have blacks, but
not good or great blacks, but "starter" blacks, just breed them to
elite greys, maroons, and of course, blacks.
I lucked out and got an older true black Bolivian import who had 21.2µ
at 3.5 years. She doesn't produce black reliably, unfortunately, but
all of her crias are excellent no matter the color, even her light fawn
crias. So far she has never produced a white, though, so that's
something! :)
She produced a black male cria this year (with white boots and face!)
and his crimp is fabulous. I can't tell about fineness yet, it could be
that he's just so dense and crimpy that it's fooling my fingers as to
the micron. I took a snippet of his fleece and visually it compares
well with my elite fleeced (less than 20µ) lighter colored animals, and
the smaller staples also feel as fine compared to a similar sized
staple of lighter colored fleece, I've got my fingers crossed!
Her light fawn cria from last year has gorgeous fleece. The sire is a
MB/ID/MRG Silas son. His dam is black with a grey sire and grandsire,
and Silas was white. So I hope my little light fawn girl can produce
black or grey if bred to black or grey (or rose grey).
So anyway, that's my short advice. Breed your blacks to the best greys
and blacks, and maroons that you can afford. And then to browns if
those other colors aren't within your budget.
And do look at the pedigree. If you have a very dark pedigree, the odds
of getting a dark cria increase. With my Bolivian import, I have no
ancestors to see, so there's no way to predict what she'll throw!
Heather
Heather Zeleny
White Lotus Alpacas
(formerly West Wind Alpacas)
Eugene, OR
541.895.0964
Holistic Farm and Elite Fleece
http://www.alpacanation.com/whitelotus.asp
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AlpacaTalk/join
On Aug 11, 2008, at 8:11 PM, mmttocher wrote:
> Hi all - I am new to breeding and so have been reading up a bit. Does
> anyone want to share their thoughts on breeding black alpacas with
> me? The finest and most dense fleeces are on whites so does that mean
> any breeding program aiming at producing fine dense fleeced blacks
> have to include whites in the program?
> Thanks
> Mandy
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