ALPACAS: It’s all about the FIBER!

Part 2: Post-2008 Alpaca Breeding: Value correction and the road toward FOCUS ON FIBER!

Why did the Alpaca’s “Rare and Exotic” status continue for so long?

In 2003, when alpacas entered my life, there were estimated to be ~98,000 alpacas in the U.S. This is VERY FEW from a livestock perspective. Even still many people have never seen or heard of alpacas! To heighten their rarity even more alpacas are a “slow-growth” livestock, they are reproductively peculiar, to say the least.

Being “induced ovulators” (a trait shared only by felines!), female alpacas require the male to breed them in a most demonstrative manner. This causes them to ovulate during the breeding process! As a result, they can not be artificially inseminated. So, in order to breed, stud services became commonplace. Now female and male alpacas often travel long distances in order for the female to get impregnated. After all of that and a year of gestation, they would hopefully produce one offspring. This slow growth was one of the key reasons that the alpaca “boom” went on for as long as it did.

Although this was clearly an animal being bred to produce exquisite, luxurious fiber, the emphasis of the alpaca industry had been breeding and selling. Therefore, a viable market for alpaca fiber simply did not exist in the U.S. outside of a cottage industry. Processing was done through a small number of “mini-mills”* and public marketing of alpaca yarn and other alpaca fiber products were nearly non-existent. Believe it or not, for years many farms simply threw away the fiber after shearing, focusing instead on the big profits to be made from alpaca sales.

From Boom to Crash

Despite their slow reproductive growth, within about 10 years from the start of the alpaca market “boom”, mid-range alpacas had more than doubled in number. Fewer new farms were starting up and the logical conclusion occurred: supply exceeded demand.

During the next few years (~2007 – 2010) the value of the average female alpaca decreased by nearly 75% and males, who were not stud quality, became nearly unsellable! Numerous alpaca farms across the country lost much of their initial investment, cut their losses, and gave up their farms. Sad but necessary, this situation caused a number of changes in the once booming alpaca industry.

The unchecked breeding of low to average quality alpacas was slowed greatly, and at the same time the market for “pet alpacas” and “fiber alpacas” increased. Many large farms even culled low quality animals for end-product use (hides and meat). On a positive note, however, with this correction in price alpacas became an affordable livestock, and for the first time, a market that was focused on the alpacas’ fiber was emerging.

Breeding for IMPROVEMENT of Fiber Quality!

Up to this point, unchecked breeding practices for quantity over quality had caused a less than optimal improvement in the quality of alpaca fiber. Now, many serious breeders renewed their focus on breeding to improve FIBER QUALITY and BREEDING FOR EXCELLENT “SEED STOCK”. Sales and breeding of high-quality stock continued and the value of these alpacas remained high in the breeders marketplace. With the shift of focus from breeding for sales to breeding for fiber improvement, concentration on specific fiber characteristics became paramount.

The science behind alpaca breeding tells us what fiber characteristics are most important for the production of excellent fiber. What are the most important fiber characteristics, and why? How do we breed for more fiber that is soft next to the skin, and also for greater production, i.e. greater fiber weight on the alpaca? Come on back for the answers to these and other questions, as we explore the “Science of Alpaca Fiber”!

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**Many of these “mini-mills were started by alpaca farmers

Read: Alpacas: It’s All About the Fiber Part 1