RE: [AlpacaTalk] getting grey
Hi Susan,
You have a really good question here! First off…we’d better define gray. Are you looking for a maroon with silver in the coat in a roaning pattern, or a tuxedo gray on a fawn or silver base? Are you looking for a silver gray? Are you really looking for a solid pale cloud gray? Are you defining gray to include the coffee color animals with black points that have white, black and brown fibers interspersed evenly throughout the blanket? In my suris I have a pale silver animal with peachy colored spots and he’s also classed as a rose gray--appy. And, furthermore, the appy animals seem to have some link to grays too. Look at the Condor line in suris to see that in action.
One of the problems that I see in breeding for all of the “ gray” is that we define it as so many different things!
I love silver gray animals that appear to be dusted in cinnamon, I am equally fond of the tuxedo rose grays on a silver or fawn ground---and I love the maroon tuxedo animals with some roaning in the coat---but they are just not all the same thing and any of them could be called “rose gray” by our industry.
To add more complexity to this mix, it does appear that all these colors and patterns do have some genetic closeness. If we breed to one of the “rose gray appys”…we can get a regular rose or silver gray. When we breed fawn to black or gray we often get rose gray or “maroon rose gray” or some other gray family variant.
What is being done here to class different types of gray and rose gray is a start in finding out how to breed for it. Certainly fawn/silver gray and black have some interrelationship, but I’m not sure quite what it is.
There must be a lot of work in progress to discern the different color and dilution patterns and define the relationship between the colors and patterns.
I’m hoping for more discussion as there is so much to learn.
Allison
Allison E. Moss-Fritch
New Moon Alpacas
350 Cloquallum Rd.
Elma, WA 98541
360 861-8584
From: AlpacaTalk@yahoogro
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 1:18 AM
To: AlpacaTalk@yahoogro
Subject: Re: [AlpacaTalk] getting grey
I was wondering if there are any rules or hints you have as to how to get a gray? For example - I have a burgundy tuxedo - should I breed her to a silver gray, rose gray or dark silver gray? What type of gray should I breed to a black female to increase the chance of getting gray?
Gray Obsessed
(Susan Olson)
Alpaca Loco
Riverside, CA
posted by Chaddo at 9:31 PM
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